Elder Dempster - and its seawomen's history

One of the things that Liverpool shipping company Elder Dempster inadvertently did for women in the mid-twentieth century was that it gave them the chance to go to West-Africa and back, for free, as stewardesses.

Now the project Homeward Bound: A Liverpool-West Africa Heritage at Liverpool John Moores University has gathered the stories of 20 Elder Dempster seafarers, including their oral testimony. http://www.ljmu.ac.uk/elderdempster

The launch party on Friday (11 Nov) was a really great opportunity to not only meet the lively, joke-cracking elders of the company nicknamed Elder Shysters. We also enjoyed a West African band + story-telling presentation there, and heard the story of what the research process found.

Heritage Lottery-funded, this project was led by two key people Professor Nick White and Dr Ailbhe McDaid(pictured).

PROUD TO BE PART OF IT
I'm really pleased to have been involved in this project in several ways. I hope other shipping companies will follow suit while its veteran seafarers are still with us.

May Quinn, my great aunt, was one of the stewardesses (see picture of her against some of the scraps of fabric she worked with as a dressmaker after her retirement, in the 1950s). She sailed on the Apapa, which was where she met the steward she would marry, Bill Sullivan.

NOT ALOFT, BUT DUSTING THEIR WAY ROUND THE WORLD
It's because of May, really, that I came to be an historian of women's maritime pasts.

After her death I realised that stewardessing was the way adventurous working-class women managed to see the world for free. They dusted their way round it.

But no-one seemed to have written anything about these dynamic women, then. Someone should, I thought. Then I realised that person would have to be me. And so in the 1980s I started interviewing veteran stewardesses. And I went on, and wider...

You can read the stories of May, and of Julia Andrews (whose descendents I interviewed way back) via the link above.
To read about Liverpool JMU's version of the launch event see:
https://www.ljmu.ac.uk/about-us/news/future-proofing-history#Find

But here today are pictures of the women, some of which will be eventually posted on Homeward Bound's website. Julia is pictured here with passengers in the late 1920s.

Her friend, another ED stewardess, name unknown, walks with a West African woven shopping basket.
Objects change countries. Seafarers were important transmitters of culture knowledge - of which souvenir objects are a material symbol.

The basket lid to the side of her photo is from my old and similar sewing basket. It may indicate the colours of her original basket: this material evidence that she had indeed ventured far away to the country that was called the White Man's Grave - and come back.

Elder Dempster - and its seawomen's history

One of the things that Liverpool shipping company Elder Dempster inadvertently did for women in the mid-twentieth century was that it gave them the chance to go to West-Africa and back, for free, as stewardesses.

Now the project Homeward Bound: A Liverpool-West Africa Heritage at Liverpool John Moores University has gathered the stories of 20 Elder Dempster seafarers, including their oral testimony.

The launch party on Friday (11 Nov) was a really great opportunity to not only meet the lively, joke-cracking elders of the company nicknamed Elder Shysters. We also enjoyed a West African band + story-telling presentation there, and heard the story of what the research process found.

Heritage Lottery-funded, this project was led by two key people Professor Nick White and Dr Ailbhe McDaid (pictured). (Sorry, I can't find a picture of Nick)
.

PROUD TO BE PART OF IT
I'm really pleased to have been involved in this project in several ways. I hope other shipping companies will follow suit while its veteran seafarers are still with us.


May Quinn, my great aunt, was one of the stewardesses (see picture of her against some of the scraps of fabric she worked with as a dressmaker after her retirement, in the 1950s). She sailed on the Apapa, which was where she met the steward she would marry, Bill Sullivan.

NOT ALOFT, BUT DUSTING THEIR WAY ROUND THE WORLD
It's because of May, really, that I came to be an historian of women's maritime pasts.

After her death I realised that stewardessing was the way adventurous working-class women managed to see the world for free. They dusted their way round it.

But no-one seemed to have written anything about these dynamic women, then. Someone should, I thought. Then I realised that person would have to be me. And so in the 1980s I started interviewing veteran stewardesses. And I went on, and wider...

You can read the stories of May, and of Julia Andrews (whose descendents I interviewed way back) via this link with Liverpool JMU.
https://www.ljmu.ac.uk/about-us/news/future-proofing-history#Find

But here today are pictures of the women, some of which will be eventually posted on Homeward Bound's website. Julia is pictured here with passengers in the late 1920s.

Her friend, another ED stewardess, name unknown, walks with a West African woven shopping basket.
Objects change countries. Seafarers were important transmitters of culture knowledge - of which souvenir objects are a material symbol.

The basket lid to the side of her photo is from my old and similar sewing basket. It may indicate the colours of her original basket: this material evidence that she had indeed ventured far away to the country that was called the White Man's Grave - and come back.

'Lesbian ship' US navy to set off on Friday

NASA astronaut Sally Ride in the interior of the Challenger space shuttle, 1984. Photo by Space Frontiers/Getty Images)

On Friday a ship named after a pioneering Dr Sally Ride (1951-2012), the first US woman astronaut, will set forth. Naming the ship after her is in the same tradition as naming a vessel after civil rights leader Harvey Milk, earlier this year. Will it be as controversial?

And the sailing forth of the R/V Sally Ride raises the question of who would we in the UK choose? So many LGBTQI pioneers would be appalled at being associated with the military. I can't ever see there being an HMS Peter Tatchell or HMS Sue Sanders. What about you?

And anyway UK naval ships are named after previous UK naval ships, as well referring to concepts such as Illustrious, Invincible. Yes, they're about spin, but it's military-related spin. So I wonder if there ever could one called the Justice, the Diversity, the Out& Proud.

READ MORE ABOUT IT
The text below is a doctored lift from this article, US Navy Names Another Ship After An LGBT Pioneer, by Cody Gohl 11/3/2016: http://www.newnownext.com/us-navy-sally-ride-ship/11/2016/ I've just added some pictures.

The United States Navy will commission a ship Friday named for Sally Ride, the late lesbian astronaut who in 1983 became the first American woman in space on the STS-7 mission.

Ride, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2012, was not publicly out during her lifetime, but had been in a relationship with Tam O’Shaughnessy for over two decades.

At the Sally Ride Research Vessel christening in Annacortes, WA were (left to right) Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla; Tam O’Shaughnessy, co-founder and current CEO of Sally Ride Science; Margaret Leinen, Vice Chancellor for Marine Sciences; and Walter Munk, renowned Scripps Insitution of Oceaongraphy scientist.

“I think she’d be thrilled,” O’Shaughnessy told The San Diego Union-Tribune, regarding the R/V Sally Ride. “There are so many connections — Scripps and being female and having the first academic research vessel being named after a woman. That’s just keeping with what she was all about her whole life.”

“She probably would want to sign up for an expedition,” she added.

SEE THE VID:

https://youtu.be/YgZ_LLnWsPU?list=PLHy4NEP75tDm2n88TdyvPzStNZ3aCAzQC

The R/V Sally Ride (pictured here under construction) is a new vessel classified as an AGOR ship, or one that will be used for auxiliary general oceanographic research. These types of ships are generally named after trailblazing explorers—this marks the first time one has been named after a woman.

Owned by the Navy but operated by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the vessel will gather research on the planet’s oceans in order to combat ecological decay. It will set off Friday for its first voyage to investigate plate tectonics.

Sally Ride meeting President Obama. She was a member of the President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology. Photo credit: Whitehouse.gov