Maritime Operations & Logistics
at North West Kent College
It is difficult to believe, but even now in the 21st century
some ships still communicate using good old fashioned Morse code, the
same as the 'Titanic' used some ninety years ago!
However, Morse has been in decline since the introduction of terrestrial based Radiotelex services in the late 1970s.
Now both of these terrestrial services have all but been replaced by satellite links and the introduction of the Global Distress and Safety System - GMDSS as it is widely known.
Maritime Operations & Logistics offers a full range of GMDSS training from a single day's course aimed at the leisure market right through to the that intended for vessels trading commercially world wide.
GMDSS totally replaced existing arrangements from late 1999, and at the same time the traditional communicator - the Radio Officer - handed over his role to typically the watchkeeping officer on the bridge.
Obviously the technical maintenance capability provided
by the radio Officer was lost, but with the high level of reliability
of modern electronics, and the automated alerting methods used by GMDSS
systems it was judged by many, but not all flags, to be the way forward.
Hence even the most comprehensive course, the general Operators Certificate (GOC) only takes a total of nine days to complete.
However Maritime Operations & Logistics is discussing proposed high level technical courses with Greenwich University and other interested parties. These will involve not only GMDSS, but also other electronic navigation and data networks which are increasingly common on the interconnected ships and yachts of today.
Current GMDSS courses: