Merchant Navy Myths and Facts: Travel, Money, Internet and Risk

"You will see the world."

You will see ports. That is not the same thing. A modern container terminal is often twenty kilometres from the nearest town, the ship may be alongside for eight hours, and you may be on watch for six of them. Some contracts pass without a single run ashore.

What you will see instead is the part most people never do: the Malacca Strait at first light, a Suez convoy, ice on the deck off Murmansk, the Southern Ocean doing what it does. Both halves of this are true, and anyone who sells you only the first half is selling you something.

"There is no internet at sea."

This one used to be true and is now mostly wrong. By the end of 2025 more than 70,000 commercial vessels were using low-earth-orbit satellite service in some form, and the big container lines — Maersk, MSC, CMA CGM, Evergreen, COSCO — have been the most aggressive adopters, with fleet-wide rollouts through 2026. Unlimited plans for cargo and tanker ships now exist.

In the Mission to Seafarers Happiness Index for the second quarter of 2026, connectivity scored 7.46 out of 10 — the second-highest of every category measured. Seafarers rate it that well because on a good ship it has genuinely changed the job.

But it is not uniform, and you should know that before you sign. On the ships that have not caught up, a one or two gigabyte monthly allowance, slow speeds and blocked video calls are the single biggest complaint crews make. Ask about crew internet at your interview. It is a fair question and a good company will answer it straight.

"It is non-stop hard work, day and night."

It is watchkeeping. Four hours on, eight off, twice a day, with cargo work, drills and maintenance around it. That is a rhythm, and most people settle into it within a fortnight. It is demanding, and it is not the relentless grind the word "sea" makes people imagine.

Then you come home for months with nothing to do but be at home. No shore job gives you that. It is also the thing seafarers' families find hardest to explain to other people.

"The money is enormous from day one."

A trainee earns a stipend. The money becomes serious once you hold a certificate of competency and a rank that goes with it, and it becomes very good at senior rank. There is also a favourable tax position for Indian seafarers who meet the required days outside India in a financial year — the rules are specific, they change, and you should ask a chartered accountant rather than an agent.

We do not print salary figures on this website. Any number would be out of date, and the people quoting confident figures to your family are usually selling something. Our faculty are sailing now. Ask them.

"It is dangerous."

There are real risks and it would be dishonest to wave them away: heavy weather, enclosed spaces, machinery, fatigue, and piracy or conflict on particular routes. They are managed by drills, procedures, certificates and a safety culture stricter than almost any industry ashore — which is why the training is long and why the certificates matter.

The larger risk for an Indian family is not the sea. It is being placed on a substandard ship by an agent who took your money. That is exactly what the Government addressed on 1 August 2026. Read what changed, and why.

"You will be lonely."

Sometimes. A modern ship runs with a small crew, contracts are long, and you will miss weddings and funerals. That is the honest cost, and it is the reason people leave the sea.

The Seafarers Happiness Index sat at 6.87 out of 10 in the second quarter of 2026, down from 7.18 the quarter before. We quote the fall as well as the figure because a coaching website that only quotes good numbers should not be trusted. What the same survey shows is that the two things seafarers draw most strength from are their crewmates and staying in touch with home.

"Girls cannot really do this job."

Capt. Radhika Menon of Kodungallur joined the Shipping Corporation of India as a radio officer, became the first woman captain of the Indian Merchant Navy in 2012, and in 2016 became the first woman in the world to receive the IMO Award for Exceptional Bravery at Sea. Sonali Banerjee qualified as India's first woman marine engineer in 1999.

Girls and boys sit the same entrance exam, hold the same certificates and train in the same batch here. Women in the Merchant Navy.

"Any short course will get you to sea."

Not any more, and this is the most expensive myth on the page. Until August 2026 an agent could sell five short safety courses as a route to a Continuous Discharge Certificate. The Government's own figures say about 3,50,000 people took that route and nearly 1,80,000 of them have never had a first ship.

That route is now closed. The six routes that remain all require real training — and the first of them is an approved pre-sea course, which is where IMU CET leads.