HMCS Athabaskan – A MARS Subbie’s Perspective
Dedicated to Sad Panda
As the last ‘Sister of the Space Age’ will be paid off shortly on March 10, I wanted to write a few words on what it was like as a MARS Subbie to be aboard over the last few years. I won’t go into the experiences of the MSE, CSE or Logistic Subbies as their journey was quite different.
I have a couple of points to clear up before I get to my time with the ship. If you know of anyone contemplating MARS as a career choice, hold them down and pound them until they change their minds. Used car salesmen or politician or alligator wrangler would all be better career choices. If they are really smart, they would apply to the Air Force. Oh, I can hear the MARS community all saying, he’s just disgruntled and lashing out. Well, why does a significant portion of MARS officers immediately apply for an Occupational Transfer once they’ve completed their Naval Officer Professional Qualification (NOPQ) board? If an Athabaskan MARS officer says they love their job onboard, they have drunk the Kool-Aid and live on the Dark Side. There’s one lady who might defend her time as an Athabaskan MARS officer but she came very close one night to having my fist go through her face. A door close to the Operations Room has a crease where I almost broke my hand punching it.
Second point I wanted to talk about was the term Subbie. That’s our term to use, no one else’s. It is just as derogatory as the ‘N’ word for black people or any of the other racist words out there. We are Sub Lieutenants. The short form is too often used to belittle the person and the rank.
But that is a general short coming of the RCN. Everyone, especially the senior NCMs, seem to take pride in finding faults. The job is perfect for people with OCD, or particularly tortuous, because there are thousands of correctable faults to be found on board a ship like Athabaskan. So instead of helping to teach the new sailors and officers, people engage in endless rounds of ‘Stump the Chump’ or pointing out people’s faults and mistakes. The RCN does not provide a nurturing environment for growth and development. I prefer the Air Force model where you work as a team versus trying to trip someone up all the time.
Okay, back to the lovely life of an Athabaskan Subbie. As a general statement, in the two years I was with the ship, I have never been so continuously angry and frustrated in my life. This was pretty much the feelings of all of my contemporaries according to the Bull sessions we had in the Quads or the Quiet Area. We were a forlorn, despondent, dejected group of individuals.
I place most of the blame regarding the Subbie’s predicament on the first Commanding Officer, Executive Officer and Navigating Officer that I had. The RCN uses an antiquated system to train their newest Fleet officers. The decision to qualify and submit a new Officer of the Watch (OOW) to their NOPQ board rests entirely with the Commanding Officer (CO). All Subbies have their Req books firmly in tow and the 111 subjects are supposed to help prepare them for their Bridge Watchkeeping Certificate (BWK) and their Board. Unfortunately, we had very little oversight or guidance on how to proceed with our training and it was left up to the individual to ad hoc a method of self-teaching. In reality, we devolved to a litter of pups fighting for the one or two teats of CO nourishment. Only the most aggressive, wheedling or favoured garnered attention while the rest were ignored. In order to be noticed, we would snatch the Operations handset from each other so he would hear our voice over the communication net. In over a year, I only had a couple of short conversations with the man who was in direct charge of my career. Any other time I spoke with him, it would mostly be a grunt or some nonsensical remark. I could only engage him on the topic of my daughter, as he had grown daughters of his own. This wasn’t just an issue with me of course. Infamously, he forgot that he had not given a BWK ticket to one of the long-term Subbies while he was handing out tickets on the bridge to others. There were about a dozen of us that languished in the doldrums for years because of the lack of his enthusiasm to train and move us forward.
The next piece of excrement who contributed to the general malaise of the Subbie cabal was my first Athabaskan Executive Officer (XO). He was a universally hated man onboard the ship. He is a prime example of the failings of the MARS trade where a despicable excuse for a human can climb the RCN ranks if they are clever enough. To illustrate the disgust felt for the man, his girlfriend dumped him in hospital while he was being treated for a spontaneous lung pneumothorax. There were a couple of occasions and one particularly bad Wardroom incident with the Operations Officer where I was ashamed to be called a MARS officer. Of course, he and the Subbies had a poisonous relationship. Instead of even attempting to guide them through their training, he would at the most hold long-winded lectures mostly just to hear himself. He and I definitely did not get along. At the end, I would receive at least one blast of shit per day. In over a year, I only had one real conversation onboard with him where we actually spoke as human beings to one another. I would try to avoid him as best as I could but inevitably I would receive my daily snarky remark. This man has had command before and unfortunately will weasel into a top RCN job in the future.
The last significant personality who torpedoed the Subbie’s collective morale was our first Navigating Officer. She was particularly incompetent at her Divisional duty to progress our learning and training. She is also a clever individual who was able to personally advance her career on being able to firmly stick her head up the correct butt. There was a particular universally hated Subbie who followed her lead and had his head firmly up her butt. Like follows like. These people seem to go far in the RCN because they don’t make waves with the wrong people and sell their soul instead.
To be fair, NavOs are pretty much the busiest people in the Fleet. They never have time to themselves and with Athabaskan, instead of the usual two or three Subbies, we had up to 12 at one time. But their Divisional job is to be in direct control of the Subbies training. Instead, as in her case, we were mostly left to our own devices with little to no feedback. The CO would see our Req books maybe once a month and leave a four or five word note. She was supposed to give us quarterly Performance Development Reviews but I never received even one from her. The only real ‘help’ and guidance from her that I received was an Initial Counselling (IC) out of the blue because I had not completed my Officer of the Day training. An IC is a permanent black mark on your file and instead of guiding me towards a learning stream I should have been taking, she went straight to the heavy hand. She ended up being no friend to the group and we were glad when she was posted away.
The RCN needs a clear and standardized system when it comes to training their MARS Sub Lieutenants. The present system is too haphazard and too easily derailed by individual personalities, circumstances and an unfocused training regime. In my case, after I left the training school Venture in Esquimalt, I was never given the chance to run a day or night Man Overboard exercise. I was given only maybe 60 to 90 minutes of OOW Maneuver time over the two years. These were basic skills for an OOW and we were given next to no opportunities to practice let alone become proficient as all other priorities trumped our needs. Of course on the rare occasions that we did run the drills, inevitably there were mistakes and the CO would give us our blast of crap to be followed by the NavO bridge wing lecture. As for the numerous pre-requisites for the OOD and NOPQ boards, we had to continuously hound the proper personnel for a few minutes of their precious time. Rarely was dedicated time set aside for our studies with the Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). The RCN needs to move to a 21st century training model in order to quit wasting the time, money and efforts of everyone involved.
Another leap forward for the RCN will be the retiring of these old rust buckets and the acquisition of proper vessels. Athabaskan was a particularly poor place to live, train and study in. A large portion of a Subbie’s life is taken up with standing watch, doing their pre-requisites for Officer of the Day and NOPQ boards, and studying. Along with the usual annoyances that every warship endures with weather tossing you about, broken sleep and living in close quarters, Athabaskan had her own peculiar issues that made life onboard difficult. The worst for me was the absolute lack of flat, lit spaces for studying. The Wardroom table was the only spot as the Quads were generally taken over by visiting Air Crew who needed their sleep. I don’t begrudge the pilots for being more comfortable than us. Their lives were literally in their hands on every flight and I admire their skill and fortitude especially on some of the more hairy weather days. But for a Subbie trying to study for a Rules test, I would bounce around the ship trying to find a quiet, lit space.
Speaking of bouncing, Subbies more than most, were nomads when it came to your living space. Occasionally, we would rate cabins as Athabaskan had extra due to her being a command platform. Up forward, if we were on an OP CARIBBE, the bulkheads would be black with mold. On the colder sails, the outside bulkheads would be covered in ice. The breakers would constantly be blowing due to officers using illicit space heaters or dehumidifiers in an effort to make their cabin livable. For the Subbies, we would typically end up in a Mess on the lower decks. #1 Mess with the steam hammer in the pipes was the worst. Imagine a person irregularly beating a 50 gallon drum with a sledgehammer right next to your head. We fought with the Hull Technicians for over a week to fix the issue. We were a low priority to the HT’s. #2 Mess was bad for the heat when we sailed south as it was over one of the machinery spaces. Stewing in your own juices didn’t make for a comfortable sleep. Lack of hot water on board was another major issue. We never had any for showering. Basic creature comforts would have gone a long way to making the time more bearable. I won’t complain too loudly though as the poor sailors stuck in the 50 man messes 12, 13, and 14 had it much worse.
It is said that if you want the true story of a ship, you take a look at the general mood of the Subbies. We were not a happy lot and especially under my first CO, Athabaskan was not a happy ship. In my opinion, of any other group onboard, we were the least well treated. At one time, we were up to 12 or 13 of us when normally it should have been only two or three. When there are that many, it’s natural to want to use the Subbie army as Shitty Little Jobs Officers (SLJOs). It became normal to have Safety Officers for every evolution and Dials Officers for every Replenishment at Sea. Basically, they had to invent tasks to look like we were busy. Instead, we were just getting in the way. Whenever we would try to ‘lead’, a Bosun would basically just put us in a corner so we would be out of the way. The RCN is going to have serious issues with the new reduced manning on the Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships and new frigates because they have become used to all this extra manpower doing a slew of extra ‘keep busy’ work.
Coming back to our general treatment, some of the Chiefs of the Boat were definitely not our friends. One Combat Chief in particular enjoyed snapping Subbies into line. He was growly and rough on others in the Combat Department who also stood up to his bullying. I took umbrage to his ordering around of junior officers and confronted him on it. He immediately made a stink to the Combat Officer and as a Subbie I was automatically in the wrong. The other chiefs were on a so-so relationship level with us. In order to appear to be ‘leaders’, we were supposed to snap the bridge crew into line so that the CO could see us exercising charge. Instead of team building and inspiring people to perform, we were training as disdainful overlords meting out random harshness. So it would be difficult to interact with the ship’s company as like most people they don’t enjoy random tongue lashings. But again, you emulate what you see and experience.
If I had a particular task which galled me the most about being a Subbie, it would be the infuriating chore of copying out the fair Bridge logbooks. A logbook is meant to record significant actions and every RCN ship has an OOW notebook and the ship’s logbook. The notebook can be used to jot down everything and is done in pencil. The logbook, kept in ink, also is used to record events but what is recorded is so poorly understood, inevitably someone will screw up. Countless hours of Subbie time have been wasted on re-copying innumerable logs whose final resting place is supposed to be the RCN archives in Ottawa. It was maddening to spend so much time and effort on writing a PERFECT copy of nonsense log entries for a book that was destined to never again see the light of day.
Other disagreeable tasks included studying for and writing the regular ‘Big Three’ tests: Rules, Bridgemanship and Aircraft Procedures. The purpose of the testing was to prepare us for the eventual NOPQ board. Instead, the testing just served to show us how deficient our training and knowledge was. Reciting verbatim the Collision Regulations show no mastery of the Rules, they just show you’re a clever parrot. Sitting us down for testing was just a mechanism for making it look like we were busy and learning something.
Life was harsh for the Athabaskan MARS Subbies but there were a few bright spots. The shared hardships and constant disappointment drove us together. We pitied the poor new-comers that came into our pit of despair. All of the commiserating in the Quads quickly sucked the spirit and life out of a freshly graduated Venture student. A couple of enterprising, quick-witted Subbies produced a clandestine satirical publication that gave us a few chuckles. The food was generally pretty good although it was tough to get a few extra pizza slices on Saturday nights. I had some good relationships with a number of the crew who saw that I wasn’t a typical asshole MARS officer and had their best interests in mind. We did have some stellar parties in the Wardroom and during port visits. The partying and excessive drinking were symptoms of doomed souls attempting to find solace from the bottom of a bottle.
So I hope you have continued beating that misguided fool who even uttered the thought of going MARS. As the saying goes, ‘The beatings will continue until morale improves!’ Some of you might pass this tale off as the grumblings of a malcontent who found fault with his Subbie career. No, what was so disheartening to me was the fate that awaited us after our NOPQ boards. A Subbie’s dream was to become a gash Lieutenant, that blissful pause in your MARS career when you don’t have Director’s Level training and you pretty much just stand watches on the Bridge. Unfortunately for the directors, NavO, Combat Officer, Operations Room Officers and even the CO, the ass pain, belittling, demeaning of you and your actions never cease. It may not be as bad as the ‘Bad, Old Days’ but it is true that in the MARS profession, they eat their own. Even the best of people are reduced to bitter, sarcastic, disillusioned shells. The environment onboard Athabaskan was poison and ruined our sailing. (Subsequently, I sailed as a staff officer onboard HMCS Fredericton. That was head and shoulders a much better experience and showed to me how key people in the wrong positions can ruin your environment and learning atmosphere.)
I will miss most of the Athabaskan crew I served and sailed with but I will not miss the ship and what that setting did to suck the life out of good people.
Blair is a personification of a ‘Jack of All Trades and Master of None’. He has held several careers and has all the T-shirts. Time to add the title Blogger to the list.
