It’s Lieutenant Commander, please!

SHE’S a petite five-feet-two-inches 130-pounder, a lady who stands tall as the only female in the Caribbean to command a military vessel on the high seas.

Lieutenant Commander Antonette Wemyss-Gorman has put Jamaica on the map as the first country in the region to have a female commander in this capacity. Another first: in 1994 she was posted to the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) Coast Guard as the first sea-going female officer to serve the unit.

“It’s a nice thing to reach such a position,” she told all woman on board the HMJS SURREY, at a service commemorating the naming and commissioning of the vessel in Port Royal Tuesday.

Wemyss-Gorman has been commanding ship since 2002, a job she said is very rewarding, especially in search and rescue cases where people have been lost at sea.

She enlisted in the JDF as a potential officer in August 1992, then moved on to complete the international midshipman course at Britannia Royal Naval College in the UK. Between 1994 and 1997 she served as navigating officer to the HMJS PAUL BOGLE.

She was appointed commanding officer of the HMJS SURREY on December 1, 2006.

The HMJS SURREY, the newest addition to the fleet of Jamaican vessels, is the last of three county class vessels named for Jamaica’s counties. It is 140-feet long, and has a crew of 16. The vessel is being used in search and rescue, fisheries protection, maritime law enforcement, marine environmental pollution control, coastline surveillance, anti-smuggling and drug interdiction, aid to government agencies and maritime safety. Since arriving in Jamaica, it has patrolled over 5,000 nautical miles in Jamaican waters.

“SURREY has a 100 per cent record of search and rescue,” Wemyss-Gorman said proudly.

But at the time she joined the military, Wemyss-Gorman had no idea of the history that she would create.

In fact, it was after joining that she developed an interest in the Coast Guard.

“I really had no plans, it was after I joined that I became interested in going to sea. At the time no other female was in this unit,” she explained.

It was persons like JDF Chief of Staff Rear Admiral Hardley Lewin, who was then CEO of the Coast Guard, and who agreed to take her as the first female into that unit, and her First and Second ship captains, Lieutenant Commanders Henry Tomlinson and Richard Russell, who she credits with moulding her path.

Second in command on the HMJS SURREY, executive officer Steve Batchelor, said he admires Wemyss-Gorman’s achievements, and is touched by her leadership.

“She’s a wonderful person, a good leader,” he told all woman. “She motivates and encourages you to give your best all the time. I love working with her and am really proud to have her as my boss.”

Not only does this 34-year-old command ship on the seas, she embraces family life, and believes in getting as much time with her family as possible, even with the job demands.

“It is really difficult for families since you are sometimes away up to eight weeks,” Wemyss-Gorman, who has been married to husband Jonathan for nine years, and has a 19-month-old son, said. “Everyone gets as much time with his or her family as is physically possible. Duty comes with very high priority. Sometimes the family does suffer, but my husband is a reserve officer so he understands.”

And though it’s heart-wrenching for this new mother to be away from her son sometimes, “I grin and bear it. That was one of the reasons I waited so long to start a family.”

This country girl, a product of Knox College in Manchester, loves her job, a love that unselfishly extends to the crew she commands.

“I love to help in the moulding of their careers as persons did for me when I started,” she said.

The JDF in 1994 became the first defence force in the Caribbean to have women serving at sea on the frontline. Worldwide, there is a very small percentage of women serving at sea in the armed forces. There are four female officers serving at the JDF Coast Guard presently who hold appointments on board a ship.