Osman Chapter 4: The first day on Osman

In this chapter, we’ll learn about what happened on my first day on the oil ship! Well actually, it was half a day.

Before we jump in, if this is your first episode in the series, feel free to checkout the prologue and catch up before reading this chapter! Click here.

Similar to how my cabin looked, except there was less space and there was also a bunk bed.

The cabin room was slightly smaller than the dorm I stayed in while going to University of Alaska, Fairbanks. There was one desk against the left wall that was accompanied by a large comfy chair. Getting up from the comfy chair and taking a right there was a bathroom with brand new interior design, a tiled floor, a small shower and a vacuum styled toilet. There were also cabinets on either side of the mirror. There was a sign warning people not to sit while pressing the vacuum button on the toilet, as it could leave a large hickey where the sun doesn’t shine. Returning to the main room there was a small sofa opposite the desk, sitting down the cushions gave little resistance. On the left wall next to the desk there was a bunk bed with curtains and a sleep blinder. Across from the beds there were two dressers. There were also many outlets strewn across the room. These outlets also included American outlets, it was the first time I had seen them outside of the US in Europe or Asia.  I wondered how crowded this cabin would be with two people, especially the desk. Luckily for me, I would be the only one staying here, the rest of the crew had to share rooms.

It’s almost three fifty.

I waited until my cell phone’s clock read “two fifteen” and then I tried to find the area I had just been in. I walked around for a few minutes and then asked where “Steffen” was. They had told me my safety briefing would be with him. He came a few minutes later. He was a guy from Scotland, yet he only had a slight accent. He had giant eyes and in a matter of moments I could tell he cared a lot about safety. I sat down with him and the teacher I was meeting who I would replace as the English trainer for one month named Darren. Steffen went through many slides, he played a couple of sounds that represented alarms for abandoning the ship or dealing with different gas leaks or fires. It was an abundant amount of information and I instantly forgot most of it.

Similar to what our lifeboats looked like. We never got to see them in the water (luckily) though.

That ended up not being too bad, as much of it didn’t apply to me anyway. Then he took me on a tour around the ship, he showed me where my lifeboat was and what I should do when I got there. I had to turn my card around, grab a life jacket, find the last number and stand on it. All the numbers for each lifeboat were painted in circles on the ground. If I was the first person there, I should stand on one, and if someone was standing on one, then I should stand on two. It all seemed simple enough.

H2s Gas. It’s dangerous. Worse than burrito night.

After Steffen was done with me, I met another Scottish guy. This guy was called “Gale”. His Scottish accent was much thicker than Steffen’s. I followed him up the stairs to the helicopter deck and had to repeatedly ask him to repeat things three or four times due to his accent. He brought me to a room where he struggled with the TV for a while and then taught me all about H2S gas and the dangers and what to do if certain things happened. He showed me the equipment and had me practice opening and closing the oxygen valve I would use to connect my mask to if there were a serious H2S leak or incident. The further he went along the more I got used to his accent and by the time he was done I felt like I was ready to go to Scotland.

Dinner on the ship was pretty good. Okay it wasn’t this good. (but close)

After Gale, I was finally able to meet with Darren. We ate dinner and he showed me more of the ship. We talked a lot about how to do all the paperwork associated with the job. There was an attendance list on the computer, a daily attendance sheet for the students to sign, a lesson notes file for every class of every day, a lesson plans file for the same, and there were the books. There were also four different crews to track and the crew shifts to track and the shift changes to track with each crew change.

One of the books we used.

Now back to the books. There were the Oil and Gas books, and English exercise books. The English exercise books also had workbooks for the students and a teacher’s book that had lots of interactive activities in it. There were two whiteboards on either end of the room and across from the teacher’s chair you could see through the windows and look at the sea.

What our real classroom looked like. The table is a little bit curved due to the panoramic photo.

There was a long table with a TV monitor mounted on the end near the teacher’s chair. The TV was also connected to the laptop and there was a printer behind the TV, resting on a chair. After several hours of talking about paperwork and how things worked, he let me know that I would need to plan the lessons for the following day because he would be leaving at eight thirty in the morning. We spent an hour or so working on the lessons for the next day and then I went back upstairs.

NAV deck, short for “Navigation deck. We called this deck “the bridge”. This is a photo from google and not the actual Osman NAV deck.

My main piece of luggage was still in the radio room so I went up to get it. The radio guy was busy, so I just grabbed it and left. Then I walked around this deck called “NAV deck”, which is short for “navigation”. I kept looking at the signs trying to find the stairs to head down to my cabin, but I couldn’t locate it. Finally, after my fourth or fifth time around a square shaped hallway, a guy came out of one of the rooms and asked me if I was lost. He directed me to the stairs; the sign was obstructed behind two other signs. In the coming weeks I would learn – go left, then left to get to the radio room, then go right, and right again to get back to the stairs. My cabin’s floor was just below the NAV deck, so I carried my twenty-kilogram bag back down the flight of stairs and found my cabin again. Inside, I only unpacked what I needed and then slumped onto the sofa.

One of the perks of being on a ship.

It had been an eventful day. I had woken up on the PSV ship and spent most of the day there. Then rushed through two different Scottish guys giving me safety briefings. Then I had gone over all the paperwork and planned lessons for the next day. I sat on the sofa in my cabin for ten or twenty minutes, planning the next day. I thought about how I would plan my weekly schedule, when I would write, go to gym and eat as well as plan my lessons and do all that paperwork. Then I wasn’t sure I even remembered how to get to the classroom in the morning. I would have to wake up early. I hated waking up early. I could wake up at five thirty, take a shower and shave, then go to breakfast at six am and be in the class by six thirty. I could also just sleep until six, have a shower and a shave, skip breakfast and be in the classroom by six thirty. As I lay in my bed thinking, I decided to go with the latter plan.

Osman Chapter 3: Siem Sasha

Siem Sasha is one of the Port Supply Vessels (PSVs) that bring supplies to the oil ship Osman.

One of the most exciting parts of a flight, when the plane lands.

The plane’s wheels rolled along the tar-mac and soon I was exiting the airport. There was a man waiting with a “UNG” petroleum” sign as had been promised. UNG was the oil company that my English teaching company had a contract with. “UNG” stood for Uzbekneftegaz and it was an up and coming oil company. At the time I started work on the oil vessel, they had around one hundred thousand workers and 102 of them were working on Osman.

A look at Konya-Alta, which is near the port in Antalya.

The location of the port on a map. The port is in Liman.

The man drove me towards the port and as I talked to him, he had several questions; questions very similar to those from the taxi cab driver. Since he seemed friendly, I thought I would use that to my advantage. I told him about moving to Antalya and looking for places there. He pointed out the different districts as we drove across the city. First there was Lara, then Kepez, then Konya-alta, then Sarisu and finally Liman. The main thing that caught my eye during the drive was the mountain range and some of the peaks and mini peaks were quite close to the houses. I immediately thought about climbing some of them and my imagination started running wild.

An aerial view of the Antalya port terminal.

We arrived at the port’s gate and the security guard asked for documents and then asked me to step out of the vehicle. After some conversation between the driver and the guard, the driver got my bag out of the van and sped off. The security guard scanned my passport a few times, my Turkish resident card, he phoned someone and then finally let me through. There was a long sidewalk that led to a shipping area and then there was a terminal a little farther down the road. I was directed towards the working area that had a cafeteria, bathroom and a small lounging area. Beyond these rooms there were many cubicles. At this time, it was a little past nine thirty in the morning and I would end up sitting on the couch for several hours before lunchtime.

This lobby is a bit more luxurious than the one I was waiting most of the day in.

People came and went often, and a few people sat on the couches and conversed in Ottoman and took frequent smoking breaks. I spent the time snoozing and using up the last of my phone’s Internet minutes in between the ten to fifteen-minute snooze sessions. Close to four P.M. a man came and showed me and two other Ottoman guys a safety video on how to use a loading machine that would transport us from the Port Supply Vessel (PSV) to Osman. Then he asked us to sign a document and I asked him where to sign.

Oh. Hi.

Shortly after signing the document, one of the two Ottoman men started talking to me. He said he thought I was Ottoman this whole time, at this point around five hours, and that is why he hadn’t spoken to me. We talked for ten minutes and then went back to the cafeteria for dinner. It was a typical Ottoman dinner; a bowl of soup, bread, and an option of stuffed peppers or stuffed eggplant. A few hours after dinner we were told that the vessel might leave in the early morning or the next day at noon. We could go to a hotel and return at noon and risk missing the boat, or we could sleep on the boat.

The Ottoman guys were upset for some reason and conversing, but I agreed to go. Shortly thereafter they also agreed to go. We waited in the security area for some time before a guy came to check our passports and let us on the ship.

The gang-plank to Siem Sasha.

The look of the dock in the daylight.

The first thing I saw as we exited the terminal onto the dock was the moon and stars sparkling on the water; and a white and red colored ship gently rocking back and forth in the water. There were a few men with hard hats walking along the dock and in the distance was a metal ramp with ropes and metal forging the walk way. It was a gangplank.

As I looked around the ship I found a plaque and other things on the walls.

A health poster which included advice on how not to get Ebola.

I walked up the gangplank behind the others and we entered the small hole to get onto the ship. Inside there was a ship worker waiting with a sign in list. The Ottoman guys shared one cabin and I got another cabin to myself. We were given a tour by a Ukrainian man who turned out to be the second mate of the ship. He showed us the mess hall, which was a small open room with four or five tables, a counter with leftovers and empty steel pockets for the fresh meals. He told us the mealtimes and then showed us the lounge and smoking lounge. It was around ten P.M. so we all headed to our cabins and went to sleep for the night.

My first breakfast on the PSV.

There were lots of stairs leading up and down; the walls in the hallways gave barely enough space for two people to walk past each other. I finally found my cabin again; it was next to some kind of cleaning trough. Inside it was pitch black with the lights out so I kept one of the reading lights on while I slept. I could feel the water below rocking my bed slightly but due to the super long day, I didn’t have much trouble sleeping. I woke up again around four A.M., then six A.M., then 8. I wondered if the others had woken up yet, and so around nine thirty I finally got up out of my bed. After rummaging through the kitchen area for a few minutes I found a few things to eat. There was bread, sausage, cheese and a few onion rings. To my surprise the two Ottoman guys came up the stairs, they had just woken up too. We all ate together and then spent the rest of the day waiting.

I took a stroll around and took a look at what was in the loading area of the PSV

One of the Ottoman guys

A sign that could use some help

The ship never left the dock and we were still waiting by the evening. We spent our whole time in the smoking room, and I discovered their names were Barak and Talan. Barak was from Hatay originally and Talan was from the eastern part of The Ottoman Empire near Georgia. Barak spent the time playing Fifa on the PS4 and Talan spent his time watching videos on Instagram. There were frequent breaks for both them to have another cigarette.

The look from the back of the PSV as it left the dock.

What the PSV probably looked like from afar, as it bobbed up and down among the waves.

We spent another night on the ship and this time I had a harder time falling asleep, as I wasn’t that tired. The next morning, I got up again around nine thirty, but Barak and Talan didn’t come this time. I spoke with the chef who was Ukrainian and several other of the crew members. There was one from Russia, one from India and the rest were from Ukraine. Around ten or eleven the Ottomans came up for breakfast and then smoked. I spent most of the time learning the Russian alphabet on my phone, Barak played fifa on the PlayStation they had in the smoking room and Talan watched videos on his cell phone. By evening time, the ship was finally moving. We all ran outside and watched as the port, the mountains and all the buildings got smaller and smaller. I could feel the ship rocking side to side and had to learn how to walk properly. On this night, I could really feel the water rocking below the ship as I slept. It was as if the waves were touching my back.

Confident on the outside, screaming on the inside. Getting tucked into the frog machine.

By morning, I kept waking up every hour or so after six, because I was sure someone would come knock on my door, telling us we were going to be transported to Osman, but no such knock came. I had another breakfast, another lunch and was preparing to have another supper when we were told to get our bags and head to the main deck. They were loading cargo and the crew told us that we would have to wait until all the cargo was loaded. Then about ten minutes later, they changed their minds.

Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of the frog machine being brought onboard, but it is done the same way as this piece of cargo.

All three of us put on life vests and climbed inside the “frog” machine. The frog machine was a device about seven feet tall and shaped like a bullet. It had four seats and bars that you had to hold onto while being buckled in. The frog machine lifted us high in the sky and the boat looked tiny from above. I wondered to myself what I would do if the line snapped. If I unbuckled quickly and treaded water for three days, I might survive.

One of many new staring eyes, as I made my way to the correct place on the ship.

The line didn’t snap, and the machine lowered us down to the top deck of the ship called “Osman”. We were finally there after three days of waiting. This ship was huge in comparison to the small PSV boat. It reminded me of the titanic, with so many decks, stairs and rooms. I made sure to keep within a few steps of the Ottoman guys as we went to check in. We left our luggage in the radio room and were told to come back for a safety briefing in thirty minutes. I was supposed to find “C deck” and room number five hundred and thirty-eight. It took some time, but I finally found it.

Osman: Prologue

A story of my adventure on the Ottoman Empire’s first oil ship as an English teacher.

The Ottoman Empire in 1914.

The year is 2019 and The Ottoman Empire remains intact. In the year 1914 the Ottoman Empire failed to join the Central Powers even though they had a secret agreement with them. German and Austro-Hungarian officials were both shocked and angered by this but had their hands full with the Allied Powers. However, these Allied Powers were on edge due to the uncertainty of what the Ottomans would do. Thus, in the autumn of 1915 Mehmet V, the sultan of Turkey at the time, was assassinated by Greek and British agents. Ismail Enver Pasha took over the country and declared a state of emergency. While remaining neutral during World War I, The Ottoman Empire started to see a huge descent in their economy’s efficiency. In a meeting between military officials, including officers as low as lieutenant, they began to discuss the country, the economy and drastic changes. The first step of action was to give Arabic states autonomous freedom, while The Ottoman Empire still controlled their foreign policies. The next step was to modernize the country.

Mustafa Kemal

One young officer by the name of Mustafa Kemal, caught the eye of the grand pasha Ismail Enver and he was allowed to start a committee which worked solely on the modernization of The Empire. Over the next decade they improved their education, added more modern fashion and religious ideals to the country. In 1923 Ismail Enver Pasha retired as leader of The Ottoman Empire and appointed Mustafa Kemal the leader. Mustafa Kemal continued his work towards modernizing the country and also took up the path of secularizing it. He banned certain religious garments and put focus on less religious subjects in schools. He also created a more modern form of writing which made it easier for Ottoman people to read and write. With the death of Mustafa Kemal in 1938, the country decided to do away with their authoritarian government style and attempted to copy a western democratic system. From the 1960s to the 1970s they also gave each Arabic country their own true independence.

Osman traveling through the Mediterranean Sea

In the year 2019 The Ottoman Empire is on a quest to find oil in the Mediterranean Sea, under the orders of their new president Recep Tayip Erdogan. They have just recently sent out their first oil ship named “Osman” to do experimental drilling. The purpose of the drilling is to see what is in the waters near The Ottoman Empire and around the island of Cyprus. The country of Cyprus has complained but the European Union does not support them, and The Ottoman Empire ignores them. Half the crew on Osman is Ottoman and the rest are a mix of different foreign nationalities. Many of these Ottoman workers lack the English skills that are needed to communicate with the foreign workers. Therefore, they have created an English program on the ship and hired several English teachers to teach in the workers off hours. In this book I hope to tell you my tales of working and teaching English on The Ottoman Empire’s first oil ship: Osman.