At helm of marine studies

Source: This is Plymouth

AH, WELL, the A-Level results are in the bag so it's the right time of year to have a look around the University of Plymouth.

I'm not planning to push my brain too hard so let's try the marine studies department; it sounds like the kind of place that offers the fun but useless degrees much-criticised by proper academics and business leaders.

I'm sure marine studies boss Andrew Eccleston will give me some flannel about how the students learn useful stuff and the courses are all very demanding and rigorous.

But, ahoy there; one of his department's courses is an ocean yachting degree. It's all very well spending a few years lounging around on a sailing boat, but then what?

Let's cut to the bottom line, shall we? How much do students earn when they leave, eh? Eh?

"Well, last year one of our marine studies graduates went straight into a job earning £50,000 in the oil industry," he says.

Um, ah, well: so one former student has struck it lucky, but...

"Another earned US$100,000 (about £62,000)."

OK, a couple of recent graduates are doing well, but...

"Some of our ocean yachting graduates are working for multi-millionaires all over the world," says Andrew, smiling.

Yes, but, there's more to life than money. I bet they're in dead-end, burn-out jobs that they hate and can't stick for more than a year or two.

"We've got a couple who are captaining superyachts owned by incredibly wealthy men," says Andrew, smiling even more broadly.

He quotes an example which speaks of unimaginable opulence. One Plymouth graduate captains a 219-foot superyacht, the Golden Shadow, which lives up to its name; the boat shadows the lead superyacht, the Golden Odyssey, carrying the superwealthy owner's supertoys including a seaplane. Really.

Now I have to resist the temptation to smile, too: a distant, 'in my dreams' grin as I picture myself in the lap of luxury cruising from one fabulous location to the next. But I snap out of it.
Not everybody can get a job like that. What about the other graduates? Are they washed up in a dole queue somewhere?

Andrew remains patient, although that grin is getting wider than Plymouth Sound. "All our students are incredibly marketable." he adds. "Their earnings potential is excellent."

Well it would have to be, wouldn't it? They need to land a highly-paid job just to keep their heads above water. These days the cost of getting a degree is staggering. Graduates end up in debts deeper than the Mediterranean.

"Although many of the skills our students learn are transferable, our courses are vocational and many of our students are sponsored by merchant shipping companies," says Andrew. The full package is worth more than £35,000 and includes all course fees and a living allowance.

By now, my own education is coming on nicely.

I'd thought that, at best, marine studies was an outmoded subject area (the days of the great British merchant fleet are gone) giving students skills that were no longer needed. Hi-tech modern ships practically sail themselves, don't they?

Or, at worst, marine studies allowed students to drift along for three years before hitting the rocks: the harsh reality that they weren't in the real world.

Wrong on most counts. For a start, marine studies degrees in Plymouth are four years, with one spent on the deck on a work placement.

Besides, in the first year all the students – about 40 this intake – take the same modules.

These are rigorous courses on which – take a deep breath – maths plays an important part, and as for hi-tech, one of the department's most impressive pieces of kit, the ship simulator, is so realistic that I felt seasick when I had a go.

The impressive kit gives the feel of being on the bridge and at the helm. Programs can change the weather and location. You can dodge the tankers in a storm in the maritime equivalent of the M25, the English Channel, drop anchor in a thick mist in Plymouth Sound or, in my case, crash into Mount Batten at top speed in perfect visibility.

The three degrees have common elements but can send graduates into widely differing jobs offshore or onshore.

Ocean yachting, as the name suggests, can lead students into the growing leisure marine sector. Former Plymouth students join the ranks of yachting professionals. One is sailing manager to the boss of mobile phone giant Carphone Warehouse.

The navigation degree is just as specialised. The offshore survey, exploration and exploitation industry is where many graduates end up. In the case of the high earner mentioned at the start of this story, that's the oil industry.

Graduates in merchant shipping can expect to sail the seven seas, going anywhere on anything from a container ship to a luxury cruise liner.

And no, although you might think that everything can be done by computer linked to Global Positioning System satellites, telling the captain which wave he's floating on, it isn't.

Traditional navigational skills are still needed. GPS has not made the navigator redundant.

"People said that when radar came in," says Andrew. "There have been a range of new waves of technology and the same thing is said each time: that you won't get collisions. You do; you get different kinds of collisions. People feel safer (because of the technology) and they sail closer to the rocks, for example.

"GPS systems can give inaccurate readings and they can pack up altogether. Navigators still have to copy GPS readings on to paper and must be able to cross-check against other readings."

If they over-rely on the computer, the consequences can be disastrous. Andrew recalls a couple of headline-grabbing incidents in which GPS not only failed to prevent an accident, but was arguably the reason for the collision. One involved a cross-Channel ferry hitting a wreck; another led to a ship grounding on a sandbank off the east coast of the UK.

"In both cases the GPS wasn't zoomed in far enough; they missed the detail," he says. "At Plymouth, we still teach astronomical navigation."

In fact the city has trained navigators since 1862, when the Plymouth School of Navigation was set up. Through various name-changes the school became one of the foundation stones of the university.

Such rigorous training is one reason why British officers remain in demand on merchant and pleasure ships throughout the world, even though the 'home' fleet has shrunk.

Andrew says: "The British merchant fIeet shrank in the 1980s when it was often cheaper to employ people from other countries. That's still the case, but less so now: but the British seafarer is still held in very high regard. Some companies still insist on British officers at the top level."

Despite the recession, which has hit the marine transport sector, 'there are still a shortage of properly qualified and experienced people' on ships worldwide, Andrew adds.

You might be wondering, with respect to the joys of being an academic at the University of Plymouth, if there are so many opportunities for marine professionals, why Andrew isn't out there doing it for real.

The answer is that he's been there, done that and steamed full circle. He came to what was then Plymouth Polytechnic from his native Birmingham in 1970 for a degree in nautical studies.

Andrew spent six years as a Merchant Navy deck officer navigating ships across the Atlantic and returned to Plymouth Poly for a PhD in meteorology, the first doctorate completed in the marine department.

He later worked for the Met Office, then started his own commercial weather company, employing other Plymouth graduates.

His enterprise supplied weather information to airlines and television companies. Andrew's claim to fame is that he trained Ulrika Jonsson on how to read the weather for breakfast broadcaster TV-am.

He also set up a computer business and in total spent more than 20 years in the aviation and media sectors, supplying weather services and information technology.

He's married to childhood sweetheart Sheila. They met in a school production of The Winter's Tale – appropriately, he was playing the Mariner – when she was one of the female cast members recruited in a co-production with the neighbouring girls' college.

They've been married 36 years and have two grown-up daughters. Sheila is a PA at John Kitto Community College.

Andrew and Sheila have been back in Plymouth since 1999, when they bought a house in Mount Batten, close to the marina. He'd sold one business and was soon to give up the other.

"It felt the right time to do it," he says. "We came back to Plymouth because we love it so much.
"The city gave me such an excellent start and I love it so much."

Andrew worked briefly as a troubleshooting short-term manager before stepping out of the private sector and joining the University of Plymouth in 2002. He's the marine studies programme manager.

Despite the demands of running the courses, he still sets his own, at the helm.

"I don't sail as much as I'd like," the 57-year-old moans. "We have two sailing holidays a year.

"On one we turn right out of the Sound and go along the coast towards Penzance; on the other we turn left and go east."

He has a choice of two boats, which he owns: Bessie, a 36-foot Dufour, and Questar, a 44-foot Swan. Non-yachties should be told that mention of the larger boat will have sailors drooling; the Swan is the Aston Martin of the seas, a fast, classic craft. The Questar is in demand as a charter boat and this year raced at Cowes with Plymouth students as crew.

Navigation, IT and meteorology are his teaching specialities. Andrew is high up in the field of weather study in the UK; he's a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society and a member of this country's delegation to the World Meteorological Organisation Congress.

He seems most proud, though, of a role which combined his passion for sailing and his skills as a forecaster; he was the official forecaster to the Gypsy Moth IV project.

Sailing in the wake of Sir Francis Chichester in 2006-07 aboard the mariner's historic boat on the 40th anniversary celebration of the single-handed circumnavigation was 'a dream come true', says Andrew.

Clearly, he's made the most of his opportunities, but does the Plymouth marine sector make the most of its?

"No," says Andrew, without hesitation, "not because a bad job is done by the city, but because the opportunities are so big nobody could make the most of them.

"Plymouth has a fantastic location. Plymouth Sound and the area surrounding it are so beautiful.
"When I have a visitor from abroad and I take them sailing up the Yealm I'm confident I'm giving the best that England has."

Andrew and the marine studies department work hard to inspire young people from all backgrounds in Plymouth to get a taste of, and take an interest in, the sea. Some might think that, if marine studies graduates are in high demand and highly paid, they must have been academic high-fliers at school. Not necessarily so. Middling A-level results of the BCE grade variety can get you on board for a career connected to the sea.

Andrew says: "They might not be regarded as academic high-fliers but that might be because the 'light' hasn't come on. They haven't found what they can be really good at.

"One recent student we took on came from a Cornish fishing family with no history of higher education.

"He got a first-class degree."

With so much going for it, the only question remaining is why marine studies doesn't have a higher profile.

Part of the problem is that the merchant navy officer is invisible, says Andrew.

"They only become visible when something goes wrong at sea – and they end up in the news."