Every enlisted person entering the Navy is a Seaman. Even if you enlist into an engineering rate or aviation rate, everyone starts out as a lowly seaman recruit. You come in as an E1 and stay there until you graduate boot camp and move along to your next duty station. Everywhere you go in boot camp you are called seaman recruit, no matter who you are. Your name is never heard you are just yelled at with seam recruit and you had better answer. It really is not very flattering, but that is how things are. For our Pass and review we did sew on our correct rating badges, but right after that is was back the seaman recruit.

The seaman rating allows a sailor to take a path in the deck or admin ratings. When enlisting in the Navy if a person does not choose a job they are assigned to one of the three main areas of rating, seaman, fireman, or airman. These people are considered non-rated and end up doing the worst jobs in their areas. Seaman who remains non-rated will almost always end up in deck division. Here they learn to chip, paint, paint, chip, stand watch, and paint some more. On a larger ship a non-rated seaman might end up in the ships laundry or galley.

Seaman is used for persons who are E1, E2, and E3. Once a person gets to E3 they person must then decide which job they wish to strike, but that is another story.