Myrtle Kool, always called Molly, was born on Feb. 23, 1916, in Alma, New Brunswick, a small fishing village on the Bay of Fundy. She abhorred the name Myrtle and legally changed it to Molly in the 1940s, a friend, Jonni-Anne Carlisle, said in a telephone interview on Monday.  The sea was in Ms. Kool’s blood. Her father, Paul Kool, was a Dutch sailor who settled in New Brunswick, where he captained the Jean K, named for his eldest daughter. The second of five children, Molly spent much of her childhood aboard the scow, which took cargo from ships anchored in deep water to ports along the bay.  Hoping to become her father’s first mate, Ms. Kool applied to the Merchant Marine School in St. John, New Brunswick. She was turned down but persevered, earning a mate’s certificate there in 1937. Two years later, at the Merchant Marine Institute in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, she earned a coastal master’s certificate, entitling her to work as a captain in coastal waters. Her father handed over the Jean K, which she captained for the next five years.  Ms. Kool was nothing if not pragmatic. On one widely reported occasion, the Jean K collided with another ship in a dense fog and sent her hurtling overboard, where she risked being sucked under by the ship’s propeller. A piece of timber floated by and she grabbed it, as the ship’s passengers hurled life preservers down at her.  “I’m already floating,” Ms. Kool hollered up at them. “Stop throwing useless stuff at me and send a boat!”  In 1944, a gas explosion and fire destroyed much of the Jean K. Ms. Kool planned to return to the water once it was rebuilt, but that year she married Ray Blaisdell, moved with him to Maine and found she enjoyed living on land. She worked for many years selling Singer sewing machines.  Mr. Blaisdell died in the early 1960s. In the mid-’60s, Ms. Kool married John Carney and was known in private life as Molly Kool Carney.  Mr. Carney died before her. A sister, Martha Miller, is Ms. Kool’s only immediate survivor.  Led by Mr. Kelly, the president of the Fundy Beautification and Historical Society, an effort is currently under way to preserve Ms. Kool’s childhood home, a tiny 19th-century cottage badly in need of repair, and move it to Fundy National Park, near Alma.  Though Ms. Kool received many tributes over the years, perhaps the best summation of what she achieved came in her own words. In 1939, after she passed the three long written tests and the arduous harbor exam needed to get her master’s certificate, she wired her family back in Alma.  “You can call me captain from now on,” the telegram said.  A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A25 of the New York edition with the headline: Molly Kool, 93, a Pioneer Of the Coastal Waters, Dies. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
In the 1930s and ’40s, Ms. Kool plied the lashing waters of the Bay of Fundy as the first woman in North America to be a licensed ship’s captain.