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ships, or the ships with the most gold know how to listen and accept their help. 10. And while, secretly, they would toilet faucets. Great Ships are the ships 8. They never ever forgot the mission not mind being placed on a pedestal, the that do the job the best, whether as row of their ship and know it serves the pub- quest to create Great Ships is the great- boats or aircraft carriers. The greatest lic; not themselves personally. est reward by itself.

ships always do the job and never break 9. They know that Great Ships only Or to compress this list into one sen- down, and they, like their creators, do do one thing: They make the world a tence: If you don’t love the idea of Great not draw attention to themselves; they better place. Ships, don’t bother with this industry.

just do the job.

So here I salute not the Great Ships,

I salute the people that create today’s

Great Ships. Some of them I know per- sonally, some of them I suspect may have played a much bigger part than

I, or anybody, can imagine, and some

I may never be lucky enough to meet.

However, I have found that the Great

Ship creators have common qualities, regardless of the cog in the process they occupy.

1. They clearly see the ? aws in the last ship they created no matter how great it was.

2. They are curious and strive to be knowledgeable with the cutting edge.

3. They judge on data, not on emotion.

4. They are ? rmly footed in technical realities, but know that today’s technical realities are actually yesterday’s techni- cal realities.

5. They are persistent, but not stub- born, and failure is just a step along the path to success.

6. At some stage in their career, they have learned what it takes to become a specialist in something. They are aware of the blood, sweat, and tears in the de- tails of the creation. 7. Therefore, they value specialists and

For each column I write, MREN has agreed to make a small donation to an organization of my choice. For this column I nominate Navesink Maritime

Heritage Association. www.navesink- maritime.org. This tiny volunteer organization punches way above its weight in helping the public to Dis- cover, Engage and Sustain maritime in all its facets because its volunteers are amazingly skilled at being perfect cogs in a complex creation machine. www.marinelink.com 11

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