“””According to the article, it’s 20% deployment. One 7 month in 36 months. Or, if I understand it correctly, 29 months not deployed and 7 deployed over a span of 3 years. Doesn’t sound exhausting to me.”””
And on the other hand the sailors on these container ships and tankers colliding with the Navy ships are typically 10 months on the ship and 2 months vacation. So in three years a merchant mariner is at sea 30 months and at home 6 months. That is pretty much the opposite of a US Navy sailor.
Sailor train, repair and have other duties on top of the at sea watch duties. It is not just a job, it's 5 jobs.
The merchants don’t have anything to do at sea but sleep and get high for the most part.
It’s far different than the pace of a warship.
Deployment and at sea time are not one and the same. To make a deployment it takes about 9 months in and out {mostly out at sea} training time. We'd stay in homeport tops a month and that was after deployment and 50% of the crew was home for two weeks at a time. We'd do 3 months in the shipyards for three deployment rotations after each deployment then a year in Drydock which was no picnic.
At sea my shop pulled 4 hour watches which changed which watch you stood every 24 hours. If you did the mid-watch 0000-0400 you would likely stand the 1600-2000 watch that evening so you got some sleep. The guys in The Hole did 6&6 watch. Six hours watch, six hours work, six hours sleep,six hour watch that got staggered.
I actually did 24 on 48 off duty on the ships Boat Crew {Liberty Launches} some times we got a 4 hour break at night sometimes we didn't.
Anyway we were at sea more then in port. We kept a two carrier on station 24/7/365 presence in The Med Sea. I three year and nine months onboard I did two six-seven month deployments plus two six week deployments the first top South America down to Rio and the second one was a Caribbean Sea deployment to the VI's. Those deployments were before the Med Sea ones.
Most ships east coast also had to do a month of work ups down at GITMO operations area. That was where we underwent readiness evaluations. That was the 1976-80 Navy. With those mentioned deployments under my belt I did my last year in the shipyards in DryDock making one more short shakedown trip lasting three days before getting out.