24 June 2014; Holland America Line, Head Office Seattle.

This will be my last blog before I will venture out to the fleet. Tomorrow I will join the Volendam for 14 days (25 June to 09 July) followed by the Amsterdam for another 14 days. (10 July – 27 July) This is all to help out with the implementation of the upgraded Lifeboat drill system.   Continue reading

Today we continue our tour of the building and we are still on the 4th floor. Here we have Fleet Operations, Finance, Marketing and near to my office Logistics. The latter is the group that has to get items that the fleet orders to the ships.  With normal items such as vegetables, meat and let’s say toilet rolls that is not so complicated. There are vendor contracts and they take care of the delivery. It gets more complicated when the ship needs a one-off item that can only be obtained from one company that might be located in the depths of Idaho.  Of course the ship needs that item yesterday and then it has to be air freighted to a port where the ship will call at.  So for this group of people it is a daily puzzle to get those items where they have to go.  Even deciding whether to send an item to Juneau or to Skagway in Alaska is something to think about. Skagway does not have any easy road or air connection so an item would have to go to Juneau and then by ferry to Skagway. Then you have to know the ferry times, make sure that the agent picks it up and gets it to the ship in time. Juneau is much easier then but that does not make the ship happy as they wanted the item yesterday.  Things are not always as easy as it seems.

Fleet operations consists out of Nautical and Technical. Under each header there might be sub divisions, such as Newbuilding and Interior design.  Holland American and Seabourn are here mixed in to a certain extent as a lot of work gets done in a combined way.  Everything is overseen by a Sr. Vice President to whom reports a Vice President Nautical and a Vice President Technical. Then there is also a Vice President Compliance but that department is on the 5^th Floor. But again it mixes in as the boundaries are not clear cut. I work for Nautical but at the moment I am sort of helping out Compliance by writing training power points for the new 3 alarm system. The roll out of that system is again a joint venture between Nautical and Compliance.

The similator gives the option to replay Radar, Electronic Chart and other Nautical Data

Staying with Nautical, there are a few things that make it possible to see that you are in the nautical world here. The most obvious one is that we have our own little Simulator. Very small and mainly meant to replay sequences from the Black Boxes on the ships in case that is needed.  If something has happened on a ship and the bridge was involved then there is the option to download the Black Box of that ship and replay the evolution in the office.

This also shows that technology advances. In the old days it was always hoped when the ship went down that the captain took the last logbook with him. Now the request is to pull out the hard drive from the Black Box back up in the Captain’s cabin. This in case that the Black Box pod, which is located on the top deck, does not float free and cannot be retrieved again.

A stick for the Bow thrusters and two circular handles for the Pods

Next to it is a small maneuvering console. This came to Seattle when the first Azipod ships arrived, to give everybody the chance to do a bit of familiarization.

This is the Azipod line up for going ahead

Handling Azipods requires a different way of thinking as the propellers are not pushing the ship forward, as is the case with conventional ships, but they are pulling the ships forward, as the propellers are located at the front of the Pod.

When maneuvering the Pod can be turned 360o and the manufacturers advise that it is better to always use ahead thrust. So if you want to stop the ship, you turn the pod 180o and give ahead in the astern direction.  When going sideways, you do the same, one pod is pushing towards the dock and the other pod is kept ready to slow down the momentum by pushing ahead the other way. It is a very clever and flexible system but you have to think about the planned maneuver in different way.

The spare Prinsendam Bell

I showed in a previous blog the big bell of the Rotterdam V.  We have another big bell on the 4^th floor. This was a bell that was meant for the Prinsendam in 2002 when it transferred to the HAL fleet from Seabourn. However it turned out that one had already been installed and thus it came as decoration to Seattle and is now standing in one of the conference rooms of the finance department.

One final thing that really appealed to my sense of humor is that visitors are warned about the fact that we are really working here. Warning signs are deployed in the corridors accordingly.

17 June 2014; Seattle Holland America Line Head Office.

Today a small intermezzo before we continue our tour of the office. I have been asked by one of the blog readers about the flag that a ship flies from the bow. It seems that every company does something different.  And that is indeed true and most of it is steeped in tradition and history. Continue reading

Most of the building is occupied by Holland America and since 2011 also by Seabourn Cruise Lines. Although Seabourn is a separate company in its operation, in the office the Seabourn People are nicely mixed in with the Holland America personnel.  Nautical is grouped with Nautical, Marketing with Marketing, etc. etc. The offices are scattered over the 1 st. 3^rd and 5^th. Floor.  A result of the constant expansion of  Holland America since it came to Seattle in 1983.  The 2^nd floor and some of the 5^th. Floor is occupied by other companies. Most of them have a connection with Medical, Hospitals and Pharmaceuticals.

Section lay out of the 4th. floor

When you come to the building for the first time, it can be very confusing. Not just because it has a warren of cubicals and offices but also because the building is not square or oblong but curved. Curved in the form of a U with indeed two legs but where the U curve is, that curve is mirrored, so the center of the U has a curved façade at both sides.  That makes it very confusing when walking around as a human being is used to square and oblong things or perfect rounds. Certainly for somebody like me, who comes from the ships with their straight corridors, it takes a while to figure out how the whole layout works.  There are four elevators centered around the main lobby and from there all sorts of sections veer off into the two legs of the U.

my short term memory spread over the desk

We will get to various levels in due course but let me start with where I have been parked for the period that I am in the office.  As I belong to Nautical, I reside in a section called Fleet Operations. I am not an expert on office configurations so I do not know if what I see here is an industry standard but  we have a central area with cubicals flanked with separate offices surrounding it.  There is a sort of pecking order with the highest functions having the largest offices with a window. Then there are inner offices that face the cubicle square for the lesser Gods and then there are the people who occupy the cubicles.

A whole sea of cubicles

A friend of mine used to say, that that is the area where the real work gets done.

As I am supposed to be sea side for most of the year, I do not have my own office. I am currently parked in an office overlooking cubicle square that was occupied before me by a Deputy Director Nautical and before that by a Lady who did something for the Mariners Society.

As it is a shipping company, the hallways, offices and cubicle areas are littered (I suppose that is not exactly the right word as some of it is quite historical and valuable) with shipping memorabilia and that makes it look different to a regular office. I do not think that the Offices from the Hospital companies here in the building will be adorned in the same way. I do not expect that those corridors are filled are with stretchers and wheelchairs from the bygone days to the current time.

Also on the 4^th. Floor there are some gems to be found. When the company left for the States in 1973, most items from the Head Office in Rotterdam were handed over to the local maritime museum and thus saved for prosperity. Some items did come over, especially what had been hanging in the Director’s offices. I have been told those offices where simply packed up lock, stock and barrel in containers and unloaded directly into the new office with everything included. Other items came to the American head office when various Sales Agency’s in the major US cities were closed.

My highlight of the fourth floor is a Jacobsen painting of the Maasdam from 1889.  The painting is dated either 1891 or 1897. Anthony Jacobsen painted for a living and basically did what professional photographers do nowadays. Shipping Company’s ordered paintings from him in the way they now order photos. So the majority of his paintings are of a similar composition. The ship is always under an angle, due to the wind blowing into the sails, and the seas are either choppy to very boisterous or even stormy but never flat. He painted a lot of ships and also quite a few for Holland America Line. He lived in Hoboken near the docks so that made it quite easy as well. Nowadays these are scattered all over the place, some in Musea and some in private hands but Holland America still has one as well.

SS Maasdam 1889 by Anthony Jacobsen

It is hanging in one of the meeting rooms on the fourth floor. The painting is interesting for two reasons: First it shows the passengers on deck in roughly the right dimensions to the ship and that gives us an impression of how relatively small the ships were in those days but still they managed to cram nearly 1100 people inside the hull.  (Maasdam of 1889: 3,983.84 tons 150 first, 60 second, 800 3^rd. 85 crew)

Secondly, the name plate under it: Netherlands Line. Holland America was in those days officially called the Noord Amerikaansche Stoomvaart Maatschappij or NASM which of course nobody could pronounce.  So everybody called it the Holland America Line. In a similar way that they used the word Cunard as a simpler name for the British & North American Steam Packet Company.  However the HAL Directors in those days did not like this plebian naming of their company (they held out until 1896 before admitting defeat) but the word Netherlands Line was found acceptable, as it more or less indicated that there was only one Steamship Company in the Netherlands. Holland America always considered itself the foremost company in Holland so the thinking was not that  usual.  (There was a real Netherland Line as well which sailed to the Dutch East Indies) As Mr. Jacobson hoped for more assignments he of course ensured that the painting was labelled properly.

Once inside the main entrance door, there is a large waiting area and on display is the Bell of the ss Rotterdam V. It is I think the biggest bell that has ever graced a Holland America ship as it weighs over 300 pounds.  How it got there is a nice story as well. Yours truly was assigned as Chief Officer on the Rotterdam V when it was going out of service after having been sold to Premier Cruises.

Rotterdam bell in the Foyer

So apart from doing my CO’s job, my interest was directly peaked into the direction of the artefacts on board. It is not unusual that a new company throws everything out that does not fit in their corporate style and also does so because it does not have any affinity with the history of the ship.  Still the New Owners wanted to keep everything so in principle everything would have to stay, but our legal counsel said that everything that had the name Rotterdam on it would remain property of HAL.  Well that gave me some options. Because the ships name was Rotterdam but also the ships registration was Rotterdam.

The ship was going out of service on 30 September 1997 a deadline that had to be adhered to as the new Rotterdam (VI) was coming into service on October 1^st.  You cannot have two Rotterdam’s in one company at the same time, it is too confusing. It was already confusing enough during the new build period, as we on board were getting mail meant for the Rotterdam under construction and the construction team in Italy was receiving things meant for us in Alaska.

The final cruise was a Trans Canal cruise which had been booked solidly with Rotterdam aficionados more than a year before. Everybody who was anybody on the regular world cruises, had to be on board, to say goodbye to the “Grand Dame of the Seas”, as the ship had been nicknamed for quite a few years already.  I was a bit wary about all these particular guests coming on board as it could be expected that they would bring screwdrivers with them to “procure” a final souvenir. We had during the final voyage extra security on patrol, just in case of. However they all found out that every valuable decoration had been very strongly attached to the ship. A mere screw driver was not enough……. and luckily nobody had thought about bringing a hammer.

Bow of the ship with the bell in the center

Just to be on the safe side I made arrangements to have everything off the bulkheads that was screw driver accessible before the last cruise started. In the end we only lost a Japanese Samurai helmet and whether that was a guest or a crewmember, we will never know. The First Port Call plaques hanging in the ship, and some of them were very nice, we auctioned off to the guests and we raised about $ 12000 for the Old Sailors Home in Holland. The plan was to buy a billiard for it but I never saw the result as a few years later, the sailors home was closed. Nowadays retired sailors prefer to live in regular Retirement Homes.

Anyway I had to ensure that all that could go off was saved before the last cruise started.   There was still quite a bit of stuff that carried the name Rotterdam, such as the builder’s plates, Chinese vases, the bust of Queen Juliana who baptized the ship, etc. etc.

And also the Bell. Nicely cast into the bell was the name SS Rotterdam.  So it was ours.  The carpenter made a beautiful box and the bell was duly landed in Norfolk dry dock.  Solas requires that each ship carries a bell on the bow to give danger and fog signals. It also describes that the minimum size of the bell mouth should at least be 300 millimeters in diameter. Otherwise there would be ship owners who would hang a Christmas ornament on the bow, just to save money.  The diameter of the Rotterdam bell is 1000 millimeter or one meter.  So when the replacement bell was installed, it looked a bit poorly and the new owner was not very happy.  But we conformed with Solas and to the contract and I had saved the bell.

And now it stands here in the entrance of the office building as a reminder of one of the greatest ships the company had ever built.

The greatest HAL Ship ever ???

Before we go inside there are two other items of interest. First off all, the building has an official name and that is: Elliott Bay Office Park. That was a new one to me as well, as most people simply refer to it as the Holland America Building. Courtesy of the fact that the companies name is on big letters on the front of the building.  But as there are other companies having offices inside, I suppose calling it the Holland America Building would not be correct, however nice it may sound. Continue reading

And so began my next adventure within Holland America. Part time in the office, part time at sea.  It took a little bit longer than expected but that was due to the fact that it was realized that I needed a different sort of Visa. There are about 10 different sort of US non-immigrant visas out there and as I am going from being a full time sailor to a part time sailor, I was upgraded from a C1-D visa to a L1 visa which gives me the right to leave the ship without being required to fly directly out of the USA. I am also allowed to do work ashore. Hence my arrival in the office without having any issues when I came through Immigration at Seattle Airport. Continue reading

What HAL does in Asia? Holland America employs since 1971 Asian Crewmembers. This came about due to the rather progressive tax regime that the Dutch Government embarked upon in the late 60’s. Contrary to some other countries, the Dutch crewmembers had to pay full tax on their earnings. This meant that the wages had to go up and that made the cost of a cruise ticket prohibitive.  HAL management had the option to forgo the passenger ships and concentrate on cargo only or, to do something that would keep the wage cost under control. As a result Holland America experimented with Indonesians, who were from a culture that was used to the Dutch (and vice versa). Indonesia had been for 300 years part of the Dutch Empire until Independence came after the 2^nd world war. That made it easier to understand and work with the Dutch Officers who remained running the ships. The change over was very successful and the situation has remained the same until the current day. In the late 70’s and early 80’s Philippinos came on board as it was found that certain skills could not sufficiently be sourced in Indonesia.  Carpenters, locksmiths, Upholsterers, Bar tenders etc. A situation that also continues to the current day. Continue reading

25 April 2014; The Never Ending Need for Training.

Training has always been a necessity to be able to do a job, or to be able to apply for a job. From the mists of time there are stories about people being trained to be ready for later life. The Romans who could afford it had slaves who taught their children, in the middle ages the Guilds would have extensive apprenticeship programs and since the 19^th. Century schooling for everybody is a right laid down in the law. What has changed from the past is the pace in which things are changing and thus the need for constant updating; e.g. more training. Not too long ago a Master Craftsman could survive on his skills learned long time ago, augmented by his/her talents. Life itself would virtually remain the same and you could reach a ripe old age by “just doing a good job in the same job”. That has changed significantly; not only at Sea, but also Ashore. Since the seventies a whole industry has sprung up with as main purpose keeping those who are at work, at work. Continue reading

The current situation with international law as far as it concerns the seafarer has made it in a way easier; but also more difficult. The addition of MLC 2006, which you can call the human element in the whole scheme, has brought separated rules. With the result that obscure laws and scattered regulations were brought together in one frame work.  Which is really great as we can now find it, and we know if it really pertains to us or not.  The other side of the coin is that now we have this frame work, there can be compliance and thus it will be audited. Resulting in extra work on the ship, and thus also for the captain. Continue reading