General Purpose (GP) Rating

A general purpose rating is cross-trained for both deck and engine-room work, certificated under both STCW Regulation II/4 (deck navigational watch) and III/4 (engine watch). The dual-purpose grade is common in Asian-crewed fleets and lets one rating cover deck maintenance, mooring, and engine-room support, reducing total manning. The model traces to flexible-crewing experiments of the 1980s and remains a recognized training route in several STCW white-list administrations.