A study of fatigue among Indian deck officers : ship types & voyage patterns specific

Abstract

Working onboard a merchant ship as a deck officer has always been demanding and stressful in context with the modern shipping industry. Among many other factors, fatigue is the main challenge which the seafarers have to encounter onboard. Little has been done to study about the mental and physical conditions for Indian seafarers in the past. This thesis delves into the causes of fatigue among Indian deck officers due to several aspects with a focus on the type of ships and their voyage patterns. A questionnaire was distributed among Indian Deck Officers working on several types of vessels all over the world and 82 participants revealed cases of fatigue onboard. Most of them have either experienced it themselves or within others. It has been seen by the results that fatigue levels depend upon the type of vessels. Most of the officers advocated the need for an additional deck officer onboard to release the workloads due to type of ship and nature of voyages, blaming mostly the enormous amounts of paperwork and checklists.