PACIFIC RIM TRADE : Profiles : Millions of Engines Rev Up the Asian Economy : To start a family. To start a business. To travel. Such goals help make individual workers productive. : TONY TALBOT, 52, <i> Hong Kong ship captain </i>

British-born Tony Talbot describes his job moving goods on the high seas between Asia and the West in almost denigrating terms.

“I’m just a driver of goods, really. I drive the cargo around. I’m just a cog in the machinery.”

The captain says that over the years, innovations and technology have combined to increase cargo loads, reduce ship staff and shorten port calls. Automated satellite communications will soon eliminate the post of the ship’s radio officer.

Yet Talbot has no plans to abandon ship despite his changing, more demanding role.

“I like being at sea,” Talbot said. “I like the wide open spaces. It represents freedom. I’m the boss. . . . Even though we’re getting telexes from the U.K., I’m still here in my own little environment, running things.”

Classical music flows across the captain’s cabin while the crew finishes loading the P&O; Line’s royal blue, 957-foot-long Oriental Bay in preparation for the next leg of its commercial odyssey.

The 52-year-old Talbot who is hefty and has a grizzled beard, at times seems to regard the massive cargo he ferries from port to port as an afterthought--a necessary but trivial condition to satisfying his wanderlust.

“In the old days,” he says, “the captain was sort of a demigod, living in his ivory castle. But he’s not any longer.”