Couldn't they sail under the command of a Coxswain? They are only boats.
No, our Coxns don't have any kind of tickets. The Orcas are 210 tonnes so above the 150 tonne limit in the Small Vessel Regulations. We are exempt from the CSA but have rules in place to have our own internal requirements that meet/exceed the equivalent requirements.
They are a minor vessel, but still big enough you need to know what you are doing. They can also go 20+ knots (think there is a speed restricter now) so they can move pretty good.
Can't remember the specific listing they are under ABS but think it was some kind of minor special purpose vessel that called up cargo ship requirements. That's the default, unless you have more than 12 passengers, at which case you are a passenger ship and need things like additional escape and evac requirements, sprinklers from the berths to the escape route, additional redundancy in machinery, comms and other systems and some similar additional crew to escort untrained passengers to safety.
Junior military personnel posted there that have completed the environmental training ashore (for FF, DC, evac etc) are considered 'special crew', not passengers, so that's more things like when sea cadets and CIC go for day sails, family day, VIP dog and pony shows etc.
But the SOPs are based on the CONOPs that has 4 qualified people in those core posiitons, so for something like a fire, the BWK and bosn is your entire fire response for manual fire fighting, and can get augmented by other qualified military personnel if available (while someone makes sure any civvies onboard are escorted to a safe area). So if you have civvie riders you have to augment the core crew with some escorts, but eventually you hit the capacity of the lifeboats (plus the spares needed in SOLAS).
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