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What It's Like To Be...

A Harbor Pilot

What It's Like To Be...

Dan Heath

Curiosity, Jobs, Careers, Business, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Human Interest

4.8646 Ratings

🗓️ 3 June 2025

⏱️ 38 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Scaling three-story rope ladders up the sides of ships, memorizing every rock and current in a harbor, and narrowly avoiding catastrophic collisions with Captain Grant Livingstone, a retired harbor pilot. What do you do when your engine and anchors fail in heavy fog? And how do you dock a ship the size of the Empire State Building? Grant and his twin brother Captain George Livingstone co-authored the recent book Shiphandling, The Beautiful Game. IF YOU LIKE THIS EPISODE: Check out what it's l...

Transcript

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0:00.0

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.

0:11.9

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.

0:22.1

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

0:30.2

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

0:34.4

My wife finally stopped. She would just interrupt me and she would lean forward and tell

0:40.1

the person, whoever was asking, Grant is a valet parking attendant, but he parks ships instead of cars.

0:50.5

And everybody would get it immediately. So why do you need a valet parker for a huge ship?

0:58.3

Well, because every one of those ships will be docked at a port and a harbor.

1:03.3

And a harbor is a treacherous place to sail.

1:07.1

A pilot like Grant has to memorize every inch of the harbor.

1:11.6

Where are the rocks under the water?

1:14.1

Where are the shallow areas?

1:16.0

Where are the currents?

1:17.2

Where is the wind coming from?

1:19.6

That's all local knowledge.

1:21.8

You just can't expect the captain of an international cargo ship to know.

1:26.8

So that's where harbor pilots come in. They go out a few

1:30.8

miles offshore. They board the approaching ship and then personally piloted in. And when it's

1:38.1

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

1:46.7

dollars that are navigating dangerous waters. Most of the accidents with ships occur when ships are

1:54.5

maneuvering and there's no place that ships are maneuvering more than when they're inside a port with a pilot on board.

2:03.3

And so harbor pilots are among the most highly trained mariners in the world.

...

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