Flying Angel Xmas cheer: trans at Vindi, 1951.

Researching gender and the sea - at the moment through Mission to Seafarers archives - I keep finding the ways that this Protestant charity inadvertently helped people struggling with their gender and sexual idenity.  

So here's s heartwarming story of accidental queer support, one Christmas. It's complete with refreshments and kind ladies in jolly paper hats, but sadly not the usual little gifts that staff presented to residents at some mission centres all over the world. 

It happened at Sharpness, near Bristol, in 1951. April Ashley was the one of beneficiaries. Twenty years later this would-be deck boy became one of the most beautiful British super-models of her time. 

I have a soft spot for April because she was born in the same Scouse hospital as my dad, just yards from my Nana's Smithdown Road terrace. They, too, were poor. My nana, like April's mum, was a Catholic married to a Protestant in that divided city. Those were grim times and you learnt to be tough and to pretend to conform.

HEADING TO MANLINESS AT SEA 

April wrote 'At fifteen I... I was constantly taunted for being like a girl and yes, I wanted to be one .... I would have long conversations with God each night, asking Him to make me wake up .... whatever it was proper for me to be. Instinctively, without knowing why, we all knew me to be a misfit. 

'Therefore I decided to take myself in hand. It was no longer any good wanting to be a girl. I wanted to be a man .... I privately determined to go to sea ... It seemed to be one of the things that made you a man.'

She managed to get a posh introduction to a merchant navy training school near Glucester and 'On a damp November morning I found myself at Lime Street Station with a small brown cardboard suitcase, waiting for the train to Bristol and the cadet ship  S.S. Vindicatrix.'

I myself happen to know from Mission to Seafarers archives that, in the period just before April went there, the old premises on the River Severn were being partly  replaced because merchant navy labour demands were increasing. A permanent structure was being built (see pic above). Meanwhile the boys slept in Nissen huts.

LADY WARDENS' WARMTH

The Mission to Seafarers hut (unil 1952 the low black building near the centre of this picture) offered hospitality to the 'Vindi Boys', after lesssons.  It was a homely place without strict teachers around and was psychologically warm enough to stop boys absconding from the dark marshes and tough discipline. 

Miss Eileen M Kerr had been running it since 1943. The Lady Warden role was relatively new post opened up in the MtoS to about six authoritative ladies because of wartime shortages of men. 

In correspondence Miss Kerr makes clear she had a pastoral, almost almoner-like role, looking up train tables for home-bound boys, dressing light wounds and listening to problems. (Vindicatrix at that point seemed not to have a matron or women teachers.)  

She would have seen April come in hating the ill-fitting uniform  'I looked like a vaudeville act' and unused to social life. 

Each day of the six-week intensive course it was 'Up before dawn, ablutions, tidy the bed and locker, polish buttons and boots, clean the washroom, marching, breakfast, formal classes, lunch, potato-peeling and floor-scrubbing, physical jerks, dinner, lights out at 9 p.m. There was no time for conversation.

'The second three weeks were more romantic. We moved on to the S.S. Vindicatrix herself, a three-masted hulk slurping up and down alongside the River Severn, where one was taught the practical skills of seamanship. I dashed up the rigging, out along the yard, and shouted 'Land ahoy!' with both lungs.

'At night we fell asleep exhausted, soothed by the creaking of the ship and the sound of water. I loved it all, especially this new experience 'companionship', even when the others bragged about girls and I went peculiar inside ...

CHRISTMAS ABOARD

' Shore leave came at Christmas  ... those unable to afford the fare home were allowed to stay on board. It promised to be glum until an extravagant food parcel arrived from John and Edna. Included was a huge fruit cake. I cut myself a slice and passed the rest on. 

'In return, back came a hunk of haggis which I tasted for the first time and found not unpalatable. We shared everything, cracked jokes ...

'In the evening [we] ambled over to the Mission House where the tea ladies in flimsy paper hats made a sense of occasion out of lemonade and buns. 

'On Boxing Day three of us slipped away to the Bristol pubs and got tiddly: strictly against the rules and therefore essential to do. 

'It was the most delightful Christmas I've ever had'.

NEW YEAR 1952

Back in Norris Green, Liverpool, two months later, April got work as a deck boy. So in February 1952 'I picked up my cardboard suitcase ,.. took a deep breath of air, coughed, and set off on the road to Manchester to join the S.S. Pacific Fortune.' (Pictured).

Life on the Furness Withy refrigerated cargo ship to Jamaica wasn't a happy time. April was bullied, tried suicide, and eventually left the MN. The rest is history -  of the high-profile glam trans kind. Google it. 

Meanwhile, life in the Mission House by the Vindi went on. And who knows how many GSRD (Gender and Sexual Relationship Diverse) gained from the warmth of women who knew support mattered but may not have had  a clue about what identity issues? 

A number of Assistant Lady Wardens left after only a few months, so it must have been a challenging job. Or maybe the strict Miss Kerr put assistants off.

INFO

• April wrote three autobiographies; Odyssey, The First Lady and Inside Out. Two were pulped. For detailed comparisons see Aprils biogs. I took the above extracts from April Ashley's Odyssey, by Duncan Fallowell & April Ashley, Jonathan Cape, London, 1982. ISBN 0-224-01849-3. It bears a strong resenblance to James Hanley's novel, Boy.
• The Sharprness Mission info is to be found in archives within Hull History Centre. MtoS archives 
• The Vindi and its accompanying mission went circa 1967 but are remembered on social media. (April is not mentioned there). Over its 28-year existence 70,000 boys had trained there.

Selina’s troubled Indian voyages

By guest contributor Paul Martinovich

I'm delighted that museologist and author Paul Martinovich has agreed to share his knowledge and images about the different voyages of Selina Du Charles Shee Holwell (1783-1825). The stories are important, not least because having extra-marital sex at sea, with an East India ship captain, changed her life.

Many young women experienced romantic episodes on long journeys aboard ship. But few can have both met and married their spouses aboard ship. 

Even fewer can have later had the marriage end dramatically while travelling on another vessel. However this was the case for a young woman named Selina Cordelia St Charles around the end of the 18th century, on East India company ships.

SELINA SAILS FROM QUEBEC

Selina Cordelia was almost certainly the illegitimate daughter of William Henry Birch. He was a British Army engineer stationed in Quebec City in the early 1780s. Her mother is an enigma. On Selina's baptismal certificate she is shown as Elizabeth DunReid, though her 'natural daughter' is given the surname DuCharles. 

At some point 'DuCharles' became ‘St Charles’.  And Selina St Charles travelled across the Atlantic, without her mother, to live with her Birch grandparents, at Pinner just outside of London.

FROM PINNER TO CALCUTTA: 1796 

In 1796, possibly as a result of the death of her father, it was decided to send Selina to India, even though she was only 14 years old. There she would live with her Birch uncles. They were prominent businessmen with the East India Company (see coat of arms above). She would be expected eventually to find a husband. 

The dispatching of children to live with relatives in distant countries was not unknown in Georgian times. And the annual flow of young women travelling to India to seek a husband was so regular that it came to be nicknamed ‘the fishing fleet’.

'The dispatching of children to live with relatives in distant countries was not unknown.' 

Selina travelled on the East Indiaman William Pitt  via the Cape of Good Hope. She was ‘under the protection of the captain’ (Captain Charles Mitchell). Such patriarchal care was normal for ‘unaccompanied’ women. 

Stratfield Saye Preservation Trust

They made the  journey south and then headed north-east to Calcutta (modern Kolkata). Another passenger was John Shee (pictured) a British Army officer going out to join his regiment (the 33rd Foot) in Bengal. 

Their shipboard acquaintance led the young Selina (she was still playing with dolls) to marry the 26-year-old major when the ship stopped at Cape Town.  (See image from ships' log).

Marriages of 16- or even 15-year-old girls were not unheard of in the Georgian period. But it is difficult to understand how, under any circumstances, a child of 14 could be allowed to wed a man of 26.

The Shees lived, apparently happily, in Fort William, India, in 1797. 

Image by Zoffany, fourteen years earlier, representing  a much wealthier British household  in Fort William: Sir Elijah Impey, the first Chief Justice of the new supreme court at Calcutta,  Lady Mary Impey and his legitimate children

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GOING TO ENGLAND: 1798 

In 1798 Selina returned to England alone, supposedly because of her health. She sailed on the East Indiamen Lord Hawke, arriving in February 1799. 

John Shee had made no provision for her support while she was in England. He also failed to communicate with her in any way, for more than two years. 

GOING BACK FOR HER MAN: 1801

And yet in 1801, against the advice of friends and relatives, she returned to India. On the East Indiaman the Duke of Montrose, under Captain Patrick Burt, she sailed from Portsmouth in March and arrived at Madras in July. (See pic of women arriving Madras, which had no harbour for large vessels, in 1856, detail, by JB East.)

John Shee had meanwhile risen to the rank of brevet lieutenant-colonel in the 33rd, which happened to be the regiment of Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington. There is ample evidence that Arthur Wellesley considered John a brutal officer, and 'a species of assassin', who practiced with a pistol in order to be able to kill his opponents in duels more efficiently. 

After reaching India in July Selina did not stay long, since John (probably partly because of Arthur’s enmity) decided to return to England and sell his commission. 

RETURNING IN MONTHS

Just six months after her five-month voyage she accompanied her husband back on this December 1801 journey. The marriage was now breaking down. It seems likely that her husband was physically abusing her; ‘intimate partner violence’ is now recognised as more prevalent in military populations.

'The marriage was now breaking down.'

Captain Pulteney Malcolm (left) of the Royal Navy was a tall, handsome Scotsman who had spent four years commanding ships in Indian waters. He offered the couple passage from Cape Town to England in his ship of the line, the Victorious. As part of the naval reductions during the Peace of Amiens, it was returning home. 

A number of other passengers and several hundred troops were also crammed aboard the ship, which was in poor condition and urgently needed repairs. During the passage, the captain and Selina had sex in his cabin, despite the proximity of her husband in an adjacent compartment. 

She had sneaked out of the marital cabin when she thought her husband was asleep. John found out about the adultery, pulled her out of her hiding place, and threw her towards his rival, saying 'There, take your strumpet, and a pretty bargain you have of her'. 

'There, take your strumpet,  and a pretty bargain you have of her'.

SPOUSE AND SELINA SUNDERED, 1803

After abusing the lovers, John left the Victorious to complete his journey on another ship. The Victorious was so unseaworthy that it had to limp into Lisbon. The Admiralty decided to break up the ship on the spot. 

Pulteney Malcolm and the crew arrived in England several months later in hired ships. How and when Selina got back to England from Lisbon is not clear.

At this point John Shee brought a legal suit for ‘Crim.Con.’ (Criminal Conversation) against Pulteney Malcolm. In such actions, the plaintiff sued for damages as a result of the harm ‘done to him’ by the defendant's adultery with his wife. 

The London trial was reported in a number of papers. The most detailed version appeared in The Sporting Magazine of 1803, Vol 23, pp.125-127.Sporting Record. 

Selina’ is extremely unlikely to have been present, so her views in her own words were not reported in these articles.

DISSING THE ‘BURTHEN’

Several witnesses testified to the coldness of John Shee towards his wife and the events on board ship. The evidence suggested that John had been both mentally and physically abusive to Selina. 

But she was denigrated. Another witness said her conduct ‘was very bad in public; she was fawning on men in general.’ A surgeon on board attested to her ‘levity’. He had treated her for ‘hysterics’, which ‘she told him was owing to her husband’s conduct.’ 

After John’s confrontation with Pulteney Malcolm, he was quoted as saying that Selina 'was a foolish, depraved, vicious [bitch], and he was happy he had got rid of such a burthen'. 

Pulteney did not deny the accusation that he had had adulterous relations with Selina. But his lawyer entered letters into the record that showed that the differences between the Shees were long-standing, and not a result of the captain’s attentions to her.

Newspaper reports give the impression that the judge and jury were unsympathetic to both the wife and the ‘wronged’ husband.

In his summation, the judge Baron Alvanley (pictured) found that John Shee 'had not used due diligence to prevent his wife ... from throwing herself into the arms of the defendant'. 

He admonished British husbands to refrain from using excessive 'correction' (physical abuse) to curb their straying wives. 

The jury believed John to be legally in the right and  found Pulteney guilty. But the plaintiff was awarded the derisory sum of 40 shillings in damages (about £187 in today’s money). 

LATER SUPPORT

After these five voyages Selina’s subsequent life seems to have been relatively happy. John Shee went to an early grave. Pulteney married in 1809 and became an admiral. 

Selina’s liaison with Pulteney resulted in a child: Benjamin Basil was born in November 1803, and baptised two months later with the surname Shee. In March 1804 John Shee died at Dover, probably of alcohol-related problems. Selina was left the single mother of a four-month-old infant. 

Within a couple of weeks of John’s death, she married haberdasher James Martin Holwell, her second cousin. They began to make a new life in the west of England.

James and Selina raised the boy along with their two later children. Pulteney acknowledged Benjamin as his son, and visited the Holwells at least once. However, he kept his paternal relationship secret from the boy. Both his wife, Clementine Elphinstone, and his sister, knew of his ‘by-blow’. He occasionally mentioned Benjamin in his letters. 

After James Holwell went bankrupt with £400 debts in 1809 Pulteney found him a job. He also paid for the lad’s education at a good public school.

Later he used his Indian and family connections to get Benjamin into the East India Company’s Madras Army as an officer. There Benjamin had an interesting career (much of it in Persia, now Iran) before his early death at age 37.   

Selina and family emigrated to Montreal, where Selina died in 1825. (See burial record). 

For more information about these individuals, see my book ‘The Sea is my Element: the eventful life of Admiral Sir Pulteney Malcolm, 1768-1838.’  Sea

In these days of exploring narratives about mobilities and sexualities I thank Paul for this insight into a version of domestic violence at sea, and seemingly consensual sex between the ship's patriarch and his married passenger.