Dan: 0:00

Harbor pilot is a job that dates back to ancient times. Our global commerce system would shut down without it, and yet I'd never heard of it. Maybe you haven't either. Grant Livingstone is a retired harbor pilot who worked out of the port of Long Beach in California for 34 years. At parties, he would try to explain his job.

Grant: 0:22

When anyone asked me, I would dive into the technical definition of a harbor pilot, and people's eyes would glaze over.

Dan: 0:30

Luckily, his wife would often step in to help him out in these situations.

Grant: 0:34

My wife finally stopped. She would just interrupt me, and she would lean forward and tell the person, whoever was asking, Grant is a valet parking attendant, but he parks ships instead of cars. And everybody would get it immediately.

Dan: 0:54

So why do you need a valet parker for a huge ship? Well, because every one of those ships will be docked at a port in a harbor. And a harbor is a treacherous place to sail. A pilot like Grant has to memorize every inch of the harbor.

Grant: 1:11

Where are the rocks under the water? Where are the shallow areas? Where are the currents? Where is the wind coming from?

Dan: 1:19

That's all local knowledge. You just can't expect the captain of an international cargo ship to know. So that's where harbor pilots come in. They go out a few miles offshore. They board the approaching ship and then personally pilot it in. And when it's ready to leave the harbor, they pilot it back out. The stakes here are high. We're talking ships and cargo worth hundreds of millions of dollars that are navigating dangerous waters.

Grant: 1:50

Most of the accidents with ships occur when ships are maneuvering, and there's no place that ships are maneuvering more than when they're inside a port with a pilot on board.

Dan: 2:03

And so harbor pilots are among the most highly trained mariners in the world. Grant has piloted 16,000 ships. Most of the time, it was smooth sailing. But there were also moments of near disaster. I'm Dan Heath and this is What It's Like to Be. In every episode we walk in the shoes of someone from a different profession. A long haul trucker, an ocean lifeguard, a hairstylist. We want to know what they do all day at work. Today we'll ask Grant Livingstone what it's like to be a harbor pilot. We'll talk about how he climbs aboard a moving ship, what it's like interpersonally when he takes over command from the ship's captain, and how he avoided a near-catastrophic collision in an oil tanker. Stay with us. You can't just apply to become a harbor pilot. First, you need a lot of experience at sea. So you'll likely have worked as a captain on a ship. In fact

Grant: 3:21

Most captains at sea, many of them, after they get their captain's experience, they aspire to become a pilot.

Dan: 3:27

Oh, no kidding. So it's like kind of moving up the ladder.

Grant: 3:31

It is. We're not saying that a master's job at sea is a lesser job. I want to be careful. It's a different job. You're comparing apples to oranges.

Dan: 3:43

Does it pay more?

Grant: 3:44

It does. And you're home far more and the pay is considerably more. But so is the risk because most of the ship accidents, as I told you, occur when ships are maneuvering. And most of the maneuvering occurs in ports. And so as the pilot, you are quadrupling 10 times the risk that you had for collisions when you were a master at sea. And a pilot on a ship and you're maneuvering these ships, Dan, you get into an accident and it's potentially a career-ending accident. That is a lot of liability to keep in mind when you're going to work every day.

Dan: 4:25

One of the challenges of being a harbor pilot is that you're not piloting the same ships every day. You could be working with very different ships. So Grant's son, as it happens, is an airline pilot. He flies Boeing 767s.

Grant: 4:40

And I told him, imagine if your job as a pilot was to land and take off at an airport. You're going to stay at Los Angeles International Airport and you're going to take off in this plane and then the next plane coming in, you're going to land it. And some of them are 747s. Some of them are A-Bus 300s. Some of them are twin-engine cargo Cessnas.

Dan: 5:06

That's a great analogy. Yeah.

Grant: 5:08

It is not easy, Dan, to go from a ship that's 300,000 tons and 1,200 or 1,300 feet long. You get off that ship and they put you on a 300-foot cargo ship that's very lightweight and small. You really have to always reset that relative motion. It's one of the most difficult things for pilots that are training.

Dan: 5:37

Harbor pilots are great at their jobs, partly because they're the cream of the crop in terms of skill, but also because they get so much more practice. Grant said that when he was at sea, before his harbor pilot days,

Grant: 5:51

We were going to various ports on the East Coast and South America, and it took us two months to do a round trip. So once every two months, we went to that foreign port in South America or that port in the United States. So once every two months in that particular port, we would dock and undock the ship once every two months. The pilot in that local port may be docking and undocking five ships a day. So that pilot not only has much more experience than I do as a captain visiting the port, he has much more knowledge of the port, but he also, or her, they also have much more ship handling experience, and that's key for piloting.

Dan: 6:45

But before you can pilot a ship, you have to get on it, often while it's still moving. And that can be an adventure in itself.

Grant: 6:55

So we approach the ship, pilot boat captain who are highly skilled boat operators, and specialize in putting a human being next to a ship so they can climb a rope ladder. And it's tricky. And when the weather's rough, it can be life-threatening. And there's been, unfortunately, still to this day, too many pilots losing their lives trying to board or get off ships.

Dan: 7:21

Wait, so you board by climbing up a rope ladder?

Grant: 7:24

A rope ladder, it's called a Jacob's ladder.

Dan: 7:27

And the height he's scaling on the ladder varies depending on the ship and what it's carrying. Take an oil tanker, for example.

Grant: 7:36

When those ships are loaded, it's a very short climb to the main deck. So the pilot ladder might only be 12 feet. That you have to climb. But when that ship empties, now they might come out in a ballast draft of about 30 feet, let's say.

Dan: 7:53

Whoa. I mean, so you're like climbing a three-story building.

Grant: 7:56

You're climbing 40 feet.

Dan: 7:58

That is crazy.

Grant: 7:59

Yeah.

Dan: 8:00

I mean, that's the best technology that our Earth has to offer right now is you've got to like precariously climb a rope ladder.

Grant: 8:08

It's considered routine by the ship. We're just going to put the pilot ladder out. But it hasn't changed, Dan. I joke and I say that there's two technologies that are the same from the 1800s, toilets and toilet tanks and pilot ladders. It hasn't evolved.

Dan: 8:26

I mean, I just can't believe there's that many listeners who have processed this, that our global economy absolutely hinges on overseas shipping. And every overseas container ship eventually makes it into a port. And every time they come to a port, there's somebody climbing a rope ladder to get them in so they can unload. I mean, it's like the whole global economy hinges on you going rung over rung. That's a hard thing to get your brain around.

Grant: 8:56

Absolutely. There's about 55,000 ships, maybe even more now, but let's say 55,000 ships on the ocean moving every day. And of those 55,000, some are on a four-week transit, some are on two weeks, some are just days. Those 55,000 ships are heading for a port, and they've left a port. And they disembarked a pilot, and they're going to board a pilot. So those 55,000 ships have 110,000 pilot boardings that they've got coming up in the next few weeks.

Dan: 9:34

Grant climbed a Jacob's Ladder up the side of a ship thousands upon thousands of times. And he fell off three times.

Grant: 9:43

The worst fall I had was from about 15 feet. And it was at night. And I've got boots on. I've got a radio. I've got all this weight. And I had a pilot coat. So it looks like a big winter coat made from vinyl that you would wear and something that would be good in the cold or the rain. Well, in those days, they were called neutrally buoyant. Now, I didn't know that when someone told me, wear your float coat. I assumed that if I went into the water, it was going to pop me to the surface. And when I fell, I hit the water and I just kept going down because of my boots and all the weight. But I wasn't concerned. I'm a scuba diver, so I'm comfortable under the water. I wasn't worried at all. I have no idea how far I went down. Maybe 12 feet, 15 feet, I don't know. Maybe further. But when I got down there, nothing happened. I stayed right where I was. And I had expected the float coat to bounce me to the surface. And I have no idea why I did this. I put my arms straight out like I was flying. I don't know if I thought there was, it's these things you do. I'm holding my breath. I'm looking up. I can see a vague light, but I'm not going anywhere. And as I'm holding my breath, I realized, oh, crap. You better start swimming. And I started kicking and swimming, but you've got this massive float coat on. So your arms aren't free to move like you were scuba diving.

Dan: 11:24

Right.

Grant: 11:25

You know, just had a mask and a snorkel. So I had to kick and I had to really kick hard, but I didn't want to expend too much of that oxygen because I wasn't sure how far it was to the surface. And I just remember thinking, oh, there's the surface. I'm about to, oh, no, that wasn't it. Okay, there. No, I've got to go further. And when I finally did get to the surface, I had no more air left. And I hadn't panicked yet, but I realized, okay, this could get serious in a hurry.

Dan: 11:59

Was that the closest to panic you've ever been in your career?

Grant: 12:04

Oh, no, no, no, no. No, that was the minor panic. The major panic was yet to come.

Dan: 13:27

What happens like once you get up the ladder and you're talking to the ship's captain, do you sort of take over? Is that awkward? Is the captain miffed that you're one-upping them? Or like what happens in that interaction?

Grant: 13:40

Yes, yes, and yes. It can be awkward. You get on the deck of the ship. Now you're on the main deck after you've climbed on board. Now you walk to the house of the ship. That would be the living quarters and the offices. It might, in most ships, it's on the stern. Now, that might be eight floors. So now you go into the house and you go up eight decks, eight floors, and you arrive on the bridge of the ship. Now, in Long Beach, we really emphasize, please be cognizant, that as a pilot, it's the master's ship. It's not your ship. You are the invited guest. You're walking onto a ship. It's a different culture, possibly a different language. And we need the captain's trust, and the captain needs to trust us. And if there's something wrong, and when I get on the bridge of the ship, Dan, I say, Captain Dan, welcome to the port of Long Beach. My name's Captain Livingstone. We're going to be taking you into berth 245 today. Our orders are port side two. Is that correct? Captain says, yes. I say, Captain, is there any discrepancies? Is there anything wrong that isn't working that would affect the maneuvering of the ship? And the captain will go through a pilot master exchange with me, and it's on paper, and it's all now documented, right? Everything is liability. And the captain will say, no, the rudders are working, the bow thruster's working, the main engine is working, everything is working as far as we know. And then I'll say, okay, Captain, in about 20 minutes when we get close to the port, We're going to have tugboats standing by, and I need you to put one tug on the port bow, take one tug line, one tug line on the starboard bow, one tug line center lead aft. And that's just in the first five minutes.

Dan: 15:34

Most of the time, things go smoothly from there. Grant would pilot the ship through the harbor and to the port. But then he's got to dock it. And imagine trying to parallel park a car that's the length of 90 cars. And now imagine that car is a boat and it's on water. The tolerance for mistakes here is low.

Grant: 15:57

When I was in the training program, the senior pilots would tell me, don't forget, you can crash in the last ship length and ruin the whole job. You see it on cruise ships a lot when they're docking or big oil tankers docking. They're doing a quarter of a knot, but then they hit the end of the dock. So you're doing half a mile per hour. You're barely moving, but you're not stopped. And you're on a ship that weighs 120,000 tons. And so if you've got 120,000 tons moving at half a mile per hour and it collides with a dock or rocks, even though it's only half a mile an hour, there's going to be a lot of damage done.

Dan: 16:43

Grant had at least one close call that could have ended in disaster. Remember a few minutes ago when Grant said almost drowning after falling off a ladder cost him minor panic? Now we're going to find out what major panic looks like.

Grant: 16:58

I was bringing in a 1,200-foot, it happened to be an Italian flag oil tanker. And this was just after three years of piloting. So in my three-year training program, I had done 3,000 ships. Now that's a high number in three years. So I was well prepared. we're bringing the ship in we're approaching the breakwater once we get inside the breakwater we have to make a 90 degree turn to the right I have to pass between two ships that are anchored

Dan: 17:34

But just as they're starting to make the turn to go between those two anchored ships fog rolls in And now I can just

Grant: 17:43

see past the bow of the ship and I had just initiated a slow turn to starboard. Those ships were still well on my right side. And the captain looks at me and says, why don't we stop here? And we'll just wait. And we'll see if we get better visibility. And when we can see, we'll pass between the two ships that are anchored. I said, good idea, captain. So I said, stop the engine. And the officer on the bridge stops the engine. And I said, slow astern. And we put the engine slow astern and nothing happened.

Dan: 18:18

Slow astern is a command to put the ship's engine in reverse at around 25 percent power so basically they're trying to slow down to avoid the two anchored ships that they're facing at this point

Grant: 18:31

And i say okay half astern. Nothing. And then the phone rings and the italian captain picks up the phone and he starts yelling in italian into the phone. it's the chief engineer. The chief engineer tells him we lost the engine. And I look at the captain, and he knows that we're slowly turning to one of those anchored ships, and we have to stop now. And I said, okay, Captain, no problem. Let the starboard anchor go. Both anchors are ready for an emergency. We were going to use the starboard anchor to anchor the ship. We were doing about three knots. Not ideal to let the anchor go on a 1,200-foot ship doing three knots, but in this case, with no engine, we better let that anchor go. And he said, that's right, Mr. Pilot, okay. And he calls the chief mate on the bow, and he says, let go of the starboard anchor. The starboard anchor won't let go. Now, that's not terribly unusual. Sometimes the anchors, after being at sea, they're on the bow, they've got all that salt water, they get rust, the brakes get stuck. He started to panic again, and I said, Captain, Captain, it's okay, let go the port anchor. We've got another anchor, let it go. He gives the command to the bow, let go the port anchor. The port anchor will not drop. Now that is unusual.

Dan: 19:58

And this whole time, you're kind of drifting toward one or the other of those, and you can't even see where you're going or how much room you have left?

Grant: 20:08

Not yet. And just about at that point, I look up, and just coming out of the fog, I could see the port side of the anchored ship, and we were headed dead midship on that ship at nearly a 90-degree angle.

Dan: 20:23

Oh, man. And you can't stop. You don't have any anchors.

Grant: 20:27

You can't stop. We told the captain, I said, blow the danger signal so that we alert the ship at anchor, there could be a collision, the danger signal in international waters is five blasts on the ship's whistle. Any mariner at sea, when they hear five blasts on a ship whistle, you're going to get their attention. If we hit that ship, Dan, with a half-loaded oil tanker, in those days there was no inert gas in the cargo tank. So it was half crude oil and half crude oil fumes. And there were about nine huge tanks. And so if we hit that ship, very likely the spark, if you had encroached on one of the tanks, very likely you would get a massive explosion. And there's going to be a lot of people dead.

Dan: 21:24

And this ship, I mean, just to linger here is just, I mean, this is a 1,200 foot ship. That's like the size of the Empire State Building. That's like as long as the Empire State Building is tall. And you're trying to stop or correct the movement of that thing without any anchors and without any engines.

Grant: 21:41

And without panic. And, you know, you're talking about almost four football fields. You had to be panicked at this point. I started to panic. Everybody on the bridge of the ship is now yelling in Italian at each other. And I could feel a wave coming from my feet like cold water was rising up from my ankles to my knees. And so I recognized I was starting to panic and I couldn't see any solutions. I could only see headlines, massive tanker collides, massive explosion off downtown Long Beach and damage and deaths.

Dan: 22:21

Grant knew he needed to calm down. He turned away from the chaos on the bridge and closed his eyes. He remembered breathing exercises that Navy SEALs used called box breathing.

Grant: 22:33

And when I turned my back and looked down, closed my eyes, and I did the four deep breaths, deep exhales, I promised myself when I turned back and looked over the bow, I would do the first thing that came to mind. Now I've stopped the panic. I've slowed my breathing. I've slowed my heart rate. I turned back around. I looked over the bow of the ship. Now we're very close to the other ship. I looked up and the rudder was still hard right. So the engine's not running. The rudder is still hard right. And it occurred to me, try putting the engine ahead.

Dan: 23:17

So remember, Grant had tried putting the engine in reverse, but it didn't work. And his epiphany here is that he could try putting the engine ahead. It's sort of the same logic as that old thing where if your stick shift car doesn't start, you get some buddies to push and get it rolling before you try again. Grant had realized that the forward movement of the ship might allow him to start the engine.

Grant: 23:43

And when the mate put the engine on half a head, the engine started.

Dan: 23:48

But wouldn't that just make you go faster toward the ship? I don't think I understand yet.

Grant: 23:54

It would increase the movement ahead. But with the rudder hard right, I put this massive right swing on the ship. And when it started to swing, because the rudder's hard right, I asked them for full ahead. And when I put that engine on from half to full ahead, it increased the rate of turn to almost 30 degrees per minute. And it increased the rate of turn because we were only doing three knots. So that's like you're in your car and you're doing about three or four miles an hour. And you put your wheel hard left and you hit the accelerator. And the rear end just spins right out, right? That's exactly what happens with a ship. I got the rate of turn going so quickly, we were now parallel to the other ship. Our bow was at their stern. Our stern was at their bow. But now the bow is going to clear. But now I've got the rudder hard right, full ahead. And now our stern is going to slam into the port side of that ship. And I realized it's still going to be a collision and a bad one. Not as bad as head on. I told the quartermaster on the wheel, I said, shift your rudder hard left. I left the engines full ahead. And just before our stern hit the side of that ship, the hard left rudder stopped the stern and started lifting us away.

Dan: 25:36

So Grant's ship basically fishtailed, just missing the other ship. In fact, it was so close that the pilot station that was watching this whole thing on radar actually thought they'd collided.

Grant: 25:50

And the vice president at the time, Captain Graham, called me on the radio and said, Grant, we've notified the emergency services and the Coast Guard about the collision. On the radar, Dan, at the pilot station, the two images had merged. We were about 40 feet and parallel off the other anchored ship.

Dan: 26:12

40 feet.

Grant: 26:13

I know that because there was a tugboat tied to my port bow, and there was just enough space for that tugboat not to get crushed. And when I called the pilot station and I said, Captain Graham, we did not hit. There was no collision. He called me. He said, no collision. And I said, no, you can cancel the emergency services. We did not collide. And that one was three years into my career. And that made me reconsider how I handled emergencies and what kind of training I should have. And the pilot station as well. We all looked at that and said, okay, we need to up our emergency training to deal with panic, to deal with these kinds of extreme cases.

Dan: 27:11

Walk us through the daily rhythms of the job. Like on a given day, how many hours are you working and how many ships will you dock and so forth?

Grant: 27:21

It varies from port to port around the world. And so in Long Beach, we work a seven-day shift. So we're on duty, on call for seven days, and then we have seven days off.

Dan: 27:34

Wait, but does that mean you're on site for seven days? Like you're sleeping in a back room or something?

Grant: 27:39

If you're working, so you're going to think you guys are so spoiled. We are at home on our seven days on duty. We're at home until they need us. But we have to be able to answer the phone. We're like, you know, and we've got a pilot station that's very much like a fire station. We've got bunk rooms. We've got a lounge. We've got a galley. And when you are working, when you do get called down, quite often you're staying at the station. And especially if you know that you're going to do another job. And so you've got seven pilots. They're on a rotating basis where the number one pilot is going to do five ships. And then they get at least 12 hours off, and it's usually 24. But it's a similar kind of a rotation wherever you go. You've got X number of pilots, the number one pilot on the list. They're out there working, and they're not going to stop working until they do X number of ships or they reach X number of hours. 14 hours is the limit. We're under the same federal guidelines. We're a federal pilot service. We're under the same guidelines as airline pilots.

Dan: 28:52

And kind of a routine docking might take what, two or three hours?

Grant: 28:57

Yes. And it depends on where you are. So if you're on a long river transit, Mississippi River, Houston Ship Canal, San Francisco, going in the San Francisco Bay, going up into the Benicia and up into towards Sacramento, that might be eight hours, 10 hours. And very similar on the Mississippi River, very similar in the Houston Ship Canal in Texas, or it could be just a short transit docking the ship. But I'm going to, let's just call it three hours on average if you take everything into account.

Dan: 29:32

So Grant, we always end our episodes with a quick lightning round of questions. Here we go. What is a word or phrase that only someone from your profession will be likely to know? And what does it mean?

Grant: 29:46

Securite, securite, securite. And that is a call, a broadcast on a VHF radio. Every ship and every shore side business that deals with ships has VHF radios. And when a ship is coming into a port or when a ship is moving, the proper terminology is securite, securite, securite. This is the Maersk Gartner. We are getting underway from berth 134. We'll be outbound for sea. And securite, securite, Securite means important marine broadcast, and it's related directly in degrees, which most of your listeners will know. It's related directly to Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. And Mayday, repeated three times, means emergency broadcast to follow. So if my ship is sinking or I've had a collision, I get on the radio, I broadcast to all listeners, Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. Anybody on a bridge of a ship or a tugboat or a boat that hears mayday, mayday, mayday, they know that's an emergency broadcast. So now they're going to listen. When I say securite, securite, securite, they, anyone listening on any other ship, tugboat or boat in the harbor knows it's an important marine movement broadcast. They're going to expect to hear about the movement of a ship.

Dan: 31:17

What is the most insulting thing you could say about a harbor pilot's work?

Grant: 31:22

So we should do such a good job that we make it look easy. When I do a really difficult job and I've used all of the skills and the experience I've had and it goes absolutely smoothly and when I get done, now I've gathered up all of my experience and I'm so proud of myself. I made it look easy and the captain looks at you and says, well, that was easy. That's when you go, no, it wasn't. And you're not going to say, at least I don't. I don't say, easy. Captain, what's the matter with you? That's the hardest darn job I've had in six months. That's the, it's when you do your job so well that people say, well, that was easy. You got an easy job.

Dan: 32:14

What is an aspect of your work that you consistently savor?

Grant: 32:19

I am a sunset fanatic. A ship at sea with the sun going down, when that sun goes down that day, it'll never happen again. It's a singular event. And each sunset is unique. And there is a sense of beauty and peace for me. I will catch every sunset I can on the bridge of a ship. If I'm moving a ship and the sun's going down and I'm not docking that ship or undocking it, I take a few moments, like a zen moment for me, to go out and quietly watch that sun just as it dips under the horizon.

Dan: 33:03

What do you think it was about you that fit this work so well?

Grant: 33:09

I think it's the artistic ship handling. When you hit that artistic level, that sense of satisfaction, I can't stop coming back for it. It can be routine and it can be paint by number and it can be step by step. and there's many times where that's exactly what's required, but there's other times, Dan, where it can become an artistic movement of this massive object floating on the water. And when you get that right and you realize the movement of the ship was flat out artistic, I would keep coming back for that, obviously. I came back for that 16,000 times. I didn't get tired of it.

Dan: 34:03

Grant Livingstone is a retired harbor pilot. He spent 34 years at the port of Long Beach in California. He recently published a book called Shiphandling, the Beautiful Game with his twin brother, Captain George Livingstone. Okay, the rope ladder. We have to talk about the rope ladder. First of all, lest you think that harbor piloting is some kind of archaic anti-technology profession, no. Grant told me about this portable piloting unit, the PPU that he uses, which is sort of like a fancy laptop that maps the progress of your ship through the port in real time. It's showing you your location from overhead with a half meter accuracy and projecting out where you'll be in two or three or six or nine minutes. So, no, this job is full of fancy tech. But the best tool for the job isn't always the newest. Thus, the rope ladder. Isn't it reassuring in a weird way that, in a world of AI and drones and automation, that global commerce still hinges on a bunch of humans climbing ladders, navigating the perils of ports, coordinating with ship captains who've come from all over the world, preparing for emergencies, and yes, carefully scaling rope ladders to take temporary command of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cargo. Folks, that's what it's like to be a harbor pilot. By the way, this episode brought to mind two others that you might be interested in. If you want to hear more about the kinds of products that are loaded up on those container ships that Grant is valet parking, check out the Toy Distributor episode. It's especially relevant in our newly tariff-centric world. And also we heard how harbor pilots need to have obsessive knowledge of their local ports, and that reminded me of the London cabbie episode and the test that they have to pass to qualify for their role, which has been called the hardest exam of any kind in the world. Check it out. A shout out to recent Apple Podcast reviewers and Spotify commenters. Thank you all. Here's a recent one we enjoyed from Cuz Tumbleweed with the headline, The Best Gift to Our Family. They said, In a time when it's not always easy to engage in thoughtful conversation with my kids, this podcast provides the perfect opportunity. We eagerly await each episode to drop and hit pause many times throughout each interview to chat about what we heard. The kids learn so much without realizing they're learning and love listening to a podcast that doesn't talk down to them. What it's like to be fills all of us up. And I often hear applause from the backseat as an episode wraps. That is beautiful. Thank you for that. This episode was produced by Matt Purdy. I'm Dan Heath. See you next time.