What are the four STCW basic safety training courses?

Under the STCW convention every seafarer must complete basic safety training before being assigned shipboard duties, and it consists of four short courses defined in section A-VI/1 of the STCW Code. Together they take roughly two weeks at an approved training centre and form the foundation on which every later, rank-specific qualification is built.

• Personal Survival Techniques (A-VI/1-1) teaches abandoning ship: donning lifejackets and immersion suits, jumping safely into the water, righting and boarding liferafts, survival swimming, cold water survival and the use of location aids, with practical pool work.
• Fire Prevention and Fire Fighting (A-VI/1-2) covers how shipboard fires start and spread, extinguisher types and fixed systems, and live firefighting practice as part of a team, including entering smoke-filled compartments in breathing apparatus.
• Elementary First Aid (A-VI/1-3) teaches the immediate response to injury and illness: assessment, resuscitation, bleeding control, burns and casualty handling until a more qualified person takes over.
• Personal Safety and Social Responsibilities (A-VI/1-4) covers safe working practices, emergency procedures and alarms, pollution prevention, communication and teamworking on board, fatigue, and the seafarer's rights and duties.

Alongside these, virtually all seafarers now also need security training under the convention: at minimum security awareness, or the designated security duties course for those with tasks under the ship security plan. Administrations and employers commonly bundle it with the basic courses.

Two practical points matter for a career. First, the certificates must exist before you join your first ship, and the originals travel with you; manning offices and Port State Control both check them, and a missing certificate can stop you signing on. Second, competence must be maintained: the survival and firefighting elements require evidence of continued competence at intervals not exceeding five years, through a refresher course or documented onboard training and drills accepted by the administration, so diarise the expiry dates along with your medical certificate.

The basic courses are deliberately elementary. As you advance you will layer on proficiency in survival craft and rescue boats, advanced firefighting, medical first aid and medical care, and specialised training for tanker or passenger ship service. But the four basics are the ones every person on board shares, from cadet to master, and they exist because in a real emergency the ship's survival depends on every hand knowing how to fight a fire, launch a raft and stay alive in the water.