I Was a 19 Year Old California Maritime Deck Cadet Alone on a Container Ship. He Was 15 or 20 Years Older and an Officer. I’m Not Sure if It Was Rape, but It Was Definitely Not Consensual.

*This account was submitted to MLAA by Maggie Williams, a graduate of the California Maritime Academy*

At the end of my freshman year at California Maritime Academy (CMA), I went out for the required summer training cruise on the Training Ship Golden Bear (TSGB) with hundreds of other Cal Maritime students. That first cadet cruise on the TSGB went pretty much as planned. I learned a lot, and by the end of the cruise I felt pretty confident about the path I had chosen to become a professional mariner.

At the end of my sophomore year, instead of going on the training ship, I went out on a 60 day “commercial cruise” aboard a container ship. Doing a commercial cruise after sophomore year and a training ship cruise two other summers is the standard path at CMA for accruing the sea time required to sit for your 3rd Mate’s or 3rd Assistant Engineer’s license. 

On my freshman cruise aboard the TSGB there had been what I would call a “normal level” of harassment for the late 1990’s. It was terrible, typical of the times, and all of the young women on the training ship experienced it to some extent. There was sexual harassment and, of course, the general “hazing” kind of harassment. But at least after that first cruise I felt like I was prepared for whatever might happen on the commercial ship.  

As the day to join the container ship arrived, I was excited to get aboard a “real ship.” It was the summer of 1999, and I was a 19 year old deck cadet as I made my way to the Port of LA-Long Beach to join the M/V Mokihana. The Port was massive. There were huge gantry cranes overhead, top-pick loaders zooming around, and longshoremen dodging trucks. As I climbed up the gangway up to the M/V Mokihana with my sea bag slung over my shoulder, it was all a bit overwhelming.  

The ship itself was a hodgepodge design and fairly confusing, but I found my room and was then left to figure out the rest of the ship on my own. We didn’t have “sea partners” back then (maybe they do now?), and I was the only cadet from CMA aboard the ship. For part of my time aboard the vessel there was an engine cadet from either Maine or Mass Maritime, but I had very little interaction with him and certainly didn’t consider him to be a friend or an ally. 

The 3rd mates, 2nd mates, 3rd assistant engineers, and 2nd assistant engineers all obtained their jobs via union hiring halls. The senior officers were all permanent employees and generally worked on 35 day rotations. One of the captains was a CMA grad and one was a hawsepiper. Both chief mates were CMA grads. I don’t remember how the chief engineers and 1st assistant engineers obtained their licenses, but I remember there was generally a lot of discussion about maritime academies and which ones produced better mariners, and about whether it was better to be a hawsepiper or an academy grad. 

It seemed like everyone onboard wanted to assign you to a “team,” or tell you how much better their own experience was. It was all weirdly hostile and confrontational. There was also a lot of tension between the deck department and the engine department. The engineers seemed to have chips on their shoulders. I had to spend time in the engine room completing a rotation for my shipboard independent study from CMA, and the engineers were fairly hostile to the presence of a young female deck cadet in their engine room.

  The Chief Engineer was just a jerk. He made several comments to me about how women didn’t belong on ships, and he went out of his way to make me feel very uncomfortable in his engine room. Overall, it was a very lonely time for me. It was nothing like being on the TSGB training cruise with hundreds of other students. The training ship experience had its own problems, but on the M/V Mokihana I was alone and didn’t have any friends or anyone I could even relate to. I wanted to make friends and I wanted to talk to my shipmates, but there just weren’t many to choose from. 

It wasn’t long before I found myself feeling desperate to fit in, and desperate to just feel safe on a ship where I was the only female crewmember. One day the 2nd Engineer invited me to play cribbage with him. He was 15 to 20 years older than me and married, but we got along well and he became the friend I had been searching for. Whenever I had some downtime, I began playing cribbage with him.

The game provided some much needed relaxation. We talked about life on the ship, he told me about what it was like to attend Maine Maritime Academy, and through my friendship with him I finally began to feel welcomed. He deflected criticism and meanness from the other engineers away from me, and my engine room rotation improved with his guidance and help.  

With more than half of my time aboard the ship still to go, he began to flirt with me. It started small, but then he became more touchy-feely. His advances surprised me, and I felt very confused and was unsure of how to respond. I had a boyfriend and was not trying to cheat on him, and since the 2nd Engineer was married, I had thought that being friends with him would be a safe relationship. It seemed like we both simply wanted some friendship and companionship, and someone to play cards with. But it became clear that he wanted more than that. 

At the same I was still struggling with loneliness, and he was really my only friend aboard the ship. He had helped make my life in the engine room and aboard the ship much better, and I didn’t want to jeopardize that. I was afraid that if I did not give in to his advances, or at least flirt back with him, I would lose my only friend. At the extreme, I worried that refusing his advances might lead to me being ostracized or harassed.  

Telling the Captain of Chief Mate about my predicament never even entered my mind. I just assumed that if I told them I felt uncomfortable about the 2nd Engineer’s advances I would be blamed for getting myself into the situation in the first place. Or worse, I thought they might ask me to leave the ship, which would result in not obtaining the sea time I needed to graduate. 

Because I so desperately wanted to fit in and maintain this human connection, I gave in to the 2nd Engineer’s advances and had sex with him, albeit as a reluctant participant. I wished I had the courage to tell him I didn’t want to be intimate with him, that I just wanted to play cards and chat, but I didn’t. I gave in to him, and it never felt right.

I’ve struggled with that decision ever since. For years afterwards, I told myself that because I was over 18 and because he didn’t pin me down, that it was consensual and there was nothing I could complain about. But I still beat myself up, and felt horribly bad about giving in to him. I told myself that it was my fault. I told myself that I was weak, that I was not cut out for a life at sea, and that I should work in a shoreside position. So that’s what I did when I graduated.

It took me over 20 years to realize that he had abused his power, and that the sexual relationship was not consensual. It took me over 20 years to realize that, because of the vast difference in power that existed between us, I was not able to consent to having sex with him. According to Planned Parenthood, consent must be “freely given” and without any pressure or manipulation. 

I didn’t have sex with this much older man who was my superior on the ship because I was attracted to him, or because I wanted to have sex with him. I had sex with him because I was afraid of what would happen if I turned him down, because it seemed easier to go along with it than to fight it, and because I wanted to feel safe and protected. 

When a licensed officer of a ship expresses sexual interest in a cadet, it’s nice to think that she can easily and politely decline. But the reality is that there can be a lot of pressure in these situations. There is pressure to fit in, pressure to be liked and feel part of the crew, and pressure to feel protected. I believe this pressure is called “sexual coercion,” and because there is no way for that cadet to walk away or go home in the middle of the ocean, these inherently coercive sexual relationships should not be tolerated on ships.

I’m not sure if I should call what happened to me on that ship “rape.” Maybe that’s too extreme. Maybe it’s not. But I can definitely say that it was not consensual. 

At this point my story is over 20 years old, and I am no longer working in the maritime industry. I don’t feel like I need to be anonymous, and I’m not ashamed to have my name attached to this.

If I remembered the name of the perpetrator I would tell you, but I can’t. I tried to forget his name, and I did.