"I think when the guests meet me they're pleasantly surprised"

September 22, 2015 12:20 PM

Kate McCue becomes the first American Female to be Captain of a Cruise Ship.

From the heavy.com article's count, she joins the ranks of only 4 other female captains in the Cruise ship industry.

"Royal Caribbean is credited with hiring the first female in international history when they appointed Karin Stahre-Janson of Sweden captain in 2007. They also added a female captain from Portugal in 2008. Most recently, in 2010, Britain’s Cunard and P&O Cruises hired a pair of female captains from Denmark and the UK."

Celebrity Cruises also has had their first female president and CEO, Lisa Lutoff-Perlo since December 2014.

posted by danapiper (16 comments total)

(First post on the blue!)
posted by danapiper at 12:21 PM on September 22, 2015 [5 favorites]

Nice!


(nice!)
posted by So You're Saying These Are Pants? at 12:32 PM on September 22, 2015 [3 favorites]

Wow. I had no idea the industry was so gender-skewed. Good for her! Even slow change is change.
posted by 256 at 12:53 PM on September 22, 2015

First, I see a future movie role for Sandra Bullock. Second, Louboutins? Cruise ship captains must be paid very, very well. Good for her.
posted by fuse theorem at 1:01 PM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

"First, I see a future movie role for Sandra Bullock."

Speed 2?
posted by I-baLL at 1:03 PM on September 22, 2015 [5 favorites]

We are sailing on the Summit in November and this has been just one of the many reasons I'm looking forward to it. I hope I get the chance to meet her.

On the cruise message boards that I frequent, other Celebrity customers are also excited about this, which I also think is pretty cool.
posted by pallas14 at 1:33 PM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

Second, Louboutins? Cruise ship captains must be paid very, very well. Good for her.

Commercial sea captains on big ships make a ton of money. Like, 400k+

It's also a highly skilled position that takes years and years to work your way up to, but yea. You also generally have months off a year.
posted by emptythought at 1:48 PM on September 22, 2015 [3 favorites]

This has some pretty significant awesomeness for me, which is why I posted it. I'm also a female captain, but on a much smaller boat (118 tons, 104 foot schooner). And yes, what emptythought said - most shipboard positions require a ton of skill, patience, and very little sleep. When you're on, you're on 24/7. I can attest from personal experience, the time off is much needed. I used to work a 6 weeks on, 2 weeks off schedule and it was brutal. Not quite enough time to decompress from even the smoothest, most trouble-free hitches. Ten on/ten off is what she works and that's pretty standard across the industry from what I understand of the large commercial vessels. It sounds cushy when you think about it as a normal job, but when you think of it in terms of how mentally taxing it would be to quite literally be in charge of thousands of people's well-being for a 14 days at a time on a self-sustaining, floating platform in the middle of the ocean, it makes my head hurt just thinking about it. She is fantastic.
posted by danapiper at 2:15 PM on September 22, 2015 [30 favorites]

Isaac your bartender gives Kate "two finger-guns and a smile"
posted by jeff-o-matic at 3:49 PM on September 22, 2015 [3 favorites]

Man, almost every year I learn about another very gender-skewed occupation and am surprised that it was like that in the first place. I guess in my mind I always assumed that we had left the era of "the first woman xyz" because it's more expected for women to work now, so surely things like cruise ship captain had filled out. And then I wonder, how are all these occupations still 100% male? Is it that female-dominated jobs are more numerous so more women get funneled into them? Are there more 100% female occupations but we don't hear as much about the "first male xyz?" Are there more unemployed women or really THAT many more stay-at-home wives?
posted by picklenickle at 4:56 PM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

Awesome!
posted by Verabelle Higbee Tachikaze at 6:15 PM on September 22, 2015

Most male- and female-dominated occupations statistics from the USG
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 6:17 PM on September 22, 2015

picklenickle: "And then I wonder, how are all these occupations still 100% male?"

In this case you need years of progressive experience so we are just now seeing the results from women entering the track 10,20,30 years ago.
posted by Mitheral at 6:55 PM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

I had a female captain when I worked on a smaller cruise ship in 2013. There was another female captain in the fleet that year, and the port captain was female as well. It looks like they don't have any women at all who are captains this year, though.
posted by aniola at 7:12 PM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

Very cool. Also of note: she is 37 years old. I think that is relatively young for a cruise ship captain.
posted by davidmsc at 10:42 PM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

While much of the recent news can make it feel like society is progressing at a very slow rate, it’s stories like these that show things are indeed moving forward.

I'm with picklenickle, I was surprised that this was a first.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 10:59 PM on September 22, 2015