I Was Sexually Harassed on the SUNY Maritime Training Ship

*This story was submitted to MLAA by the victim, a graduate of SUNY Maritime Academy*

I’m a graduate of SUNY Maritime and I was sexually harassed by a student who later came back to be a watch-standing engineer my senior sea term. 

During my freshman sea term, there was this senior in my work/watch group who would come up to me randomly and grab ahold of my hand and ask if I had a boyfriend (I did). When I’d try to get out of his grip, he’d just hold me tighter. 

He did this repeatedly while continuing to say things like “I can be your boyfriend” and “your boyfriend isn’t here so he wouldn’t know.” I had another girl tell me that it was nothing and “he does that to all the girls” which is disturbing. 

The most haunting thing happened when I was assigned to his work group for the day. We were in one of the large berthing holds waiting for a licensed engineer with several underclassmen, and he was following me around the hold. I felt so uncomfortable that I ran to stand with one of my friends. 

He told one of the guys that “this is how you do it, you tire them out so then you can mount them.” I felt sick. Who says that to a person? My friend threatened him to stay away from me. 

On our last watch rotation, he came up and took a picture of me. Just me. He said that he wanted to remember me. 

I didn’t report it because I didn’t want to be “that girl.” The guys at Maritime already spread so many rumors about the girls on the ship (they are definitely the bigger gossipers), and I didn’t want to become another one of them. That’s what the atmosphere of a training ship does to a person. It silences you. 

When my senior sea term came, my harasser was back on the training ship as a 3A/E watch-stander. I was so anxious to be stuck on watch with him. One night in one of our first ports, I had been out drinking with some of my guy friends, and he came up to our group and put his arm around my shoulders, pulling me close. 

I can’t even remember what he said, because I was so anxious. But one of the guys I was with said something about “that guy being creepy.” Because I had been drinking I said “try being a freshman while he threatened to ‘mount’ you.’”

I ended up telling the rest of my story and explaining to them how uncomfortable he made me on watch. The guys were all surprised that I said anything to them, but I was so much luckier than most girls in the maritime industry. Two of the guys from that night were in my watch group, and any time my harasser approached me alone, one of them would make an excuse to come over. They believed me, and I was never left alone with him on watch again. 

I’m forever grateful to those guys for helping me feel safer in that engine room. Girls aren’t usually that lucky. I’m also so lucky that I wasn’t assaulted and just harassed, which is such a sad thing to say.

And I did make moves to prevent him from being re-hired for another sea term. I reported to Captain Smith (Commandant at the time) that he was incompetent. It becomes a safety issue when the 1A/E relies on you and the other unlicensed 1st class cadets to manage the plant because the licensed watchstander doesn’t know what he’s doing. 

I was lucky to have an excuse besides his harassment to make sure he doesn’t have another opportunity to prey on female students. Schools are more likely to believe you if you claim that your engineer is incompetent than if you tell them that you were sexually harassed.

That’s a problem.