Kate McCue went on her first cruise at age 12. Now she's in charge of a ship traveling between the Eastern U.S. and the Caribbean.
"My dad said, 'You can do anything you want in the world, including drive the thing.' My goal since then was to become a captain," she says.
Twenty-five years later, McCue, 37, has realized her dream. In July, she became the first American female captain of a megaton cruise ship. She's now midway through her first voyage aboard Celebrity Summit, traveling between the Eastern U.S. and the Caribbean.
McCue reveals what it's like to drive a floating hotel, how her 12-week stints at sea help her marriage, and why the middle of the ocean with nothing around is her happy place.
I grew up in San Francisco, and I began my career as a cadet at California Maritime Academy. It's part of the Cal State University system. Business administration was my major. Our maritime training included things like celestial navigation, advanced firefighting classes, medical first aid, and hands-on practice maneuvering ships.
Every summer the cadets [what undergrads are called at CMA] go on a training cruise to get hands-on experience for going to sea. This enabled me to go to places like Easter Island, Robinson Crusoe Island, Palmyra [in the Northern Pacific], and all over the South Pacific. These are places that most people will not see in their lifetimes. I started to get that wanderlust passion going on.
I also did an internship with Chiquita on cargo ships. We were bringing bananas from Ecuador to Long Beach, California. My job was to stand watch on the bridge and assist with cargo operations — whether it was loading the bananas, killing those giant spiders that come out of the bananas, ensuring temperatures were maintained in the cargo hold, or unloading bananas. Working on the cargo ships really solidified my desire to work on cruise ships. Instead of killing spiders, you can eat at the best restaurants, see shows that are just as good as we have in Vegas [where McCue now lives when on land], and go on amazing shore excursions, like looking for bears in Alaska, riding a hot air balloon over Tuscany, or driving a Ferrari down the Amalfi Coast. Everyone on the crew has time to explore and enjoy every port. We're always on call, but no one works 24 hours a day.
Upon graduation in 2000, I earned my third mate license, which meant that I could sail anything from a tugboat to the world's largest super tanker. I also got a BA in business administration, which comes in really handy for a captain, who is theoretically the CEO of the ship.
I had visited Maui on one of the training ships [during college], and I just fell in love. When I first graduated, I packed up all my stuff and moved to Maui, staying with my cousins. We all worked on the same catamaran that took people out to the crater Molokini. We were the deck hands, lifeguards, surf instructors, bartenders, and just general boat people. After about six months of sleeping on the couch, I thought, I have to get a real job where I could move up.
I went back to San Francisco, then I ended up in L.A. getting a job at Maersk Sealand as a logistics assistant manager. It's a shipping company that would take containers off the ships, put them on trains or trucks, and send them out across the states. I did that for about a year and a half. I was itching to get back to sea. I applied to every cruise company I could find. It took about nine months, and in the end, I was just about to send in my résumé for a bartender on a ship because I was so desperate to get my foot in the door.
I finally got a job with Disney Cruise Lines as a third mate. Basically, you have first officers who stand eight-hour watches on the bridge. I was assisting the [first] officer on the watch. I was also helping them in their extra duties — firefighting, life saving, navigation, updating charts, and maintaining radio equipment.
I was actively looking for positions to move up. At the time, Disney only had two ships and promotions were very hard to come by. I worked with Disney for about a year and a half before a position opened up at Royal Caribbean in 2003. I started as second officer. It was similar to third officer, assisting the first officer with the watch. Then I was promoted to first officer, so I was standing my own watch on the bridge. Then I moved up to chief officer safety. I did all the training for the crew and was in charge of safety on board. Then I was promoted to staff captain, which is second-in-command and deputy to the captain.
I received my promotion to captain from Lisa Lutoff-Perlo, the first female president and CEO of Celebrity Cruises [which is part of Royal Caribbean], which is extra special. She wrote me an amazing letter, which I got to give to my dad on Father's Day. He started reading it out loud, word by word, and about halfway through, he got real quiet. He looked at me, then at the letter, then back at me. He said, "Captain?" Then the waterworks just, whoa. It was pretty awesome.
I've been telling people that this is what I wanted for so long. I never had that sense of being treated differently because I'm a woman. I was always supported by my [all-male] captains. They were always pushing me to my goal. I was floored by the media and the attention that [becoming the first American woman to become captain] brought on.
As captain, you're in charge of the deck, crew, the technical aspects of the ship, as well as the hotel. I'm also in charge of the safety of the crew and passengers. I oversee it all. I'm on the bridge for all arrivals and departures. I'm on call 24/7. Any time the bridge team needs support — whether there are additional ships in traffic or we're close to land, or the weather changes — they call me.
In the evenings, there are different functions I get to attend. There's a reception for repeat guests. I have a captain's reception I host for the ship, which they do before the shows and the theater. Usually I'm in bed at a pretty decent time. Then I'll get up and be on the bridge and maneuver into port. Once we're at port, there are meetings with the executive committee or inspections around the ship. Routine is not a part of the job. Every day, we're in a different place and conditions are never the same.
