Ocean loving teen blazes a path for women engineers by swapping the classroom for an apprenticeship building and refitting superyachts

An ocean-loving teenager is blazing a path for women engineers by swapping the classroom for an apprenticeship building and refitting superyachts.

Millie Rogers, 17, was so certain of her future ambitions that just a month after finishing her GCSEs in May 2021, she sacrificed the long summer break her friends were taking before sixth form to join global yacht specialists Pendennis as a general engineering apprentice.

She added: “Like any new job, the early days were daunting – especially being surrounded by men – but the team couldn’t have been more welcoming.

“Some girls don’t have the confidence to try something like this and that can hold them back.  I’d love to encourage other women to get involved.”

She said: “I was always a confident swimmer and swam with a club for years before I became part of our lifesaving club at around the age of seven.

“Every summer, we would be down the beach mucking about in the water.

“We often went out in a dinghy, which was really good  fun and a family friend had a racing catamaran which we went out on a few times. That was amazing.”

While Millie enjoyed design and technology and art at school, she always knew she wanted more.

She said: “I worked really hard and did enjoy school, but I was generally very anxious at that time for no reason really.

For years, Millie dreamed of one day becoming an architect, as she was fascinated by the creative process and inspired by the adventurous builds on the Channel 4 home improvement show, Grand Designs.

But, as she approached her GCSEs, she realised she wanted to get away from studying in a classroom and find a more vocational next step.

Millie added: “I loved school and enjoyed being arty, but I had spent so long doing that, I wanted something new and different next.”

When Pendennis came into Millie’s school to talk through the opportunities available, she knew immediately that she wanted to get involved.

Millie added:  “My grandad was always doing bits, too, so they would show me how to do things and ask for my opinion.

“I was quite nervous to start with when I began the apprenticeship, but I was mainly excited about doing something completely new.”

As well as studying engineering, electrical skills and joinery on three days a week at college, Millie has been working on a 65 metre motor yacht, assisting supervisors to change propeller shafts, remove heating systems and replacing bearings.

She said: “On my second day, we were straight into the cabin to work.

“I had never done anything like this before, but immediately got stuck in with the cable and lighting.

Millie added: “Each is beautiful in its own way and none of them are the same.

“Two weeks in I was putting in all the systems for a yacht. Then, next, I was ripping them from an older yacht.”

“It was really interesting watching the yacht being loaded with weights to see how it would balance,” she said.

“I didn’t even know it was something they did and it was really cool seeing how they used tonnes of weights to measure how much the boat was moving.

Approaching the end of her first year, Millie feels like she has come on leaps and bounds and is excited for the future.

She said: “You start a job and it feels like an absolute mess and you have  a little panic, but then you work it out and complete it and it feels amazing.

When Millie announced to her friends that she was going to become a superyacht engineer, they could not believe it.

She said: “They were quite shocked when I told them I was going into this career, but also super happy for me.

She added: “I was at a festival a few months ago and an older lady came up to me and my friend and asked what we did and she was really shocked and impressed when I told her, which was nice.

“Initially, I didn’t think too much about the fact that I was part of the new generation of women doing this, but now it’s really important to me. ”

And while she hones her engineering skills,  she is keen to encourage other girls to follow her into an engineering career.

She said: “Everyone has always been so welcoming and amazing, but there should definitely be more women getting involved in this.

“So often, girls don’t consider jobs like this or feel too shy to say they do and it would be great to change that.

“I can’t believe I have already done my first year, but I am so excited for the next few years and the challenges they will bring.”