Imagine this. You're a naval officer on a ship in the middle of the ocean
and you're caught in a hurricane. It happened to Ron Ingram. His ship bounced
all over the place.
"We call it roll and pitch. Roll is side to side. Pitch is up and down.
In a heavy sea in a relatively small ship, it's not uncommon to see a roll
of 45 degrees or so. Imagine that you're sitting in your room and you tilted
halfway up to vertical. That's a 45-degree roll, and it's not a normal thing
to happen to a person."
Being in a hurricane was frightening, but Ingram applied the navy training
he'd received and survived.
With the navy, Ingram played a vital role in the design, installation and
testing of the Tomahawk weapon system. The company he now works for served
as the design agent to the navy for the introduction of the Tomahawk aboard
destroyers, cruisers and battleships. It was pretty exciting to be involved
in such an important project.
Ingram is based in California. As a manager, Ingram oversees the smooth
running of many large engineering and design projects.
Being a marine engineer has its rewards. You might get to design a ship
that has to go 30 knots or a sea-water pump that has to drain a certain number
of gallons per minute.
The rewards come from seeing your design working. "It's great to see your
design is able to accomplish whatever function it was designed to do."
Ingram's company employs both naval architects and marine engineers. Ingram
explains the difference. "A naval architect is the person associated with
the hull form -- the shape of the hull and how long and how wide it is. The
marine engineer is associated with the machinery that goes into the hull."
It can be a dangerous job for a couple of reasons. "Anytime you're in an
industrial environment, it's always dangerous. A shipyard is an industrial
area and engineers spend time in shipyards. So there's some danger there."
There's danger out at sea too, as Ingram well knows after his encounter with
a hurricane.
"People are injured or killed at sea every day, usually in smaller fishing
vessels. There are always interesting things that happen aboard ship. Surprises,
things that you wouldn't expect to happen. When a ship is underway in a heavy
sea, things come loose that you would never have thought could come loose.
Things fail. You've got to get things working again, usually in a hurry."
Yet there's a romance about the sea that attracts people to seagoing occupations.
Still, the opportunities are so few in the merchant marine that most end up
as land-based engineers. Ingram was fortunate to have spent time at sea. Many
graduates don't get that opportunity.
Now Ingram is happy to be involved in the design end of things. He works
closely with the navy, private ship owners, shipyards, combat system companies
and energy utilities. His colleagues are combat systems engineers, naval architects
and transportation scientists.
Lt. Laurie Doucet came by her love for engineering honestly. Her father
was an air force electrical engineer. When Doucet graduated from high school,
she enrolled in chemistry at college -- intending to become a medical doctor.
Later, after thinking more about (and not liking) the idea of performing surgery,
she switched and became a chemical engineer.
"I was exposed to engineering at a young age and had strong academic results
in sciences and math throughout high school," she says. "During that time
I was exposed to some specific programs...for women in science and technology."
Doucet had always wanted to serve in the military. She visited a recruiting
center and signed up for an officer training program. Maritime engineering
caught her interest, and she trained to become a marine systems expert.
"Marine systems, for me, is the most hands-on engineering by far....You're
the closest to the equipment, closest to the mechanic technologist. You go
to sea with a ship and you're the head of the department -- the boss....That
doesn't exist in the army or air force, where engineers stay back somewhere."
Doucet's regard for her profession is unbounded.
"It's the absolute best engineering in uniform," she says.
Cmdr. Norm Blatchford is the former head of a navy fleet school for technicians,
and currently runs a navy engineering division.
Blatchford grew up on the West Coast and his father worked in a pulp mill.
"I was lucky enough to get a summer job there and was put into the steam plant."
He ended up earning his stationary engineering certificate. "Which enabled
me to put myself through university without owing a great amount of money
at the end of the day."
But he didn't study engineering. He studied geology. "At the time, I made
some inquiries and found that the navy was looking for marine engineers."
Until recently, the navy operated steam plants. "The transition
from stationary engineering and land-based steam plants to ship steam plants
was not all that difficult to make. So I made that conversion and started
on my training."
During the early years of a marine engineer's career in the navy, they
will be taught the skills to take over a ship's entire engineering department.
"You're the senior officer responsible for the propulsion plant and all of
the hotel services -- including steam, power, sanitary systems. Everything
excluding the electronics and radars, which is another branch of marine engineering,"
says Blatchford.
"It's not the lifestyle that everybody's cut out for. You're away from
home a fair amount -- especially early in your career. If you're on a ship,
you have to leave your family...behind for two or three months, sometimes
six months. We have a ship right now on its way to the Persian Gulf and it'll
be gone six months. That is a little foreign to some people. But on the other
hand it can be a very exciting lifestyle. People who stay in love it."
Did Blatchford ever get to use his geology degree? "I often made a joke
out of it," he says. "I said that if we ever do run aground, I can get out
and tell the captain what kind of rock we hit."