Duties of Stewards

[fredofmars]

I found an interesting listing of stewards duties in the WW2 era US Merchant Marine.

http://www.usmm.net/steward.html

There are other interesting things on that site, but this page looked the most relevant to Traveller.

What do you have your stewards doing during voyages?

 

[aramis]

So we get:
Mess
Stores
Porter/valet/housekeeping
(Laundry. Implied but not stated.)


The other department guides are also good stuff...

 

[princelian]

On board our research drillship (R/V JOIDES Resolution), there is a staff of approximately 10 catering staff (Catermar, out of Portugal) who act as stewards.

They prepare all the meals.
They clean the non-laboratory spaces of the ship.
They are the plumbers if a head is non-functioning.
They collect the laundry and return it to your cabin clean and folded.
They straighten up your cabin and make your bed.
They take the squid and fish that are attracted to our lights at night (24 hour operation) and are harpooned by the Phillipino roughnecks and cook 'em up FRESH. Mmmmm....

They take excellent care of us out there to the point that despite the 12 hours a day, 7 days a week schedule on board ship, I feel overworked when I come home and have to do my own chores.

Oh, and in port, they barbeque for the crossover parties! They smoke some mean meat, man.

 

[signless]

I've always thought it interesting that the name "buccaneer" came from a french word - "boucanier" - which basically described someone who barbecued meat along the Spanish main. They used an indigenous brazilian design of smoker called a "boucan". They'd sell this meat to passing ships by rowing out to sea and selling their wares.
Since the meat came from poaching the king's stock, they often island-hopped in order to stay one step ahead of the law. In this way, I've always seen them as the earliest "travellers".
Eventually, they became more adventurous, and instead of selling smoked meat, would simply row out and board passing ships and plunder to their heart's content.
I've always thought every ship's steward I'd encountered in my life had a little bit of the pirate in them...

 

[princelian]

Mostly they had the cooking wine in them, in my experience. We're a dry ship, but some of the cooks seemed pretty jolly to me all the time (and had bloodshot eyes).

We took positions aboard a 600 dton subsidized liner at one point, and the Chief Steward and his two mates jumped ship because they didn't like the supercargo's treatment of them.

The captain didn't mention that they were gone until after we were in deep space, and then proceeded to make us take over as the steward staff for the trip. There were four of us, and he figured with our inexperience we'd need an extra hand.

The supercargo was composed of several snooty nobles, some non-humanoid aliens who were quite disturbing (but ended up being the nicest of the bunch once you learned how to avoid their somewhat acidic appendages; oh! how we scrubbed the decks after them), and some middle class but decidedly unpleasant folks.

ALL of them paid High Passage. ALL of them had special needs. And NONE of us had the appropriate skills. Nor did we know how to cook beyond punching buttons on the synthesizer.

We had just finished a smash-and-grab mission which went bad (we were betrayed (again) by the patron) but from which we'd salvaged our hides, so we thought a nice working passage on the liner would be a pleasant change. Even after the captain's reassignment of us to steward duty we still thought that. How bad could it be?

It was bad....just remember something my father always said to me: "Hungry people are mean people." It's true, it's true.

 

[Lochlaber]

Basically stewards are the members of the crew/housekeeping staff a passenger would meet on a daily basis. By my reading of the rules (D20), you are required to have 1 steward per every 5 passenger staterooms. IMTU a steward handles the job of keeping cabin basically clean during the trip, keeping the bathroom and/or mini-bar properly stocked and reporting to his boss any complaints about the accomodations to his boss, such as leaky pipes, etc..

I usually have a steward to passenger compartment ratio of 10:1 and a ratio of 20:1 for crew staterooms, with the officers coming in for the same attention as the passengers. This releases the other 'stewards' for such details as working in the kitchen or laundry room, wait and/or entertainment staff.

 

[Uncle Bob]

When I was in college in Houston a number of guys took summer jobs on offshore oil rigs. They were essentially stewards since the roughnecks worked 12/12.

In Heinlein's Starman Jones Sam the ex-marine shipped out with phony papers as a steward.

 

[Maladominus]

IMTU, stewards are always blonde female and Swedish, and are responsible for giving backrubs and massages.

Leave the cooking to the robots.

 

[aramis]

Sounds like everyone stinks, uses the microwave to cook their own meals, and has dirty laundry!

 

[Icosahedron]

Originally posted by Maladominus:
IMTU, stewards are always blonde female and Swedish, and are responsible for giving backrubs and massages.

For Cr10,000 they gotta be good!

 

[mbrinkhues]

Originally posted by Icosahedron:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Maladominus:
IMTU, stewards are always blonde female and Swedish, and are responsible for giving backrubs and massages.

For Cr10,000 they gotta be good! </font>[/QUOTE]Guess we finally found out why the Sword Worlders dislike the Empire - All their attractive females are hired off.

 

[Lochlaber]

I hope that crack about microwave cooking, etc., wasn't aimed towards me Aramis. I did say that my ratio's released workers to handle the kitchen, serving and the laundry.

 

[Liam Devlin]

Originally posted by signless:
I've always thought it interesting that the name "buccaneer" came from a french word - "boucanier" - which basically described someone who barbecued meat along the Spanish main. They used an indigenous brazilian design of smoker called a "boucan". They'd sell this meat to passing ships by rowing out to sea and selling their wares.
Since the meat came from poaching the king's stock, they often island-hopped in order to stay one step ahead of the law. In this way, I've always seen them as the earliest "travellers".
Eventually, they became more adventurous, and instead of selling smoked meat, would simply row out and board passing ships and plunder to their heart's content.
I've always thought every ship's steward I'd encountered in my life had a little bit of the pirate in them...

Arr! AN' pass th' taters, matey!

I see you received your speak like a pirate day e-mail too on this..

 

[Liam Devlin]

Originally posted by Maladominus:
IMTU, stewards are always blonde female and Swedish, and are responsible for giving backrubs and massages.

Leave the cooking to the robots.

'Leaves the passengers visually stimulated they ignore their food tastes like refried ground vehicle rubber tires, eh?

 

[Liam Devlin]

IMTU the Ship's Steward saw to the passenger's needs meal and room-wise; the robots did the laundry!--that's my story and I'm sticking to it for thems with mind's elsewhere