Hugh Mulzac

Who is Hugh Mulzac?

Hugh Mulzac was a mariner born on Union Island in the Grenadines who became the first African American to hold a master's license in the United States Merchant Marine. He went to sea as a teenager, studied navigation, and earned his officer's credentials in the early twentieth century despite the severe racial discrimination of the American shipping industry, which for decades refused to give him command of a vessel even after he qualified. He worked for years as a ship's steward and mate while repeatedly being passed over for captaincy because of his race. During the Second World War, as the United States Merchant Marine faced urgent wartime demand for experienced officers, Mulzac was finally given command of the SS Booker T. Washington in 1942, the first Liberty ship named for an African American and a vessel that sailed with one of the first racially integrated crews in American maritime history. He completed more than twenty transatlantic voyages during the war and later recounted his experiences in his autobiography, A Star to Steer By. He is remembered as a pioneering figure in both Caribbean and African American maritime history.

Sources: Hugh Mulzac, A Star to Steer By (autobiography, 1963) · U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command, records on the SS Booker T. Washington · National Maritime Historical Society, profile of Hugh Mulzac