I Was Forced Out of My Job by Shipboard Sexual Harassment and Discrimination.

* This account was submitted to MLAA by the victim *

I’m thick skinned, in no way sensitive, and I’ve endured a lot in my life. My career at sea has been pretty good to me, mostly because of the people I’ve met along the way. I’ve never been sexually assaulted at work, thank God. And my heart goes out to everyone who has had to experience that pain. But the harassment and sexism that are so ingrained in this industry eventually caught up with me and compelled me to quit my job. 

     I shipped out for 2 years on the same boat. We had two captains who worked staggered schedules. The one captain was really great. The other captain and his chief mate were a completely different story. They were both overtly sexist and racist. 

    The bigoted captain was a total asshole. He told me to my face that he couldn’t control his thoughts about me, and therefore he made up a bunch of rules I had to follow. I was required to wear shorts that went past my knees. I was not allowed to work out in the boat’s gym because I was going to “scare the guys away.” He told me that it was inappropriate for me to be in his presence because it was disrespectful to his wife. And he told me that he preferred brunettes to blondes, and didn’t know why everyone likes blondes (his wife was a blonde and I’m brunette.) This captain also told me that I needed to stay in my room when I was off watch, because everything I wore “was cute” (despite the fact that I only wore granny panties and men’s clothes and never wore makeup when I would go on hitch).

    After hitch I would put mascara on and a nice shirt to fly home in. When I did, he made comments about me trying to “look cute” for him. I didn’t know how to respond, so all I said was “I try to look nice at the airport because you never know which celebrity you could meet.” But eventually I even stopped putting on mascara and nice shirts until I actually arrived at the airport. 

    The sexual harassment escalated to a point where I was so uncomfortable that I would eat dinner in my room. If I walked into the galley and saw the captain I’d leave because I didn’t want to be alone with him. He made my job really hard. 

    I took a lot of pride in my work. I know I’m not the best or smartest, but I definitely put in the time and effort. He never appreciated my effort, and would purposely find things for me to do that were obscure and difficult. 

     His chief mate was another problem. The chief mate made comments about “wet t-shirt contests” to me, and about how I better not put tampons on the shopping list because I need to be responsible and bring them myself. 

    Our chief engineer was black and the chief mate would say racist things to him. The first incident I remember is when my chief mate started calling the black chief engineer a “bitch.” Then on grub runs the chief mate would ask him if he wanted them to pick up “fried chicken and watermelon” for him. There were other things racist things he did, but that’s his story. I don’t want to put words in his mouth. 

     The harassment I was experiencing got to a point where I was so uncomfortable that it was almost unbearable. Everyone else saw what the captain was doing to me, but none of them would say anything. They would just joke about it in private and apologize to me for him. It got so bad that I started to get panic attacks while flying to work.

    The final straw came one day when I was off watch and working out. We were at anchor and the chief mate was on watch. We started dragging anchor and drifting because the chief mate wasn’t paying attention. The emergency bell kept ringing in the engine room, so I left the gym and ran down to help the engineer on watch. We put the compressor back together and were able to emergency start the engines. I helped save the day. 

     The chief engineer was proud of his guys, and it was like “Happy day.” But the captain lost his shit. He wasn’t pissed that the 2nd in command was negligent during watch and put the boat in danger. He was furious that I wore shorts into the engine room to help save the day! The chief engineer stood up for me, and he and the captain had a blowout that almost turned into a fist fight—over me wearing shorts in the engine room during an emergency. After their fight the chief engineer left the boat, and I decided there was no way I could continue working for that captain.

    I wanted to transfer to another boat, but I needed the captain’s signature for the transfer. On the transfer form I put that I wanted to learn another engineering system, and there was a boat that needed an engineer and they had requested me. The captain denied my request for a transfer. He told me that he didn’t want to let me go. 

     Yes, I could have gone to the office for help, and they probably would have helped me. But I was afraid to do that. In this industry all that a captain needs to do is call up his buddies and say “she’s going to be a problem” and suddenly you’re black-listed in the fleet. I felt like my only option was to quit the toxic job and leave the company, which is what I did.