‘Aye, Aye, Ma’am’ : She’s the Only Woman Tugboat Skipper on the West Coast

With its powerful diesel engines gently rumbling, Capt. Christi Thomas nudged the tugboat Spartan against the huge ship towering over her and shouted to the tug’s deckhands to make fast to the Korean vessel.

The Auto Champ--a 650-foot car carrier tied up in Los Angeles Harbor--had unloaded hundreds of Asian-built Chevrolets and Fords at Terminal Island and was ready to sail, but needed help getting under way. High on the ship’s bridge, the harbor pilot--charged with guiding the Auto Champ out to sea--radioed the Spartan, “Chris, back easy.”

Thomas, 30, the only woman tugboat skipper on dhe West Coast and one of four in the nation, acknowledged the order by a single sharp whistle blast and reversed the engines. The 91-foot Spartan strained against the huge lines, its twin 1,200-horsepower diesels thundering.

Mission Accomplished

Standing at the controls on Spartan’s open bridge, Thomas smoothly pushed the Auto Champ out into mid-channel. This was her third ship assist on a recent workday, and before the watch was over she would help park one more big ship.

Ten years after going to work as a cook in a tugboat galley, Thomas is at the top of her profession, earning about $45,000 a year. Getting there wasn’t easy in a field dominated by men.

“I was one of a few (women) trying to break in (to maritime jobs) . . . and they (crewmen) were raised to think this was a man’s industry,” she said. Sensing that she wasn’t accepted, she worked all the harder. “I was overeager . . . grabbing lines out of guys’ hands . . . doing everything . . . because I wanted to show them I could do it,” she said.

Thomas works in the sprawling Long Beach-Los Angeles port complex, the nation’s busiest. Last year 7,106 ships arrived here, putting the port far ahead of the combined New York-New Jersy harbor. It takes two dozen tugs working closely with 33 harbor pilots to handle that much traffic. The 48 skippers who work the tugs around the clock must handle everything from rusty tramp steamers to 950-foot-long supertankers.

The tugs usually work in pairs, one on the bow and the other on the stern, their skippers taking orders from the pilots. The tugs also shuttle oil barges to ships needing refueling.

The work is exacting and a miscalculation can lead to collisions, oil spills or smashed docks, skippers say. They rate Thomas as among the best boat handlers around.

“She’s good,” said Ken Graham, vice president of Jacobsen Pilot Service, which provides pilots in the Long Beach Harbor. “She’s earned the acceptance of all the pilots and tugboat skippers in the harbor.”

The praise was echoed by others, including her own four-man crew. Veteran deckhand Tiny Wright, 61, said, “She knows how to run a boat.” The Spartan’s cook, Dragi Okak added, “She’s just like one of the boys.”

“They don’t think of me as a woman anymore,” Thomas said. “Now they just think I’m the one that’s running the boat. That makes it a lot easier.”

It wasn’t always that way. Breaking into a job that was virtually closed to women a decade ago was difficult. The maritime academies had just begun accepting a few women and getting a command on any boat was unheard of, but a few jobs were opening for cooks and deckhands.

“To make it, a woman has had to work three times harder,” said Nancy Taylor Robson, whose autobiographical book, “Women in the Wheel House,” details her experiences on tugs.

Robson, who lives in Maryland and who is working on an oral history of women skippers, knows of only three other female tug captains, all on the East Coast.

“They all have worked their buns off in a hostile environment,” Robson said. However, she added, “There is very little bitterness . . . (and) they are careful not to make femaleness an issue. . . . They try hard to fit in.”

There was harassment, Robson said. “There were one or two (men on a crew) who didn’t think you should be there.” They were rude or made snide remarks or never spoke at all. Robson said only a few women stuck it out long enough to climb the ladder of command.

Today things have changed. This year, 10% of the graduates of the California Marine Academy in Vallejo will be women, and international companies like Crowley Maritime Corp.--owners of the Spartan--are making an effort to hire them as third mates on a variety of vessels.

“We’ve employed 24 women on everything from container ships to tug crews,” said Dick Simpson, Crowley vice president for marketing. Crowley operates 400 vessels of all kinds around the world and employs 4,000 people. Several women are mates or captains on other types of Crowley vessels, but Thomas is the only female tug captain, he said.

Tugboats occupy a special niche in the maritime world. These squat, heavy-duty vessels push or pull anything that goes to sea. Their crews stand six-hour watches around the clock, ready for any job order from the port captain.

Thomas came up the hard way, starting as a cook on a Crowley tug. That was in 1978 and she was 18, a girl from Oxnard who liked to surf and who sought adventure. She was working on fishing boats when she saw the Crowley job advertised.

“I really didn’t know how to cook or even plan a meal and I had no idea what a tug did, but it sounded like fun,” she said. “They took me because it was an equal opportunity thing. They didn’t have any women.”

Within a few months a deckhand’s job opened up and she came out of the galley. But a woman wasn’t accepted on deck at first. When asked about harassment, she shied away from the subject, saying only: “I had to earn their respect. . . . I just did my job and never said anything.”

Living on board in cramped quarters, working 20 days on, 10 days off, she learned the ropes, earning her able-body seaman’s card. Even then one of the skippers used to order her to bring his coffee up to the bridge and, she said, “He’d ask me to go out on a date.” She didn’t accept.

By 1984 she had her first mate’s license and was standing every other watch on the bridge, commanding the tug. When she took over, some crewmen resented taking orders from a woman and she had trouble establishing her authority.

Thomas was reluctant to explain how she solved the problem, other than to say she did not report the crewman. “I wanted to keep it on the boat. We went through some hard times, but it all worked out.”

Last year, she got the top berth on the Spartan, a boat she loves. “It’s so easy to handle, it’s like a toy. I can do anything with it.”

While most of Thomas’ work is in the harbor, she sometimes goes to sea to tow big barges used in salvage work. Fighting sea sickness and foul weather, she has worked open-sea tows from San Diego to San Francisco.

Now working 15 days on and 15 off, she leaves Los Angeles as soon as she’s off duty. “Los Angeles is like a jungle,” she said, explaining why she moved north to Bishop, east of the Sierra Nevada. There she and her boyfriend own a small carpet-cleaning business and spend their free time hiking, skiing or fishing in the mountains.

Thomas is ambitious to move up in the maritime world by becoming a harbor pilot. The pay is higher and she would again be challenging an all-male world. To get a pilot license she needs more tug experience and must pass a tough Coast Guard test.

“I’d have to study hard and then take that test. . . . They make you draw a chart of the whole harbor from memory, all of the channels, depths, the lights . . . everything. . . . It’s tough.”

And she is thinking about marriage and children.

“If I could get to be a pilot, I’d be home every night,” she said. “There is no way I’d want to be away from my kid for 15 days.”