IN THE SEA OF MEN

For centuries, the role of women in shipping had been underrated and limited to the minimum. The situation began to change dramatically in the 20th century as a result of the growing number of women defying the existing limitations.

To this day various beliefs in what guarantees safety and brings fair winds are still popular among male ship crew members who need them to have a sense of control, to calm down and to have a fear of illness or death eased. The awareness of all perils at sea has led to numerous superstitions. One such superstition has it that the presence of a woman on board a military or merchant ship can make the sea gods angry and, as a result of their anger, the weather conditions are likely to deteriorate dramatically and the sea will get rough. The belief in bad luck brought by the fair sex on board a ship caused women to be excluded from shipping and led to numerous tragedies. One of them was throwing overboard more than 60 women who, in 1379, ended their lives in the Irish Sea. What remained in contradiction to this superstition was the conviction that a ship with a figurehead representing a woman with widely open eyes and unsheathed breasts would be blessed with the grace of sea gods. Another explanation why women were not allowed to work on board a ship was the opinion that their good looks might distract the male crew, be a source of conflicts, jealousy and lower the morale.

Despite the danger of losing their lives, some women would decide to serve aboard a ship dressed as men. One of them was Mary Read, born in England in 1685. Shortly after birth, she was disguised by her mother as Mary’s lately deceased half-brother. Thanks to this, Mary and her mother could live comfortably on the money inherited from the dead boy’s grandmother into Mary’s teen years when, dressed as a boy, Mary found work as a foot-boy. She changed it then to serve aboard an English military ship and fought on many fronts.

It was the 18th century that saw the first changes in women’s place in shipping. They were due to the wars conducted at that time. Some captains agreed to women’s presence on board a ship together with their husbands. It was not easy though, as each woman deci- ding to join her husband had to share a hammock or a bunk with him as well as a daily food ration consisting of a pie- ce of salted beef, dried peas, a roll and some cheese. Besides, her everyday duties included keeping the ship clean, seeing to it that the men had enough gunpowder during battles and nursing the injured.

When, towards the end of the 18th century, very fast sailing ships called clippers came into use to transport foodstuffs over long distances (such as tea from China), the role of women on ships changed further. It became custo- mary for the captain to take his wife on board a ship with him. She was to help him navigate, repair sails, assist in keeping the logbook and the accounts.

One of the first women in the history of shipping to command the ship was Mary Ann Brown Patten. In 1856, she was the commander of an American merchant ship Neptune’s Car for 56 days. At 19, pregnant with her first child, Mary had to rise to the occasion when her husband, the captain of the ship, collapsed from fatigue. She put an end to the mutiny and took command of the ship.

Another woman who contributed to the change of women’s rights in shipping was Kate Tyrrell. In 1899, she became the first official female shipowner in the history. She had been fighting for it for 9 years, inspired by women’s suffrage movement. During that time, the owner of her Irish ship, Denbighshire Lass, had been her trusted employee who had officially owned it for more than 13 years.

The first female captain of a merchant ship was Anna Shchetinina. It was the year 1935 and she was only 27 years old. Her first voyage on MV Chavycha started in Hamburg (where it had just been purchased) and ended in the Russian Far East. In acknowledgement of her services, Anna was awarded the medal of the Hero of Socialist Labour, one of the highest awards in the USSR. She died in 1999 and one of the Kuril Islands was named after her by the government of the Russian Federation.

The next 72 years saw little changes in the role of women as ship captains. Only a small group of brave women fought for equality in shipping. Among them was Danuta Kobylińska-Walas, who became Poland’s first and the world’s second female master mariner as late as in 1962.

The breakthrough came in 2007, when a Swedish female mariner Karin StahreJanson was named captain of Monarch of the Seas, one of the world’s biggest cruise ships, with a capacity of 2744 passengers. She inspired other women and the number of female captains began to grow. Belinde Bennet is yet another example. When she took command of the ship in the Bahamas in 2016, she became the world’s first black female cruise ship captain.

According to the estimates of the Chamber of Marine Commerce, 1.2 million persons are employed on ships now, out of which only 24 thousand are women. Why is it so? Women are still seen as the weaker sex, having no necessary skills and competences to work in the shipping industry. To addition to all this, there is a common misconception that it is better to employ a man, even with lower qualifications, than a woman.

For ages, due to ancient beliefs and wrong opinions, equal treatment of women and men in the shipping industry was not possible. Let us hope that the number of men taking decisions based on facts and not on misconceptions will grow in the world, leading to increased presence of women in the shipping industry and, consequently, to increased effectiveness and efficiency of work on ships. Only the committed and the passionate contribute to the success in their workplace. It has nothing to do with you being a man or a woman.