Petty Officer of the Watch, now this one I know about first hand. Just like the OOD the POOW is a watch stander. This person stands along with the OOD while in port for quarter deck watch. He is the person who handles the deck log and the grunt work of the watch. He will call people to the quarterdeck and pass the word over the 1MC when needed. If a message needs to be taken to a different location he will take it. On a larger ship there will be a runner for this purpose.

Since the Navy considers buildings ships the came watch system is used for those as well. This is where I had my real time POOW experience. For Service School Command at Great Lakes I had to stand watch as POOW. We had twelve section rotation with 2 sets of watch standers, so we stood watch maybe once ever month at best. The POOW watch was 12 hours long, 6am to 6pm or 6pm to 6am. Neither one was all too good, but that’s what you had to do.

We had a TV with all the channels, geedunk machines, and of course coffee. I had to keep a deck log of the happenings, check people in and out from leave, muster extra duty people, and perform colors. Sometimes it was boring, other times it was boring. We would order in Chinese food, pizza, subs, or what ever else we might want to eat. The OOD was a Senior Chief and he had to roam the base from time to time. We had a duty van and a duty car.

POOW duty was really fairly easy. I liked getting drive around the base in the OOD car and watching all the students saluting the car.