From 1935 to 1949, India trained its marine engineers on the training ship Dufferin at Bombay. After independence, the Government decided to train marine engineers on shore. In 1947 it set up the Merchant Navy Officers Training Committee to plan training on shore.
The result was the Directorate of Marine Engineering Training, or DMET. It began work on 10 August 1949. The head office was in Calcutta and a branch was in Bombay. Neither had its own building at first. In Calcutta the cadets used temporary rooms on Gorachand Road in Park Circus. In Bombay they used rooms at Boribunder.
The sources give different numbers for the first intake. One source gives 50 students in total, with 30 in Calcutta and 20 in Bombay. IMU’s own campus histories say that each campus started with 60 cadets.
DMET mixed classroom study with hands-on work in marine workshops. The training was residential. An IMU history calls it “paramilitary type training”.
The two campuses soon found permanent homes. Calcutta moved to Taratala Road in 1953. Bombay moved to Lower Parel in 1966. The intake grew to 60 in August 1958 and to 100 a year later. From 1962, cadets were chosen through an all-India entrance examination.
In 1975, the Bombay campus added a one-year course for graduate mechanical engineers who wanted to go to sea. By about 2010 it had trained more than 2,500 of them.
DMET kept its name until 1995, when it became the Marine Engineering and Research Institute (MERI). Alumni of both names count 1949 as the start of their institute.
