ships are organized around functional duties of the crew. Some are seamen and handle mooring lines and anchors. Others deal with propulsion, food, navigation, and so on. The Navy groups these functions into departments. The senior officer in each is the department head. When I was administrative assistant to the executive officer I was, de facto, the assistant department head of the executive officer’s department. It included the office, written correspondence, personnel, postal clerks, legal activities, and more.
When the ship ailed off to join the Seventh Fleet Amphibious Force the Executive Officer became a full time coordinator of relations between the crew and the embarked marines, both the infantry battalion, and the helicopter squadron that carried them around. I inherited, so to speak, the routine functions of the head of the executive department. The new position was, of course, in addition to my standing watch as officer of the deck when underway. The department heads led periodic inspection teams. I did that, too. In fact, on one such inspection I found a hole in the insulation of a pipe in a fan room that had a full kit for shooting heroin; a bent spoon, a pocket lighter, and a syringe. The only thing missing was the actual rugs. We kept an eye on the entry to the fan room, but we never caught anyone trying to get in and recover his kit.
Another formal function was the daily round of eight o’clock reports. At 8 PM every day the Executive Officer received a daily summary of any activities taht were outside the scheduled routine. It included a navigational report for forwarding to the Captain. Most of the time there was nothing special to report, but it did mean I had to be in contact with a lot of people, including the chaplain, and to know what was going on all over the ship. It was excellent training for my next assigment which would be as actual head of the operations department on a slightly smaller ship.
Wetherhorn 