As a Female Cadet I Worked on Ro-Ro’s, Cruise Ships and Container Ships. The Cargo Ships Were Fine, But the Cruise Ships Were a Nightmare. Eventually, I Quit Sailing.
I’m from Europe. Going to sea runs in my family, and I ended up going to a maritime academy to become a licensed deck officer. My first ship was a Ro-Ro, and it was fine. I was the only woman aboard the ship, but the crew were for the most part respectful and I didn’t have any problems.
After a few months aboard the Ro-Ro I was able to get a spot aboard a cruise ship through some family connections, and I was very excited about the opportunity. It was a big international cruise line, and it seemed like a dream job. But the experience turned out to be much different than what I expected.
As soon as I joined the first cruise ship, a European Chief Officer (a man) began harassing me and subjecting me to mental abuse. He was incredibly rude, and would say terrible things to me all the time. From the first day, he began trying to ostracize me from everyone else on the crew and make me feel isolated. He would make up rules for me, like telling me that I was not allowed to speak that day, or telling me that I was not allowed to eat lunch on another day. He tried to isolate me from everyone except the bridge officers, and when he would allow me to eat, he would only allow me to eat my meals with the other bridge officers. He also tried to prevent me from speaking with anyone else on the ship.
He often sat in his office monitoring security cameras for no reason other than to stalk me and others, and when he couldn’t figure out exactly where I was at any given time, he would send people to find me. This man wanted to control my entire life. We had electronic ID cards that we had to use to leave the ship and then use to re-board the vessel, and these comings and goings were all kept in an electronic log that he could access.
This Chief Officer would always check the log to learn who I was leaving the ship with, and who I was hanging out with. I was given a company cell phone, but he had access to my call log and would check all of my calls to see who I was speaking with. He also wanted to know everything about my romantic life aboard the ship and whether or not I was having sex with anyone. He wanted to know about everyone’s sex life.
He was an extremely creepy guy, and he would sometimes get angry and throw things at me. I put up with his insanity and abuse for as long as I could, but eventually it became too much to deal with. Even though I was afraid that reporting him would negatively impact my career with the company, I decided to report him to the ship’s Human Relations officer by writing a letter. I explained all of the things he was doing to me, and after I wrote the letter to HR, I went to speak to the Captain about the situation. The Captain told me that he did not believe me, and he told me that I should keep quiet about it.
The next day I received a call on my cell phone from a personnel director in the company’s main office. This man was the personnel director for all deck and engine officers, and someone every officer in the company was afraid of. On the phone he was extremely rude, and he told me point-blank to “shut up” about the situation. He also told me that if I continued to talk about the harassment and abuse I was receiving from the Chief Officer, I would be fired. Of course this terrified me. I was only 20 years old and it seemed like my entire career was threatened.
Two days later someone from the office arrived at the ship and came aboard. The pretext for his visit was an “inspection,” but the real reason he came to the ship was to tell me in person to shut up about what the Chief Officer was doing and to further terrify me, which he did. This man was a former cruise ship Captain and about 60 years old. Everyone knew who he was, and knew that he had been charged with using and smuggling cocaine while working for a different company earlier in his career. He was so threatening that while he was talking to me I could feel my body going from hot to cold, hot to cold, and I was so scared that I actually felt like I was passing out.
The next day I suddenly received orders that I was being sent to a different cruise ship, and they flew me out that night. I’d spent about 3 months on that ship before being sent to the next one. Nothing happened to the Chief Officer I reported, and a few weeks later I learned from some of my former shipmates that he actually received a promotion.
The 2nd cruise ship was fine, and I didn’t have any problems. I actually had a good time on that ship, and after a couple months I was flown home to Europe to spend about 2 months with my family. While I was home I didn’t tell anyone about what had happened, not even my family. I just didn’t know what to say and didn’t want to scare anyone, I guess.
After two months at home, the cruise ship line flew me to meet my 3rd cruise ship on a four-month contract as a deck cadet. I met the ship in Mexico and almost immediately began having problems. This time the problem was a male Staff Captain—another European. The man had no life, and he spent all day watching security cameras and sending security guards around the ship to see what we were doing. He had a peep hole in his door and he would stand in his office just watching the hallway to see who was coming and going, because he had nothing better to do. It was like we were under constant surveillance. He would constantly check our bank cards to see when we were buying alcohol or internet access on the ship, and he would tell us he was watching everything we were doing.
This psychotic Staff Captain was harassing most of the junior deck and engine officers, including a male engine cadet who was 20 years old and even an electrician who was about 30 years old. There was an awful culture of harassment on the ship, and it seemed like everyone was harassing everyone else who was junior to them.
This Staff Captain would not even allow me to go ashore, and I was on the ship two months before I first got off that ship. That’s when he told me to go to the grocery store with a list of things to buy him, and then I had to immediately return to the vessel. I was ashore for about one hour. He just wanted to make my life miserable.
On that ship I stood watch with a 2nd Officer and a 3rd Officer who was on his first contract. The 2nd Officer was in charge of the watch, but he would sleep 2 to 3 hours of almost every 4-hour watch, and he was not doing well psychologically. He would close himself into his cabin for long periods of time, and he would cut himself. The cuts weren’t easily visible, but I saw them under his uniform on several occasions. Everyone who works for that company is required to take a psychological exam every two years, but nobody really does it. They just pay a doctor to sign off on it.
The 2nd Officer had me doing all of his logbook entries, even though he was supposed to do them, and one day the 2nd Officer didn’t sign out of the logbook and the Captain became angry. The 2nd Officer then made up a bizarre story about how the situation was all my fault because I was violent and disorganized, and that led to me getting a “warning” from the Staff Captain. Because I made a report of abuse and harassment on the first ship, the Staff Captain told me that I now had two warnings with the company, and that if I received a third warning I would be fired. It was ridiculous, but the point was to make me live even further in fear. And it worked.
The culture of that company was completely toxic and I saw and heard about truly horrifying things. There were all kinds of fights on the ships, people getting stabbed, hit in the head—all different kinds of violence. On my 2nd cruise ship, I became friends with one of the nurses. She told me all kinds of awful stories. She told me that a few years earlier, she was onboard another one of the company’s cruise ships when a dancer was found dead in the cabin of one of the ship’s engineers. The dancer and engineer had been in a romantic relationship. Earlier that night people heard them yelling in his room, and then later the engineer reported that he found her dead by suicide inside his cabin.
The nurse went to the cabin with the ship’s doctor and saw the body. She said the dancer was sitting on the floor with a kind of noose around her neck that was hanging from the door handle. She said it was obvious that it would have been impossible for her to hang herself from that position, sitting on the floor. But the doctor was told by the company to call it a suicide, and he wrote out an official report of suicide, even though everyone knew the engineer had killed her by choking her to death. She said she asked the doctor if that had bothered him, and he said he didn’t care. The doctor said that was just the way things were done. That engineer is still working for the company.
That nurse told me about crewmembers who would have psychotic breaks from all the stress they were under, or possibly from being drugged. Once, she was called to the cabin of a 2nd Officer. She found the man completely naked, and he had no idea where he was or what had happened to him. She told me about a similar incident where a deck officer was found wandering the hallway of the ship completely naked with some kind of unexplained amnesia.
Several people told me about a situation where a Captain was married, but was dating one of the crewmembers. When the Captain’s wife came to visit the ship, he had his girlfriend locked in the ship’s jail for almost a week until his wife departed. I heard countless stories like these. And from talking to a lot of young people who have worked for that company, I would estimate that 80% of people experience things similar to what I experienced.
After three brutal months on that ship, I returned home to Europe for a break. When they sent me an email to return for my fourth trip to finish my cadet sea time, I told them I wasn’t coming back. They just said, “ok.” Nothing else.
I finished out my cadet sea time on a big containership that sailed all over the world. I was the only woman, but the people were completely normal and I didn’t have any problems. But one of my shipmates told me he had recently been on a ship where a Filipino seaman killed two other Filipino seamen and threw their bodies overboard wrapped in shower curtains.
After that ship I took my license exams and came back to work for that company as a 3rd Mate. The contracts were long: 6 to 8 months at a time, and I grew weary of such long stretches away from home. When the pandemic started I decided to quit sailing and find other ways to make money.
I don’t miss it.