A large volume of Email is routinely handled by the ships employed in maritime trade or during maintenance. It is essential that proper mail etiquette is observed. This would avoid confusion, delay and financial loss .

1. A Presentation
By
NISHITH CHATURVEDI
For
For Lex Consilium Foundation
EMAIL ETIQUETTE
ON SHIPS

2. SHIPS HAVE TO AS ROUTINE CARRY OUT A
LARGE CORRESPONDENCE EVERY DAY.

3. OVER CROWDED MAIL BOX:
Managers get hundred of emails daily.

4. It is vital that correspondence is timely and
correctly carried out between sender, action
addressee and info. addressee.

5. FROM: SENDER
TO : ACTION ADDRESSEE
CC & INFORMATION ADDRESSEE
BCC :

6. Different agencies and Government authorities
play their assigned roles in maritime trade.

7.  Time and accuracy are both critical.
RELEVANT ASPECTS
 E-mails are usually in English.
 As per custom, Captains of ships should only
reply.

8. RELEVANT ASPECTS
 Text of any mail should use simple
English, easy to be understood by
recipients. The originator of mail should
avoid the need of any clarification.
 The above would be attainable by keeping
sentences short and the text in proper
sequence.

9. RELEVANT ASPECTS
 Normally a Captain has minimum ten years
experience as an officer.
It implies that he has adequate expertise and
exposure to deal with different types of
matters that are dealt in correspondence.

10. CASE STUDY
 In one case, the Owner wanted some
information from their Managers.
 Matter was not complicated. Covering
letter seeking info was a simple one
paragraph mail.
 Managers in turn relied upon the
Superintendents to get the data from the
ships and submit to them duly collated.

11. Each of the six Managers had been assigned
up to six ships under them.

12. Reply had to carry stamps of respective vessels.

13. Stamp shows name of Vessel with following
details :
• GRT (Gross Registered Tonnage)
• NRT (Net Register Tonnage)
• IMO (The International Maritime Organization)
• CALL SIGN

14.  Ships were also informed that reply must
come mentioning same subject. It meant that
the subject was not to be changed in their
email.
 Email replies were to be sent by the ships to
the Superintendent by a due date.

15. However, in many cases email replies
showed:
 Late receipt.
 Subjects changed.

16. Change in subject created avoidable confusion
to the Superintendents as these could not be
arranged in proper folders.

17. When asked for reason to send their replies
late and with subject changed, many ships
admitted they had not even read the mail.

18.  Consequently the required information
could not be furnished to the Owner in
time. The delay had financial implications.
 Also led to avoidable exchange of mails to
and fro.

19. Murphy’s Law
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

20. CONCLUSION
Inept and careless handling of mail must
be avoided.

21. m
THANK YOU

22. An efficient engine room will save you millions.

23. NOT INCLUDED IN PPT:
Keywords – Email Etiquette, official
correspondence, Subject, collation of
information, simple English.

24. NOT INCLUDED IN PPT:
Introduction – The aim of presenting this PPT is
to highlight the basic Email Etiquettes on Ships.
It will help the vessel including its engineers to
discharge their duties affectively.

25.  Note for Nishith : In slide no. 12 and 13, you
may like to give an image of stamp of a ship.
 Also please check, if the abbreviations are
correct.