Deck Officer CV Examples & Writing Guide

This CV belongs to a second officer sailing on a transatlantic container service, with earlier tanker time. Note how much of the top of the page is certificates: that is not padding, it is the screening criteria. The person and companies are invented; the sea time, tonnage and inspection figures are the kind kept in your discharge book and your vessel's files.

Almost every other CV puts qualifications last. A deck officer CV does the opposite, because a crewing manager cannot consider you at all until they know what you are certificated to do. Write them exactly as they appear on the document.

• The certificate of competency and capacity: Officer of the Watch, Chief Mate or Master, with the tonnage limit (unlimited or a specific GT limit), the area (unlimited or near coastal) and the issuing administration.
• The STCW regulation it is issued under, such as II/1 or II/2, since that is what a foreign port state and a charterer look at, plus any endorsements other flags have issued to recognise it.
• Radio: GMDSS General Operator's Certificate, and whether you hold maintainer qualifications.
• Safety training with refresher dates: basic training, advanced fire fighting, proficiency in survival craft and rescue boats, fast rescue boat if you hold it, medical first aid or medical care.
• Bridge equipment: ECDIS (generic and any type-specific training), radar and ARPA (NAEST), bridge resource management.
• Tanker endorsements: oil, chemical or liquefied gas tanker cargo operations at basic or advanced level, and any advanced cargo courses.
• Documents that gate employment: ENG1 medical certificate with expiry, passport, discharge book, and any visa status that matters for the trade.
• Expiry dates on anything close to renewal. A crewing manager plans around them, and a lapsed endorsement can stop a joining.

After the documents, the questions are about fit with the vessel and about whether you will be a problem on board.

• Vessel types. Container, tanker, bulk, ro-ro, offshore supply, ferries, cruise ships and other passenger vessels all handle differently and carry different paperwork. Say what you have sailed and for how long.
• Tonnage and trade. Gross tonnage or deadweight, and whether the trade is near coastal, short sea or worldwide. Experience in a particular trade lane counts too.
• Sea time. Total days, and days in the last five years, since currency matters as much as the total.
• Inspection and incident record. Port state control results, vetting inspections on tankers, internal audit findings, and any incidents. A clean record stated plainly is worth saying out loud.
• Availability and rotation. Notice period, preferred rotation, whether you sail over Christmas, and whether you are employed directly by a shipping company or through a crewing agency.

“Licence, tonnage, route, endorsements, sea time. If those five things are not on the first half of the first page, I move to the next file, because I cannot even tell whether you are eligible. After that I want vessel types and whether your last vetting inspection was clean.”

This is the part shore-side recruiters cannot judge for you, so it has to be written precisely. Keep a sea service table if your history is long.

• Days of sea service, in total and by rank. Sea time is the currency of promotion and everyone in the industry counts it.
• Vessel name is optional, but vessel type, tonnage and trade are not. "4,900 TEU container ship, 52,000 GT, transatlantic" is what a manager needs.
• Rotation worked, such as four months on and two off, or a 90-day tour, since it shows what you are used to.
• Ports and regions, especially if you have experience in ice, high latitudes, restricted waters or specific canal transits.
• Cargo volumes and operations: cubic metres loaded, containers worked, lashing gangs supervised, transfers as cargo watch officer.
• Drills, inspections and audits: how many you ran or prepared for, and the results.
• Time as relief in a higher rank. If you have stood in as chief mate, say so with the days, because it is the evidence for your next step.

Watchkeeping is assumed. What is not assumed is the vessel, the volume and the result.

Three lines. Certificate and limits, sea time, vessel types, one clean record statement.

More people search for a deck cadet CV than for any other version of this document, and it is a genuinely different problem: you have certificates and almost no employment history. Build it around the certificates, the Training Record Book and any time on deck.

1. 1Lead with the certificate of competency you hold or expect, with the date. An OOW (Unlimited) certificate at the end of your cadetship is the entire reason a company will look at you.
2. 2List every STCW course with its date, and say whether your ENG1 and passport are already in hand. Companies want people who can join a ship without waiting on paperwork.
3. 3Write your sea phases as a job. Days of sea service, vessel types and tonnages, the watches you stood, the assessments you completed, and who signed them off.
4. 4Include your college phases separately, with the qualification (HND, FdSc or degree) and the simulator and practical training you completed.
5. 5Add practical deck skills honestly: mooring stations, cargo watches, sounding and gauging, tank cleaning, chipping and painting, small boat handling. Nobody expects command experience.
6. 6Say what you are willing to sail on and for how long. Cadets and newly qualified officers who accept any vessel type on a long rotation are hired first.
7. 7If you have no cadetship yet, apply to the shipping companies and training providers that sponsor Merchant Navy cadets, and list any deck rating experience you already have.

Shipping usually calls this document a CV, and it can run longer than most: two pages is standard once you have several vessels, and a sea service table can add a third.

• Structure it as: contact and availability, credentials, sea service summary, employment history, education, then additional training.
• Keep UK conventions on the CV itself: no photo, no date of birth, no marital status. Crewing agencies often ask for those separately on their own application form along with passport and next of kin details, and that is a different document.
• Give expiry dates for endorsements and medical certificates so a manager can plan.
• State your availability date and preferred rotation clearly at the top.
• Say whether you are employed directly, through a crewing agency or freelance, since it shapes how you are hired.
• Mirror the advert's exact terms: "OOW", "unlimited", "port state control", "ISM", "ECDIS", "tanker endorsement", "dynamic positioning" if relevant.
• Send a PDF named Lastname-Firstname-Second-Officer.pdf, and be ready to attach scanned certificates, because crewing departments will ask for them with the application.