Ways to join merchant navy(Deck Officer) for Indian Students

Merchant navy is a good choice for those who want to earn good at an early age. I have known many students who think that merchant navy is for rich people only. Yes it takes a lot of money initially to complete your pre sea training at a merchant navy academy.(Don’t worry if you don’t know anyting about merchant navy, pre sea training and deck officer etc, I will cover everything for you). Good thing is that it can all be financed through an education loan and you will be able to repay whole of your loan in first 6 months of your job as an deck officer.

In this article will will cover following things

• What is merchant navy
• Different positions to start career in merchant navy
• Who can become Captain, Chief Engineer or crew member on a ship
  • Educational background required
  • Money needed to study
  • Medical and physical test
• Type of Ships and accordingly the salary of different officials at those ships
• How one should approach this career and what to avoid(Very Important)
• Life at Sea/ Merchant navy/Duties
• Who should go for this career and who should not

What is merchant navy/Understanding the Merchant Navy

Basically the main aim of companies in merchant navy is transporting goods from one port to other within a country or across the globe. These goods could be anything you see around you like laptops, iphones, big machines, food , timber, crude oil, gases and chemicals etc. As a staff on a ship sometimes you will not even know what goods you are carrying on your ship. Typically companies either have their on fleet of ships, these companies are referred as owner companies or companies manage ships of somebody else, these companies are called ship management companies.

Different positions to start career in merchant navy

There are four main streams to join merchant navy

1. Joining as Deck cadet
2. Joining as mechanical engineer
3. joining as ordinary seaman, fitter, oiler etc
4. joining as steward

In this article we will be talking about joining as Deck cadet only as this is the most sought out job in merchant navy and this is the only stream by which you can become the Captain one day(The Master of the Ship) most prestigious position on a ship

Who can become Captain, Chief Engineer or crew member on a ship

As I told you earlier to become captain you have to join as Deck cadet which is a term for trainee officer. You need to have at least 60% marks in your 12th and your stream should have been non medical science. You will need to go through one year of pre-sea training from an IMO recognised institution and acquire diploma in nautical sciences form there. You will need anywhere from 4 lakh to 8 lakh for this course. One more thing you should be below 25years of age.

To become Chief Engineer you have to join as junior engineer, you must have B.Tech in mechanicals and then join an IMO recognised institute and have to complete 6 months of pre-sea training.

To Become a crew member you should be 10th pass or ITI etc.You have to take 6 months pre-sea training from an IMO recognised institute Remember Crew members can continue to study and there are specific sea service and education required to get promoted to an officer’s grade. It is little difficult to become Captain this way but it is not impossible.

For all the posts you should be physically fit because there would be a complete medical test before joining the ship

For DECK CADETS there is one very specific requirement to eye sight, they should be 6/6 in both eyes and there should not be color blindness an night blindness. In a whole their eye sight should be perfect.

Type of Ships and accordingly the salary of different officials at those ships

There are three major types of merchant ships

• Cargo Ships
• Container Ships
• Tanker ships

The salary on cargo and container ships is less than the salary at the Tanker ships. Why? Because there is more risk on tankers compared to other two types. Will can discuss about these in detail in other blog if you want.. Just tell me in comment section.

Now let me tell you the salary — As India officer on a cargo ship you will get around 2 lakhs per month, same can be upto 3 lakh per month on Tanker ships. If you think this is not good enough let me tell you that you can become captain in a span of 10 years and the salary of Captain is form 7 lakh to 30 lakh per month depending on the type of ship. So I would say that it is a very promising career.

How one should approach this career and what to avoid(Very Important)

Now there is a lot of competition in this career as well and there are a lot of agents who gives you foul promises and can cheat you. So first of all beware of these guys.

The right way to approach this career is to appear for interviews which merchant navy companies take to recruit freshers. Then you will get written sponsorship from that company and then you will go to an Academy/Institute of their choice to complete your pre-sea training. This way your job is guaranteed even before starting of your studies for DNS(diploma in nautical sciences)

The other way is to join an academy on your own get DNS and then search job. This method is not recommended because there are very few jobs for such candidates and these candidates are one who gets trapped by agents.

This article is getting very big so I would conclude it here, There are many things which I wanted to cover like life at sea, what job you do on ship, how you can travel the world and earn as well in this career, the perks of the job, the difficulties of this job, Career opportunities after you decide to quit this job later on etc. Dear readers if you are interested in any particular topic you can ask me by comment section, I will try to answer every question and also try to write other blog covering remaining topics.

About the author:

Mr. Dheeraj Parashar is the author of this article who was former deck cadet in Anglo Eastern Ship Management. He had to quit the merchant navy due to family issues, now he is working as scale 2 Manager in Punjab National Bank. He also has a youtube channel called RideGuru where he talks about one of his passions ‘Automobiles’. He write guest blogs on different sites. You can follow his on instagram and ask your queries.

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