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我是一名商船上的导航员，有七年海上工作经验。这里有两件事可能让你感兴趣。首先，在商船服务中，晋升几乎完全取决于能力。自我推销，比如一份完美的简历，几乎没有帮助。能力，比如在“人落水”事件中采取的行动，才更为重要。其次：圣诞夜，一艘船发射了一枚火箭降落伞信号弹。数百艘船都看到了。这是一个遇险信号。每一艘看到它的船都有义务报告。然而，无线电里播放的是圣诞颂歌。 — 晚上11点。我正在值班，听到窗帘后面有脚步声。一个高大、宽肩的剪影走了出来。是T船长。海面空无一人，他只是上来看看海。他给我讲了他和他一位挚友的竞争故事，这位朋友和他一样，都投身于航海事业。他们同年，但他的朋友是学院的荣誉毕业生，T船长以0.02的平均学分排名第二。毕业时，他们各自打赌一万美元，看谁先成为船长。他的朋友29岁时成为了一名油轮船长，指挥着约10万总吨的船舶。T船长30岁时，在同等载重量的燃气船上达到了船长职位。大型船舶的晋升速度较慢，而燃气船则执行着行业内最严格的安全法规。尽管如此，他承认，他输了。他的对手获得了他航行过的所有船长的推荐信。T船长称赞道，这值得称赞。 29岁和30岁。我曾与比我年长十岁、仍在为晋升而挣扎的二副一起航行。 “航海是一项直接的工作。在晋升方面，真正重要的只有一件事：尽你所能地展现你的能力。” 我曾申请过其他航运公司。我花了几周时间修改我的简历，优化它，直到它变成两页，结构清晰，可读性强，令人信服。但没有回音。一位同事进入了世界上薪酬最高的一些公司之一。我向他要了简历。他的肯定比我的好。五页纸，一张模糊的脸部照片，杂乱的句子，读起来就像直接的谷歌翻译。写得很差，但他一个月就找到了工作。一个不同之处：他申请时，公司正在大力宣传招聘信息。他们急需人手来装备他们新造的船只。招聘人员只筛选简历以入围。真正的评判发生在面试中。重要的是一件事：你能在多大程度上做好你的工作。在“人落水”事件中你会怎么做？在船员发生致命事故时，你会转向哪里？登船最安全的方式是什么？航海是一项自我推销作用甚微的职业。离职日期不是可以计划的。人们会尝试，取决于接替者的可用性，但很多时候事情不会按计划进行。圣诞节是你最容易错过的。海员们找到了庆祝错过时刻的独特方式。这件事，我保留其地点和年份。所发生的一切都是真实的。 12月25日午夜。我正要离开驾驶台时，看到海岸边燃起了烟花。VHF频道16，通常充斥着船舶报告位置的呼叫，现在播放着圣诞颂歌。使用16频道进行除紧急通信以外的任何通信都是违规的，但当数百艘船同时欢呼时，这种违规行为是无法追踪的。更非法的是几分钟后发生的事情。一道明亮的红烟射向天空。一枚火箭降落伞信号弹，来自一艘停泊的船只。烟火信号表示遇险船只，每艘看到它的船都必须将信息转达给海岸电台，并可能改变航向进行救援。这不仅仅是违规，更是违反了国际海事法。信号弹之后，无线电里传来数十艘船的欢呼声。有一句话至今仍萦绕在我耳边： “这是我们的圣诞节！” VHF频道比以往任何时候都更加疯狂地转动，信号弹像普通的鞭炮一样被发射。更多文章：thenautology.substack.com

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I'm a navigation officer on commercial ships, seven years at sea. Two things here that might interest you.First, promotion in the merchant service runs almost entirely on competency. Self-marketing, like a perfect CV, barely helps. Competency, like taking action during man overboard, mattered far more.Second: on Christmas night, a ship fired a rocket parachute flare. Hundreds of ships saw it. That's a distress signal. Every vessel that sees one is obligated to report it. The radio played Christmas carols instead.—11pm. I was standing watch when I heard footsteps behind the curtains. A tall, broad-shouldered silhouette came out. Captain T. The sea was empty, and he had come up simply to look at it.He told me about a competition with his dear friend who, alongside him, took to the sea. Same age, but his friend was the academy's honor student, Captain T. second by 0.02 CGPA. Graduating, they each bet $10,000 on who would first reach Captaincy.His friend became an oil tanker Captain at 29, commanding some 100,000 GT. Captain T. attained his at 30, on gas tankers of the same capacity. Promotion is slower on larger carriers, and gas tankers carry the most stringent safety laws in the industry.Still, he admitted, he had lost. His rival had secured recommendation letters from all Masters he sailed with. Praiseworthy, remarked Captain T.29, and 30. I've sailed with Chief Officers ten years older, still struggling for promotion."Seafaring is straightforward work. There's really only one thing that truly mattered in gaining promotion: be as competent as you can be."I once applied to other shipping companies. I spent weeks tinkering with my CV, optimizing it until it was two pages, structurally readable, credible. No reply.A colleague had gotten into one of the highest paying companies in the world. I asked for his CV. Surely his was better than mine. Five pages, a grainy face picture, tangled sentences that read like a direct google translation. Poorly written, yet his employment took a month.One difference: he applied when the company heavily advertised vacancies. They desperately needed people to man their newbuilt ships. Recruiters screened CVs only to short-list. The real judgment happened in the interview.What mattered was one thing: how well could you perform your work. What's your action during a man overboard? Where do you divert when there's a fatal case for the crew? What's the safest way to board a ship? Seafaring is a vocation where self-marketing serves very little.Sign-off dates aren't something to be planned. One would try, depending on the reliever's availability, but more often than not things would not go as planned. Christmas is the one you lose most.Seamen found their own ways of celebrating missed moments. This event, I withhold its whereabouts and its year. What transpired was true.Midnight 25th December. I was about to go down from the Bridge when I saw fireworks spring forth along the coasts. The VHF, tuned to Channel 16, usually busy with ships calling in positions, now played Christmas carols. It is a violation to use Channel 16 for anything but emergency traffic, but such breaches were untraceable when hundreds of ships cheered at once.Even more illegal was what ensued minutes after. A bright red smoke shot to the sky. A rocket parachute flare, from one of the anchored ships. Pyrotechnics signal vessels in distress, and every ship seeing it must relay the message to the coast station, and potentially deviate course to rescue her. More than a violation, this broke international maritime law.Following the flare were cheers on the radio by tens of ships. One voice has stayed with me since:"This is our Christmas!"The VHF turned more wildly than ever, the flare fired like an ordinary firecracker.More essays: thenautology.substack.com

一艘船将遇险信号弹当作烟花燃放。另一艘船看到后说：“这是我们的圣诞节。”