Word: shipping
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...that I really didn't understand," she says. "I wasn't doing what I had trained for--navigating, driving boats, seamanship and engineering." She hitched a ride on a Navy support vessel touring the region. "They had me stand watch, do a man-overboard drill, let me drive the ship," she says. "I went, 'Wow, this is neat.' I remember thinking, 'Yes, this is what I want...
Ultimately the Navy relented and found her an open slot in the surface school. After graduating, McGrath flourished aboard the Navy's fleet of support vessels. She served on four different ships from 1983 to 1994, including an 18-month stint as a commander of a salvage ship. Onshore she earned a master's degree in education from Stanford. Still, by the early 1990s she was beginning to be worried that her career had run aground. "I'm a dinosaur," she remembers thinking, "because the combatant ships aren't open to women." That changed in 1993, when Congress made warships...
...ship's commander is like the mayor of a small town. McGrath's eight-level domain ranges from the officers' staterooms above to the sailors' berthing areas to the laundry down below. When the going gets tough--which it often did on a recent training voyage in the Pacific--McGrath buzzes up and down the Jarrett's ladders like a streamlined torpedo. She barks orders on the bridge, offers praise to sailors in the lower decks and sometimes snatches a few minutes alone in her stateroom to practice Haydn's Military Symphony on the violin. Her days often begin before...
McGrath doesn't plant herself in the captain's chair. She roams the bridge, chatting up her crew, her arms crossed or on her hips. And she has struck a deal with her crew. They can drive the ship--something not all commanders permit--as long as they keep her fully informed about what's happening. McGrath's job requires her to discipline a handful of sailors every month for infractions ranging from unauthorized absences to drug use. She resists the temptation to prove that she can be just as tough as a male commander...
...smallest warships in the Navy fleet, but it packs a wallop. It carries 1,100-lb. Standard missiles, which are capable of blasting enemy aircraft out of the sky 20 miles away. And its Harpoon missiles, weighing nearly 1,400 lbs., can sink an enemy ship more than 60 miles away. The Jarrett has a pair of SH-60 Seahawk helicopters on its fantail, poised for search and rescue, antisubmarine warfare, supply runs and special operations. The ship also boasts a 3-in. gun, torpedoes and antiaircraft weapons...