I was a US engineering officer from 1982 to 2011. Most of my time we had radio officers just like this man. By my time I was on tankers at first then container ships and the turn around time in port was very fast not much time for sightseeing but I always did my best . I went to the pyramids in Egypt on Christmas Day with our radio officer “sparks” and we rented horses and rode Around the sphinx and Gaza. The radio officers had a reputation for being a bit odd and my sparks was a committed communist ! After they stopped Morse code most of the ships eliminated the position but some U.S. companies kept them as electronics officer . Also commercial ships on charter to the military still had to have them .