The Seamen's Church Institute has been involved in maritime training since 1899. In our 108-year maritime training history, we have seen many sea changes.

In 1899, noting that seafarer's stayed in the area to look for work, and realizing that advanced skills would assist them in finding work, the Seamen's Church Institute opened an informal school and began training seafarers.

In 1916, SCI at 25 South Street WWI created an unprecedented demand for mariners. SCI responded by training more than 15,000 individuals. The commitment to mariner’s professional well being, beginning at the turn of the century, reacted to the sea change caused by war, and SCI met the challenge.

SCI responded again during WWII by training more than 25,000 mariners.

More changes occurred over time. The maritime industry built larger vessels, manned by smaller crews. These vessels stayed in port for shorter durations and the places they could dock were reduced due to the greater drafts of the vessels. A merchant fleet of more than 3,000 vessels at the end of WWII began to contract.

The training of mariners went through the biggest sea change ever during the late 1970's and the early 1980's. Simulators began to find their way into maritime industry that had used classroom and on-the-job training for thousands of years. These multi-million dollar technological marvels were limited in ability, but useful for training and research. SCI was at the forefront of a "sea change" of simulation training as lower cost (comparatively) visual simulators became available.

Fewer mariners were now being trained, but the level of training required was increasing in difficulty and volume. Much of newly mandated training requires simulation. Academies and unions purchased simulators to train deep-sea mariners. The size of the merchant marine reduced to below 600 vessels during the 1980's.

The Center for Maritime Education reacted to these "sea changes" and, realizing that our merchant marine was continuing to shrink began to look at other training possibilities. We had already begun to train coastal tug and barge operators, when board members pointed to the possibilities presented by mariners on inland waters. The deep-sea merchant marine was decreasing to 200 vessels but the inland fleet remained steady or grew to its present size of more than 7,000 vessels.