Responsibilities as part of Engineering Department

I was a member of the engineering department. The engineering department was essentially hull techs, stokers, electricians and fire fighters. I was a stoker. So my job as an engineering rounds man, I was an ordinary seaman so I was a junior guy and you always started as a roundsman. And what that was, we had two major spaces, we had the engine room and we had the auxiliary machinery room. Outside of those we had what we called the outside spaces so steering gear, we had the fresh water pump room. We had the refrigeration compartments, we’d check pumps for the cooling systems, stuff like that so all that stuff had to be checked. So we would do rounds of the outside spaces and we’d just confirm that everything was running good. Any problems we’d deal with it. If there were emergencies such as a fire we were part of what we called rapid response or rapid survey teams so they would have a specific set group of people. There would be a HQ1 roundsman, there would be an engineering roundsman, and a petty officer to watch and one other guy but it escapes me right now. Essentially we would, if there was a fire reported or an alarm raised we would be the rapid response team, we would try to fight the fire with first hand extinguishers. If we couldn’t, we’d isolate the area and then we would set up hoses and stuff; report back to the damage control IC and then report back to the control room. So that was just one asset. If we had steering gear issues we would go back with the boson to steering gear to the secondary steering, sorry to emergency steering and we would set up to run by emergency steering, stuff like that. And we had emergencies like that. Other than that we would fill out our logs, update our log boards, our log sheets and everything and then do our four-hour watch and then we’re off.

Mr. Mellor provides detail on his role on board ship and the detailed routine of the entire engineering department.

Bruce Mellor

Mr. Bruce Mellor was born August 5, 1968 in Hamilton, Ontario. Always having the desire to join the military, Mr. Mellor joined the navy as ordinary seaman on board the HMCS Athabaskan. When instructions were given by the military to take part in the Persian Gulf War, he expressed his strong desire to be a part of this and spent his time at sea as a part of the engineering department with duties as stoker. With 20 years of military service, Mr. Mellor holds great pride for the contribution he made to the navy. Mr. Mellor now resides in Halifax with his family.