13 Oct; Philadelphia; USA.

I just realized that there is a name for my generation: baby boomers, for Generation X, for Generation Y, and for the Millennials, but no names for the earlier generations. Were those generations all similar to each other, or were there no psychiatrists and psychologists? The latter I doubt as we already had Sigmund Freund milling around long time ago. Still it is peculiar.

A big difference between the generations is the way they keep and kept in touch. With the modern media and connectivity everybody can keep in touch with each other 24 hours a day. During the 1986 world cruise, the only time I reached my mother at home, was when I went to a calling station in Hong Kong. Calling from the ship was also possible – most of the time – but cost prohibitive for a poor 3^rd officer and for the rest it was writing letters.  The person who went home in the middle of the cruise was at once promoted to postman with the order to mail postcards and letters upon arrival Schiphol airport. That saved money in foreign stamps and because of this system everybody always carried a good supply of Dutch stamps with them.

Technology goes faster than the ships are renewed and that means that we are retro fitting the ships all the time with new capabilities. The problem is, is the moment we have a new system installed, it is already going out of date as the usage required has increased again by an  X amount percentage. But for the current generation, being in constant contact is a regular way of life and it is not always understood that a seafaring career might not always make that possible.

Everybody goes to sea for all sorts of reasons but one reason seems to be less and less important, is the one to see the world.  As air travel has become cheaper and cheaper it is not an overpowering reason anymore to leave everybody behind for 4 months in order to finally get to Sri Lanka or Hong Kong.  I believe there are already package flights for approx. 500 euro’s to Sri Lanka from Amsterdam.

Interest in Technology and the chance to gain a lot of experience in a very short time have become more important reasons to choose a career at sea. Nowhere in the world are you put in charge of a watch – of a piece of equipment worth $ 500 mln. other than at sea. I do not know of anybody who is 21 years old and supervises a completely factory by him/herself and has to make immediate decisions when something happens. At sea you do and on a cruise ship even more so.

As a result it is fairly easy to find a job ashore after a number of years at sea and not only in pilotage. The name Holland America still has a magic sound to it and it can still open many doors. That brings the challenge to the company to retain people because there are so many possibilities for a change in career path.

With it a new word came into our cruise world. Career Path. In the past we just joined a company and eventually we got to the top. Now the whole career of an officer is managed, step by step and each officer has a fairly good idea where he/she will be on the promotion ladder in the coming years.  As the company is not decreasing, it is something that can also be managed quite well.

Basically the Human Factor has become much more complex in the last 20 years and this will only continue to evolve further. To stay in tune with what is going on, our Human Resources department keeps close tabs on what is going on out there, and although I work for Nautical I can still forward and advise about the latest concerns and thoughts that emerge.