Anna Shchetinina

Who was Anna Shchetinina?

Anna Ivanovna Shchetinina was a Soviet merchant marine sailor, said to be the world's first woman to serve as a captain of an ocean-going vessel.

Shchetinina was born at the Okeanskaya Station near Vladivostok in a family of a railway switchman. In 1925 she entered the navigation department of the Vladivostok Marine School. After graduation she worked with a shipping company in Kamchatka Peninsula, where she started as an Ordinary Seaman, and rose to a captain. At the age of 24 she received her navigator's license, and at 27 became the world's first female captain of an ocean-going ship. She attracted international attention on her first voyage as a captain, as a young woman in charge of MV Chavycha on its journey from Hamburg to the Russian Far East around Europe, Africa, and Asia.

On March 20, 1938, Shchetinina became the first chief manager of the Vladivostok fishing port. Later the same year, however, she went back to school, now at Leningrad Ship Transport Institute.