Ex Merchant Navy officers who served in the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s must be in awe of their counterparts who work in the industry today. Maybe even envious of the advancements modern day technology has created? Somehow I think not. Partly because way back then we didn’t know any better and were perfectly happy, more or less, to just get our vessel from A to B without incident and on time.
We would be under pressure occasionally, when something went wrong, but it went with the territory and very rarely created long term stress. If an item of machinery decided to break down during a raging winter storm in the North Atlantic, the engineers would be under a lot of pressure to get it fixed so the navigators could regain control of the vessel. Generally, after everything was sorted there would be very little stress, apart from making up lost time and analysing what went wrong in case preventative measures were needed.
Today it seems that one of the negative consequences of the ‘Hi-Tec’ age is ‘Big Brother’ monitoring, a plethora of alarms and performance-related targets, which often create a lot of ongoing pressure, with associated long term stress. Not an attractive career for everyone, I would guess.
This short preamble, is to highlight one of the modern day, Hi-Tec facilities available to seafarers, that I really do envy: the unquestionable advantages of the YouTube website. Sixty years ago we were all well trained, had an assortment of spare parts and materials on board, a machine tool workshop and some technical manuals. There was virtually no highly technical equipment or machinery to cope with, so we managed to get along very well.
Everything is different now; invariably computerised and much more complicated. However, most marine equipment manufacturers post videos on YouTube about the benefits of their equipment, which items to choose and specify for your particular vessel, how to effect repairs or fit spare parts and a ‘chat’ facility if you are still unsure.
In the mid 1960’s I would not have believed it could be possible. We were still communicating with head office via Morse code and such facilities were never even dreamed of as far as I can remember. If they were, it would have been as science fiction dreams, in the same vein as comic hero Dick Tracy’s 2-way wrist radio.
Solar Solve now relies on its website for on-line trading and its associated YOUTUBE CHANNEL for lots of other things. We have invested a lot of time, money and effort creating videos for our SOLAR SOLVE UK YOUTUBE CHANNEL, which can be found at https://www.youtube.com/user/solasolv. The main objective when it was conceived, was to show enquirers and customers who visited the site, how easy it is to measure windows to determine the correct dimensions for ordering Solar Solve UK products. Other videos show how easily the various products are installed.
In later videos we moved on to the marketing aspects to demonstrate the choices and benefits of various Solar Solve UK products and so it goes on. All of the Solar Solve videos have subtitles which can be displayed in 31 different languages. Why not take a look and be totally impressed?
Modern technology has enabled a whole multitude of appliances, machines, electronic devices and other types of equipment to be developed to make life’s tasks much easier to complete. Far easier than it used to be and I for one am in awe of how it all works but like most people I just accept it all and get on with my life.
