Maiden Voyages

by Siân Evans

  Emma May was ‘let go’ from another ship because she became too friendly with the chief officer. ‘It was all that gold braid,’ she explained in mitigation. On arrival in Antwerp, as the chief officer’s outraged wife stormed up the main gangway to settle the matter, woman to woman, Emma May nipped down the aft gangway with her suitcase, straight into a waiting taxi and headed for Brussels to see her sons. Although usually adept at avoiding trouble, Emma May would occasionally fall victim to sob stories and loan some handsome scoundrel her hard-earned money, never to see him again. As Edith recalled:

  She would be the confidante of a duchess, or a friend to a steward or stoker … she had the common touch … she was one of the ship’s most valued and respected senior stewardesses. I have rarely met a woman with more ‘guts’ than she had, and you do meet women of great courage when you go to sea. We started a spontaneous friendship on that voyage of the old Zeeland in 1926 – it lasted till 1973, when she died, aged 81.7

  Friendships made with other seafarers were intense, based on mutual trust and common experiences, but Edith was aware that it was difficult to sustain any relationship with land-based friends and family when constantly travelling. Some of her regular passengers she might see again on other voyages, but she was frustrated that she never knew what happened to her thousands of migrant charges, and what lives they made for themselves in the New World after she had waved them off.

  As for romance, shore-based boyfriends would soon tire of only seeing her once every thirty days, and female crew were barred from fraternising with the officers on board. Edith had a land-based admirer, a Polish Jew who worked in the company’s Antwerp office. He was offered a round trip to New York, and he accepted because he was planning to see Edith on board the Zeeland on the outward journey. Unfortunately, he was confined to his cabin with rampant seasickness, which lasted from the west coast of Ireland till they reached Nantucket. It was evident that their lives were not compatible, though, as Edith fondly recalled he had a gentle old-world courtesy, and was the only man who ever called her ‘a peach’.

  One aspect of the seafaring life that especially appealed to the more adventurous women was the opportunity to explore foreign cities. After recovering from the voyage and putting up their tired and aching ‘Cunard feet’, they would venture down the gangway to see a show, or go on a shopping spree. Seafaring women who ate in passenger dining rooms, such as Edith and Hilda James, had to buy their own evening dresses, shoes and accessories, as well as uniforms. Edith loved exploring the many cities where they berthed, and was as fascinated by the low life as the high life to be found on shore. In Liverpool she noted the younger male crew members often headed for the city’s pubs and dance halls, hell-bent on fun. Senior officers gravely warned the younger crewmen ‘to do no more than wave at the “good time” girls on Lime Street’, advice that was often ignored.

  In Antwerp Edith frequented the opera, but she also liked to visit seamen’s bars, always accompanied by some of her shipmates. Most of her time ashore was spent away from the beer and brothel brigade, as she was more friendly with passengers than the roistering crew. However, she was familiar with the red-light district of Antwerp, near the station, which sailors called Ruination Street in a variety of languages. Seated outside the doors, elderly women plied their knitting needles – each one was a madam, touting for business. Edith would pass the time of day with them and they were cordial, knowing she was the conductress, the madamica, from one of the big ships.

  New York seemed remarkable to Edith, as it did to many foreign seafarers. It was so different from the dingy hinterland of most British ports in the late 1920s. The streets were brilliantly lit, and lined with giant, colourful advertising hoardings; cinemas and dance halls were emblazoned with lights; art deco skyscrapers loomed over canyons of bustling cabs and automobiles. There was the lure of Hollywood movies, the theatres and music halls of Broadway, the glossiness of the magazines, the hum of commerce, the fashions to be seen on the crowded sidewalks. It was all humming with a sense of industry and optimism, jazz and vibrancy.

  Edith frequented speakeasies, informal and unlicensed drinking clubs, and she would occasionally go dancing at Roseland with her fellow shipmate George. On one occasion Edith was late meeting him, and he guessed correctly that she had joined the throngs of women queuing to see the mortal remains of film star Rudolph Valentino. Her motive was curiosity; Valentino was possibly the most famous film star in the world and he had died suddenly in the Polyclinic Hospital in New York on 23 August 1926. She recalled: ‘The movie idol looked shrunken, yellow, wizened … Valentino was 31 when he died, and he looked like any Italian waiter.’8 She found the lavish grief surrounding his death incomprehensible, but then she maintained no illusions about the man, rather than the matinée idol. Valentino had been a passenger on one of Edith’s ships, the Lapland, and when they docked at Halifax, he refused to get out of bed to have his papers checked by Canadian immigration authorities as he was an American citizen. Her succinct epitaph was: ‘Valentino thought he was immune. He was not.’

  Edith often looked after unaccompanied young travellers, and teenagers could be a particular trial. One thirteen-year-old, who was returning to her boarding school in Britain, was entrusted to her care. She was pretty and a good dancer, and Edith as her chaperone had to deter a couple of prowling male passengers. Nevertheless, Edith became suspicious late one evening – she went to the girl’s cabin after midnight and found it empty. Two hours later the teenager returned to find Edith waiting for her. She had attended a bachelor’s drinks party in his cabin. The man had told the girl to pretend to retire for the night, then to creep along to his cabin when the coast was clear. Fortunately, she hadn’t come to any harm, but Edith tackled the ‘boyfriend’, threatening to tell the captain. The Lothario apologised profusely, muttered something about having young sisters of his own, and kept his distance thereafter.

  Edith was occasionally surprised at the behaviour of female passengers when at sea and off the leash, especially when drink was involved. Alcohol inevitably loosened the inhibitions afloat, and during the era of Prohibition in the USA one of the main attractions of travelling on foreign ships was the alcohol freely available once out at sea. One particularly wild sixteen-year-old girl who was travelling alone on the French Line experimented unwisely with the many cocktails available in the bar, and found herself the next day with a cracking hangover and engaged to be married to a Gallic barman whose divorce was pending. Her parents were outraged, and summoned her back to the States in disgrace on Red Star Line, so she was entrusted to Edith’s care. She apparently required constant monitoring, and it was a long and acrimonious voyage for the girl, the stewardess and Edith.

  By the late 1920s, ‘conductress’ was not the only role for women seeking sea-going careers beyond the nurturing, caring roles traditionally deemed appropriate for the fairer sex. The boom in transatlantic travel enabled women to take on new roles afloat. An ability to type, coupled with an outgoing personality and organisational abilities, suited women to be stenographers on ocean liners, based in the chief purser’s office, where administrative competence was vital.

  Stenographers were increasingly employed as a matter of course on many ocean liners, so that passengers could avail themselves of secretarial and administrative assistance while travelling. Edith Sowerbutts credited Canadian Pacific Lines’ lady supervisor, Mrs Andrews, with the active recruitment of women stenographers for that company’s pursers’ offices in 1925. In fact Cunard had been an early pioneer in this field, rather daringly employing a woman stenographer on the Mauretania before the Great War, a Miss M. Casey, whose experience subsequently secured her a responsible position working for the Canadian government in Saskatchewan. Similarly, a photograph from 1920 of Chief Purser Spedding on the Aquitania shows him seated on deck with his eight male staff. Sitting alongside him is Miss G. Matthews, a young stenographer, wearing a white uniform and stockings, and a cheery smile.9 For a woman with a porta
ble typewriter and an outgoing personality, working on one of the Atlantic Ferryboats could be a decent way of making a living. By the early 1930s, Cunard actively marketed the on-board skills of its lady stenographers to business travellers, so that they could arrange ad hoc administrative and secretarial support throughout the voyage.

  Ships certainly provided floating workplaces for women whose skills were transferable from land. But by the late 1920s there were also some women seeking to take on seafaring roles previously exclusive to men. Although such women were rare – and it is significant that they usually succeeded because they came from privileged and influential backgrounds – they captured the public’s imagination and were a frequent source of interest to the press and media.

  Victoria Drummond was Britain’s first female seagoing marine engineer. She was well-connected, and had her family’s backing to pursue her ambitions. The daughter of Captain and the Hon. Mrs Drummond of Angus in Scotland, she was the granddaughter of the First Lord Amherst of Hackney, and a goddaughter of Queen Victoria. Victoria was the first woman in Britain to serve a full apprenticeship, undergoing five years’ training at the Caledonian Shipbuilding and Engineering Company in Dundee, under the same conditions as those for boy apprentices, before passing her works test as a journeyman engineer. In 1922 she became the first woman to be admitted to the Institute of Marine Engineers. Despite her commitment, she was failed thirty-one times by the British Board of Trade when sitting her chief engineer exams. Undaunted, she entered the exams run by the Panamanian authorities, as their examiners marked the papers without knowing the candidates’ gender and status. This time Victoria passed straight away; she served her apprenticeship and qualified as a ship’s engineer in 1924.

  Victoria made many long-distance return voyages travelling to South America, Australia and the Far East and, in 1926, she obtained her second engineer’s certificate. She was awarded the Lloyd’s Bravery Medal and an MBE for heroic actions during the Second World War when her ship the Bonita was bombed. Her successful career at sea lasted into the 1950s, despite encountering prejudice and sex discrimination.

  Another well-connected young woman sought to take on a maritime career previously exclusive to men. The Hon. Elsie MacKay was a thoroughly modern figure, a marine engineer and a qualified pilot. She was the third daughter of Lord Inchcape, the chairman of the steamship line P&O. ‘She is very good-looking and considered one of the best-dressed women and dancers in London society … one of the most remarkable women of the younger generation, although her modesty has prevented the public from hearing much of her exploits,’ enthused the Manchester Guardian.10

  After an early career as a film actress, under the name of Poppy Wyndham, Elsie was appointed to oversee the interior design of twelve of P&O’s liners. The vessels were equipped with modern conveniences, such as passenger lifts, electric radiators and air ventilation, but Elsie emphasised the traditional in her interpretation of historic interiors. The Viceroy of India was launched in 1929 and in its first-class smoking room Elsie installed oak panelling and a vast fireplace topped with a royal coat of arms, flanked by stained-glass escutcheons in leaded windows, and wrought-iron gates. Apparently, she had drawn on accounts of James I’s palace at Bromley-by-Bow, borrowing perhaps from an ironic reference to that monarch’s interest in transatlantic travel, coupled with his famous hatred of tobacco. Elsie favoured a variety of historical styles: the music room and the dining room evoked the eighteenth century, while the swimming pool with its classical columns and reliefs recalled the public baths in the recently excavated Italian city of Pompeii.

  There was renewed press interest in the possibility of women seafarers taking on the roles of male crew, a consistently newsworthy theme. ‘Woman at the Helm’ in the Westminster Gazette11 conveyed the revolutionary news that when the Soviet ship Tovarisch left Port Talbot docks the previous day, the female third mate, Comrade Diatchenki, was at the helm. Communist Russia was certainly pioneering in this respect: within eighteen months an official communication from Moscow announced that women were to be appointed officers on ships of their mercantile marine. One woman was named as a naval architect in state shipbuilding yards; another was appointed to be captain of a steamer, and was the first woman to command a ship of the Black Sea fleet.12

  In Britain, as early as 1925, in an article entitled ‘Women Sailors’, the Daily Chronicle reported that a ‘woman skipper’ had taken her own motor cargo boat down the Thames to the Isle of Wight, and that several foreign ocean-going freighters were known to be commanded by women. In addition, Norway’s merchant navy was known to employ women as on-board wireless operators. It was acknowledged that ‘Little ships seem to have provided most jobs for women up till now. Scores of Thames barges carry the skipper’s wife, a person who is up to any emergency, and as good as most men in the matter of steering, cooking and washing.’ The feature condemned the superstition, still retained by some seamen, that women on board brought bad luck to a ship. It also made the salient point that: ‘There are plenty of women air pilots, and if the female brain is quick enough to carry out that task successfully, it can navigate a ship with ease, even in time of danger.’13

  There was much public debate in the 1920s and 1930s about women training to be pilots. Flying as a means of travel was seen as progressive and daring, and women pilots as modern and chic. As early as July 1919, Cunard Line reported approvingly on Mrs Leon Errol, wife of the well-known actor, who had created a new record by flying in an Avro aircraft from Hounslow Aerodrome to Southampton in order to embark on the Aquitania, as she had missed the boat train. Apparently the ship’s passengers gave her an enthusiastic reception when she joined them on board.

  The proven ability of women to qualify as private pilots inevitably informed the more trenchant views about whether women could cope with technical jobs at sea. The Evening Standard advocated that women should learn to fly, claiming that they were ‘better pupils than men … the cost is only about £20 all told to become a qualified pilot, and that in comparison with other professional trainings is extremely moderate and short, besides being one of the most enjoyable and health-giving careers which any man or woman can take up.’14 Women who were qualified pilots were also fêted by the press: Miss Lilian Dawson, a fourteen-year-old American girl who sailed to Liverpool on the White Star liner Megantic, claimed to be the youngest qualified air pilot in the world. She was a member of the prestigious Pittsburgh Aero Club, alongside the international aviator Charles Lindbergh, and Lilian had obtained her pilot’s certificate the previous year. However, by law she was not yet allowed to carry passengers in her plane; as the teenage prodigy remarked, in America a girl was not even allowed a driving licence until she was eighteen.15

  Flight as a means of passenger transport was already starting to supplant combined train and sea travel across the landmasses of Europe, where ‘short hops’ between cities were now possible. In 1927 White Star Magazine reported on a journey by air from Croydon to Basle and Zurich in one of the big aeroplanes, a twin-engined Handley Page, belonging to Imperial Airways. The writer was impressed by the convenience of being able to get from London to Switzerland within a single day. However, while aeroplanes were gradually becoming a viable means of conveying passengers and their luggage short distances across continental Europe, they could not yet cover the huge expanses of the Atlantic, as it was not possible for them to carry enough fuel for the distance. And while enterprising women might be able to qualify as private pilots, and fly solo across deserts and oceans in small planes, there were still issues about employing women on ships for roles traditionally occupied by men. Various excuses were used; some shipping companies claimed it was not possible to add ‘extra facilities’ (meaning separate bathrooms) for female technicians, even though they were already provided for those women employed in traditional ‘caring’ roles such as stewardesses and nurses.

  There were other roles afloat that women coveted, but which were denied them. Semaphore and Morse code wer
e taught in the British Girl Guides from 1910, and there was considerable public interest in the relatively new science of telegraphy and wireless operations. Some women sought training as radio officers and were occasionally employed at coastal stations. However, they were not allowed on board British merchant ships, even during the Great War. Although thirty-eight women had passed their radio examinations by October 1917, it was felt they might ‘go to pieces’ in a crisis.

  In 1923 Jessie Kenney, an associate of Emmeline Pankhurst, qualified as a radio officer, having trained at the Rhyl Wireless College. She could not overcome opposition from the Marconi Company, the Board of Trade, or the shipowners to gain work as a radio officer afloat, so she signed on with a shipping company to work as a stewardess, in the hope that she might have the opportunity somehow to prove her skills as a wireless operator once at sea. She found there was no possibility of changing roles, and later recalled that she would often glance wistfully up at the wireless cabin where, in peace and quiet, she could have used the skills she had gained and, in her spare time, continued to study her science in relative peace.

  Ironically, competency and increased responsibility were considered in some quarters to be desirable attributes in women afloat in this era. While one transatlantic yachtsman, the maverick Captain Thomas Drake, predicted that ‘The day will come when women will command vessels manned by women,’16 his view remained unorthodox. But some women already working at sea were expanding their knowledge and their skills, in order to become more active crew members. The Board of Trade required every lifeboat or life raft on a liner accommodating forty-one or fewer passengers to have at least two crew members aboard who were qualified to launch it successfully. The awful fate of those aboard the Titanic, many of whom perished because of the failure to fill and successfully launch so many of its lifeboats, was still fresh in many people’s minds, particularly professional seafarers. In 1929 the training necessary to take charge of a lifeboat was opened to women for the first time. Blanche Tucker was employed as the chief cashier in the French restaurant on board the Majestic. She became the first woman to obtain the Board of Trade Lifeboat Certificate. To qualify, as well as proving her theoretical knowledge she undertook a demanding practical examination. Blanche had to prove she could supervise the ‘turning out’, lowering, handling, sailing and pulling away of a ship’s lifeboat containing ten crew members under her command, a considerable display of skill and strength. She recalled: