A professional who commands ship to transport passengers, freight, and other cargo across oceans, bays, lakes, and in coastal waters. Responsibilities include:

• Sets course of ship, using navigational aids, such as charts, area plotting sheets, compass, and sextant, and orders crew worker at helm to steer ship.
• Determines geographical position of ship, using loran or azimuths of celestial bodies.
• Inspects ship to ensure that crew and passengers observe regulations pertaining to safety and efficient operation of ship.
• Coordinates activities of crewmembers responsible for signalling devices, such as ship's whistle, flashing lights, flags, and radio, to signal ships in vicinity.
• Calculates landfall (sighting of land), using electronic sounding devices and following contour lines on chart.
• Avoids reefs, outlying shoals, and other hazards to shipping, utilising aids to navigation, such as lights, lighthouses, and buoys.
• Relinquishes command of ship to pilot, ship to guide ship through hazardous waters.
• Signals tugboat captain to berth ship.
• Maintains ship's log.
• Must be licenced by U.S.
• Coast Guard for steam, motor, or sail ship according to waters navigated and tonnage of ship.
• May be designated according to waters licenced to navigate as Master, Bays, Sounds, And Lakes; Master, Coastal Waters; Master, Great Lakes; Master, Ocean.