All well in the galley?

A HEADLINE caught my attention last week: "No Kitchen Nightmares at Sea with the New ICS Training Record Book for Ships' Cooks". The immediate response of course was that ships don't have kitchens, they have galleys.

Reading beyond the headline, however, revealed that the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) has produced something which the shipping industry does need. As ICS puts it, ships' cooks have a unique role on board a vessel and it is widely known that a well fed crew is essential to the effective running of a ship. It says: "Ensuring every ship has a properly trained and experienced cook on board is vital."

That sounds like stating the obvious though, depending on the particular flag state administration, a qualified ship's cook is only a legal requirement if the total crew is more than nine. Funnily enough, a lot of quite large ships have crews of nine.