Manning is the fastest deficiency on any inspection. Hull condition takes an hour to assess and fire equipment takes a walk round the ship, but a port state control officer can compare the Minimum Safe Manning Document against the crew list at the desk, in silence, in about four minutes — and if the two do not agree, everything else that day becomes secondary. It is also one of the few areas where the finding is detainable almost by definition: a ship that is not manned as its flag requires it to be manned is not a ship that can safely be allowed to sail.
This guide covers what the manning document fixes, what every seafarer on board has to hold, how endorsements work when a certificate comes from another administration, where the three-month allowance applies, and the rest-hours requirement that sits behind manning without appearing anywhere on the manning document.
The manning document is one page. Proving you comply with it takes the whole crew wallet.
SOLAS safe manning: what the Minimum Safe Manning Document fixes
The Minimum Safe Manning Document is issued by the flag administration and states the minimum number of crew, by rank and capacity, that the ship must carry to be operated safely. It is a minimum, not a target, and it is ship-specific — it takes account of the ship’s type, size, machinery, equipment, trading pattern and the degree of automation on board.
Capacities and numbers
The certificate each capacity needs
The conditions it was issued on
A port state control officer is required to accept a valid manning document unless there is reason to believe it was issued without regard to the principles in the relevant instruments. That is a high bar, and it is good news for the ship: the argument is not usually about whether the number is right, but about whether the ship is actually meeting it.
Crew certificate inspection: what every seafarer must hold
The check runs person by person. Four things are looked for, and the absence of any one of them is a finding against that individual rather than against the ship’s paperwork in general.
Certificate of competency or proficiency
Flag State endorsement
Valid medical certificate
Evidence of required safety training
The rule that catches people out
Flag endorsement and certificates issued by another administration
Most ships now carry crew certificated by several different administrations, which makes endorsement the busiest part of this area. Where a seafarer holds a certificate issued by an administration other than the ship’s flag, that flag has to recognise and endorse it. The endorsement is a separate document with its own validity, and it expires on its own schedule rather than with the underlying certificate.
The practical consequence is that a ship can have every certificate of competency in date and still be short-manned, because an endorsement lapsed quietly in the background. Endorsement expiry dates belong in the same tracking as the certificates themselves and, on most ships, that means holding them where the rest of the ship’s due dates live rather than in a crewing spreadsheet ashore — the same discipline the ship applies through its planned maintenance system for everything else that expires.
The three-month rule while an endorsement is being processed
There is a recognised allowance for the gap between a seafarer joining and the flag completing its recognition, and it is narrower than crews often assume.
Application submitted
Documentary proof carried on board
Service permitted for up to three months
After three months
Manning inspection against the watch: who may keep a navigational watch
The manning document establishes what the ship must carry. The watch schedule establishes who is actually doing the work, and inspectors compare the two. An officer certificated for the capacity but not designated to the watch, or a rating forming part of a watch who is not certificated to do so, both produce findings — and on the bridge they compound with everything else the chapter V navigation safety inspection is looking at.
Two patterns recur. The first is the ship operating with one fewer officer than the document requires because somebody left at the last port and the relief joins at the next one — which is a manning deficiency for the whole of the passage in between, regardless of how well the remaining officers coped. The second is a rating carried as part of the navigational watch whose certification is for a different function entirely.
Hours of rest: the manning requirement that is not on the manning document
A ship can carry every rank the document requires, with every certificate in order, and still be found not properly manned — because the people on board are not sufficiently rested to be fit for duty. Rest hours are where manning stops being an arithmetic question and becomes an operational one.
The record is as important as the practice. Records of daily hours of rest must be kept, and a missing record set is itself listed among the detainable findings — not because the absence of paper is dangerous, but because without it nobody can demonstrate the crew were fit for duty. Records that are obviously constructed afterwards are worse than none, because they tell the inspector something about the ship’s culture rather than about one week’s watches.
Manning and certificate findings that are detainable
The findings below sit at the serious end. They are not exhaustive, but they cover what actually gets ships held.
| Finding | What it means in practice | How it is usually discovered |
|---|---|---|
| Ship not manned per the manning document | Fewer people, or fewer certificated people, than the flag requires in one or more capacities | Crew list compared against the document at the desk, before anyone walks the ship |
| Certificate absent | The original is not on board — a copy, a scan or a photograph is not the certificate | Asking to see the originals for the capacities the document lists |
| Certificate expired | The competency, the endorsement or the medical has passed its date, often mid-voyage | Reading the dates rather than the certificate, which is the first thing an experienced officer does |
| Certificate inappropriate to the capacity | The person is serving above what the certificate allows, or in a different function entirely | Matching each name on the watch schedule to the capacity on their certificate |
| No endorsement, no proof of application | A certificate from another administration with nothing from the flag to recognise it | Checking whose flag issued each certificate against the ship’s own flag |
| Unqualified person on watch | Somebody keeping a navigational or engineering watch who is not certificated to do so | Watch schedule, or simply meeting the person who is on watch |
| Crew not sufficiently rested | Hours of rest not met, or the schedule makes it impossible for them to be met | Rest hour records read against the watch schedule and the port call pattern |
| Rest hour records missing | No daily records, so fitness for duty cannot be demonstrated at all | A direct request for the last month’s records |
Flag requirements and the ship’s own safety management system sit above this list. Where the company procedure is stricter than the convention minimum, the company procedure is the standard the ship will be held to.
What gives an inspector clear grounds to look further
A routine inspection becomes a more detailed one when the officer has clear grounds. In the manning and certification area these are specific rather than a matter of impression.
Each of these is an operational observation rather than a document check, which is the point: they are the things that suggest the people running the ship may not be the people the manning document assumed. Once clear grounds exist, the certificate examination stops being a sample and becomes the whole crew.
Safe manning document: when it must be reissued
The document is issued against a set of assumptions, and those assumptions age. A new manning document is normally required when any of the following changes materially.
Trading area or pattern
Ship particulars or machinery
Ship type or service
Change of flag or ownership
Crew certificate records the master should produce in five minutes
The inspection is quick, so the response has to be quicker. What closes this area fast is a single organised set rather than four separate ones.
What changed for crew certification in 2026
The manning requirements themselves are unchanged. What changed is a training requirement inside basic safety training, and it applies to people rather than to the ship — which makes it easy to overlook until a joining seafarer cannot produce the evidence.
Amendments to the STCW Code took effect on 1 January 2026, adding a new competence to section A-VI/1-4 of the STCW Code, the standard for personal safety and social responsibilities: contributing to the prevention of and response to violence and harassment, including sexual harassment, bullying and sexual assault. The training covers recognising the types of harm and the factors that contribute to them, how to intervene and report, and trauma-informed response and victim support.
