Crowley's Tug 'Cavalier'

This morning we took over the tow from the American tug 'Cavalier'. Our American colleagues have a complete different approach of what you need for Ocean Towing than we do. See the size of their tug for instance; I would not feel too comfortable on the North Atlantic in wintertime. But that's what these tugs do; towing worldwide, although most of the time it is limited to barges and medium size displacement tows. Their crew composition is usually 50% of ours; their tugs carry a crew of three licensed deck officers (Captain, Chief Mate, and 2nd Mate), one engineer, and two AB/deckhands per vessel. The absence of a cook is not so strange, on smaller Dutch ships this was a combined function with A/B in earlier days as well. The fact that only one engineer is on the crew list would give me much more headache. Power failure on a tug means more or less a collision with your own tow for sure. You are connected to your tow by a heavy wire and the weight alone of the wire will finally bring tug and tow together. With one engineer on board, it is unavoidable that the emergency response time is higher than with our Engine Room crew of five.