My Cadet Experience With a Sleazy Military Sealift Command Captain Convinced Me I Should Work on Tugs After I Graduated From Kings Point.

*This account was submitted to MLAA by a graduate of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy*

My story may not be that bad compared to others I’ve heard and read, but I think every girl who goes out to sea as a cadet has to deal with things that are completely ridiculous and unacceptable, and that was also true for me. My first sailing wasn’t bad. The Captain was an ass at first, but he lightened up over time and at the end of the trip he gave me one of the blue bound books we get at KP and he signed the inside cover saying, “You’ll go far in the industry.”

I went back to KP, then went out on my second sailing of Sea Year in the midst of the infamous “Sea Year Stand Down.” I was assigned to a certain Military Sealift Command ship because the MSC Captain specifically requested to have two female cadets added to his crew.  My female Sea Partner and I were flown to the Middle East to join the vessel. 

The day before we took the flight, my credit card was stolen, and so I had limited access to money until my card could be mailed to the Navy base in Bahrain. Luckily, my sea partner spotted me extra cash until we joined the ship. On one of the first nights aboard the ship I was talking about my credit card and money problems to my Sea Partner when the Captain overheard us, and told me to come to his office after dinner. 

When I entered his office he handed me $500 cash, and said, “just pay me back when you get your credit card, but don't tell anyone I gave you this.” Something about it just didn’t feel right, and I was on edge about taking the money. But I was literally out of money until my credit card arrived, so I took it. 

The Captain always gave off weird vibes to me and my Sea Partner, but we just ignored it and tried to get through our days. One night the deck crew went out for ice cream and the Captain tagged along. While we were eating, he mentioned that he was passionate about classic cars, which was a hobby that my dad was also into. I told the Captain that, and the Captain asked me if I wanted to see pictures of his car collection.

“Sure,” I said.

So he pulled his phone out and began swiping through pictures of his old cars, but then suddenly the car pictures ended and he began swiping through pictures of naked women posing with bongs and other smoking devices. I chuckled and told him that his camera roll had changed. He just laughed and said “this is where it gets good.”

The other crew couldn’t see this, and no one noticed. But that night I told my Sea Partner. Then, fast forward a few weeks and some officials came aboard to do an audit of the ship, and during the audit the Chief Mate noticed there was cash missing from the safe. $500 in cash, to be exact. I KNEW this was the money he had given me and told me not to tell anyone about, and I had no idea what to do and was freaking out. 

My mom then Venmoed $500 to my Sea Partner, and we took $500 out of her bank account on base, and I then immediately returned the money to the Captain. He just accepted it casually and never mentioned it again. 

After that he became even more of a creep. He began to make compliments about our bodies to me and my Sea Partner, and he would say things like “I sure wish my daughters looked like you do.” Why? It got so bad that we decided to confront the Chief Mate about the sexual harassment, which then caused an uproar on the ship, and led to an active duty Navy Captain from Bahrain conducting an investigation. 

That was not what we had expected to happen, and we were both terrified of being removed from the ship, because we needed to get our sea days.  So when confronted by the Navy Captain, we both denied that anything had happened in order to be able to stay on the ship. The Navy Captain then came back later and told me that the Navy had been investigating the Captain of our ship for other matters, and he was already on thin ice, and that sexual harassment charges would definitely get him fired.  

I was terrified of retaliation from the Captain, but figured that since we denied it to the investigator, the Captain would treat us well after that. Wrong. Even after we saved him by denying anything had happened, the Captain began to make our lives hell from then on out. When our hitch aboard the ship was almost over, we had a party at the base bar with our crew. The Captain showed up and got drunk and blatantly talked shit about us the entire time, and bragged to everyone that he was going to give us terrible performance evaluations that we would have to take back to Kings Point. 

On the day we were signing off, we went to his office to get our sea time discharge letters, but he told us that he was not going to give them to us and that our Kings Point ATR would have to call him and ask him for the letters if we wanted them to be signed. 

I went to call my ATR and was in tears talking to him. Fortunately, he had my back and we got them signed before we left. On the performance evaluation the Captain gave me terrible scores and told my ATR “she needs to smile more if she wants better scores.” When we returned to KP we both ended up telling our ATR how horrible the Captain was and I wrote out an official complaint.  But of course nothing came of it.

Later, I found out that the awful Captain was fired from Military Sealift Command for ordering parts for his personal helicopter that he kept at his house.  I don't believe in much, but I do believe he finally got his karma.

That Sea Year experience confirmed for me that I didn’t want to be underway for long periods of time on a ship. Something happens to people when they are at sea for a long time. Things tend to get sleazy. When I graduated from KP I decided to work on tugs, because the crew go home at least every month, and that seems to keep people more normal.

Things get dark on big ships, in my experience. On my first ship as a cadet, one of the only crew members that I really got along great with was a 60’ish year-old A.B. He was really nice to me. A few days after I left that ship and returned to KP with my first Sea Partner, he committed suicide in the shower inside his stateroom.