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Initially, Velasco told investigators he did not recognize the person he saw that morning and said whoever did it did not belong to his deck department, which Mays did.

That changed with USS Gerald R. Ford last month - all the deck department sailors assigned to the boatswain’s mates bridge watch teams were women.

“The deck department’s traditionally been mostly male.”

While one of the Iron 9, Seaman Adriyanna Jones, thinks the group’s achievement will influence how female sailors are seen for years to come, she believes they also showed something about the deck department.

“Sometimes deck department is overlooked as an essential asset, but recently there’s been a lot more acknowledgement towards how necessary we are to the ship.”