" Steamboat Ladies": ferried to academic certification 1904-07

A ferry to and from Ireland by Norman Wilkinson, 1905.

‘The journey was a remarkably pleasant one, and the entrance to the exquisite Bay of Dublin forms a fitting conclusion,’ wrote Lilian Haigh of her June 1905 ferry ride over from Holyhead to Ireland. (pp246-7) 

But she was travelling to appropriate a far more interesting ‘conclusion’: a piece of paper that would act as her passport to professional respect - a move towards DEI in education.

Lilian had studied at Somerville College, Oxford (pictured, right) and was one of the 300-odd ‘steamboat’ ladies’. 

Why were they so called, and with slightly mixed feelings?  Because of their reason for briefly hopping over to Ireland in the 1904-07 period. 

These Oxbridge women had already studied for and gained MAs and BAs. Over  250 were from Girton College, Cambridge (pictured left). 

However, women were excluded from formal membership of universities at that time. They had the substance (all the knowledge gained by studying)  but not the bit of confirmatory parchment. 

Steamboat ladies’ solution? They took the opportunity offered by Trinity College Dublin to award them – for a fee of £10, about £1,500 in today’s money –  ad eundem degrees. The term means the honorary granting of academic standing or a degree by one university to another. 

Trinity College Dublin was already friendly to the right sort of ladies. The college (pictured right) had begun admitting 40 female students in January 1904. 

But this degree-granting connection with women who’d graduated from other universities was controversial.

Susan M Parkes, the world expert on the steamboat ladies, explains that at the time some people considered this selling of ‘“the Dublin degree” as a “betrayal” of the women’s cause …

'They argued that instead women] should keep up the pressure and hold out for their own universities to award degrees.‘ (p248).  

Routinely by train and ferry

What was their trip like for those who decided to proceed? In early summer 1905 Lilian Haigh, like the two previous tranches of steamboat ladies in June and December 1904, would have ridden the Irish Mail train from London’s Euston up the North Wales Main Line to Holyhead on the Isle of Angelsey. The rail trip took about eight hours. 

Trains and the linked ferries were operated by the highly successful London & North Western Railway, which had been carrying passengers and mail profitably across to Ireland in a very routinised way for decades. 

Ferry operations had been long-established. Staff were used women passengers, including elite ladies with agency, even with imperious attitudes, who’d already been travelling the world.

The vessels the steamboat ladies used were almost certainly the newish LNWR railway steamers the Anglia, Cambria, Hibernia or Scotia. 

From Anglesey (pictured) some steamboat ladies sailed overnight, so as not to lose time off work. 

The 108-mile crossing to Dublin took eight to twelve hours, depending on conditions.  Passengers were in the hundreds, not thousands. I believe there was a communal Ladies’ Cabin, as on ocean liners, at that time, as well as smaller private cabins. 

Susan M Parkes found that many steamboat ladies sailed with a group of colleagues set on the same goal. They joined ships that were male-majority crewed. One or two stewardesses were routinely employed (see picture of one on the Hibernia.) 

As usual stewardesses, uniformed like maids, attended to any woman passengers  suffering debilitating seasickness en route. I devoutly hope that none of our steamboat ladies needed such ministrations before their big day.

But could any passenger confidently predict that she would have a standard voyage and arrive in fit shape for the award ceremony? No. The sea creates uncertainty. Irish ferries had sunk before, drowning people in gales.  

300 tickets to transformed status

What did this 45-hour-plus excursion, that enabled such an official transformation, cost women?  The total would be at least £50, or £7,600 in today’s money. Costs included: 

• £3 12s 6d to rent a cap, gown and hood
• £27 for the train and boat ticket
• 9s for one night in a Dublin hotel 
• £10 3s for a Batchelor of Arts fee, or £9.16s for an MA (over £1,300 today).  

It was an investment. Could women afford it?  Fortunately, many were from wealthy backgrounds. Graduates already in prestigious jobs were not necessarily well-paid: in 1905 a headmistress got roughly £85 pa. Her ‘Dublin degree’ would therefore cost at least half her annual salary.  

What was the money used for? Trinity spent £10,000 of the controversial fees as the principal funding for a hall of residence for the new women students: Trinity Hall, 3 miles away in Dartry. 

Miss E Margaret Cunningham became the first warden of the hall, 1907- 40. She’d graduated from Girton in 1891 and been a steamboat lady. The picture shows her  in 1911, in black with her academic hood, fifth from left, front row. She's next to Miss Gwynn, the first lady registrar (from 1908), who is in a grey costume with dark collar and white blouse. 

They're outside the Hall, which still stands today. Male students were admitted after 1972.

Destination Dublin

Once arrived at Dublin North Wall Lilian and other steamboat ladies would have taken some refreshment, and perhaps settled their bodies after all the ship’s motion. 

Maybe in a quayside hotel like the London and North Western railway hotel (pictured) they’d have left ther luggage. 

Then they’d have taken a cab south west across the River Liffey towards the college, about 27 minutes walk away. 

Somewhere they dressed in the rented regalia for the ceremony. 

Miss Lucy P Gwynn, the Lady Registrar, (pictured, later) then escorted the steamboat ladies to the College Examination Hall, in an all-female posse that attracted attention. 

These were by no means girlies out strolling in a rudderless way: Emily Penrose, for example, the famous women’s education campaigner, and a steamboat lady of the 1904 vintage,was 46, the distinguished principal of Bedford College and a professor of ancient history. 

There at the Halls  the women attended the long ‘commencements’ ceremony (which also included doctors, such as steamboat lady Dr Ellen McArthur,  and people being awarded honorary degrees). 

At the back of the hall (pictured) the male undergraduates sometimes barracked. They were ‘keeping us gay with their wit. It was a lively scene, but not as distinctly Irish as I had hoped,‘ wrote up-beat Lilian. 'Banter' in the college tyically included jokes about 'Spinsters of Science' and 'Mistresses of Arts.' 

Afterwards, the male Provost usually hosted them for luncheon in the newly-desegregated Dining Hall (pictured). (The first female provost was elected only in 2021). Then women posed on the steps for a photo. 

Afterwards, divesting themselves of the vestments, most women quickly turned back to home. Women undergrads had a 6pm curfew.

It’s not known how many of the steamboat ladies stayed for a few more hours or days, acting on Lilian’s advice ‘not to leave without sightseeing’. 

Voyage over, the steamboat ladies returned to, or went on to, successful careers, especially as leaders in education. 

Emily Penrose became Principal of Somerville 1907-26. She is not recorded as having sailed again but I suspect that this is just an administrative error. 

Progressing after the disembarkation

It’s no accident that the Somerville Suffrage Society was founded at the steamboat ladies’ time, in 1907, and the Oxford Women Students’ Society for Women’s Suffrage in 1911.  Educated women wanted respect and rights. Some women won the vote in 1918; all women were awarded it in 1928.  

Painting by FW Helps, 1922
Somerville College.

Oxford began awarding degrees to women in 1920; Cambridge in 1947. Emily Penrose (pictured) was one of the five Oxford college principals to have an MA conferred upon them by Oxford University Convocation in October 1920. 

What the voyage meant personally

There had been women at Oxford colleges since 1879 and at Cambridge Colleges since 1869. Emily Penrose had completed her course in 1889, fifteen years before making the Dublin trip. She may have just regarded the trip as irksome. It was a poor use of time for a busy and established professional, and s trip only necessitated because of conservative sexism.

Somerville graduate Lilian Haigh’s details are unknown. We may never know what the journey really meant to her.  In 1905 Girton graduate Ellen McArthur,  (pictured) was the first steamboat lady to be awarded the 'Dublin' D.Litt. The follwoing years she was elected a fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS). 

By contrast, one of the very first steamboat ladies in June 1904, Sophie May Nicholls, had graduated from Girton in 1892. She was already climbing Welsh mountains with male mountaineers by 1897 (see picture), the year that Cambridge women took action. By 1911 she had been to Palestine as one of early Frances Mary Buss Travelling Scholars. 

Sophie Nicholls  (not identified) and climbing party outside the iconic Pen-y-Gwryd climbing inn,  Llanberis, 1897, seven years before she became  a steamboat lady. 

An acclaimed traveller,  Sophie was an early female member of the Royal Geographical Society in 1914 (to which women had first sought admission in 1847). Misogynistic institutions and a mere ferry trip over to Dublin would have been a very minor matter to her. 

I myself feel very proud to have two slight connections to this steamboat lady, even though my principles probably wouldn’t have let me buy a ‘Dublin degree.’ 

1. Pioneer of women's education, Frances Mary Buss (pictured), Sophie’s travel funder, was my godmother’s great aunt. 

2. And I have worked in that Pen-y-Gwryd hotel, outside which Sophie is pictured. Wearing a uniform like the stewardesses on her ship I’ve mopped those PYG steps. And I surely cleaned the room Sophie used 70 years earlier, before I went off for an afternoon's mountain climbing, in her Snowdonia footsteps. 

Thanks to the efforts of pioneers like her, gender discrimination lessenned. I gained all my degree certificates without having to go to Ireland and spend half a year’s pay on it.  I am an FRHistS like Ellen - no prob. 

And my education later meant that during conferences I've dined in Trinity College’s once-segregated dining hall, as Lilian, Emily and Ellen did too. No prob. 

There is not yet a plaque to those blue-hooded steamboat ladies, to my knowledge.

References:

Susan M Parkes, ‘Trinity College Dublin and the Steamboat ladies’ in Mary R Masson and Deborah Simonton, eds, Women in Higher Education, Past Present and Future, Aberdeen University Press, Aberdeen, 1996, pp244-250. 

The Cunningham and Gwynn picture is from: 

Seawomen of colour: Where were they and why not?

In 40 years of researching seafarers’ histories on UK ships I’ve found very few women of colour. Was this somehow my error in researching?  Surely it was not an accurate picture?

Wrong. Speaking to Fazilette Khan (pictured) one of the few trail-blazers of women’s maritime history in the 1980's for #BlackHistoryMonth, it seems that yes, women of colour were indeed rare.

 The best known are:

•  Fazilette herself, who was a radio officer from 1984, then electro-technical officer and finally an Environmental Officer
• Belinda Bennett,now a captain, who began training in 1990. (See my video interview with Belinda for Lloyd’s register Foundation’s Rewriting Women into Maritime History Project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd18Xv7Ht64 ).  

RARE WOMEN

Fazilette (born 1960) worked at sea for 30 years. She still knows the industry well, because she networks as she campaigns for a better maritime environment (see #GreenSeasTrust: www.greenseas.org).

Can she remember any other brown or black women colleagues on cargo vessels and tankers, (where she was often the only woman anyway)? No, she realises.

However on passenger ships from the 2000s she increasingly found a few women of colour. They included

•  pursers’ department officers from South Asia, such as  a captain’s secretary and accountancy workers
• tours department onboard staff who knew the countries being visited, such as Caribbean islands, or sold future cruises  
•  housekeeping staff from the Philippines

The key question is how was the imbalance achieved? Did women of colour not apply, perhaps assuming they’d be blocked anyway? Or did schools and colleges fail to suggest such careers? Or did women train, but fall away after negative early sea experiences?

ONE WOMAN’S STORY

What about Fazilette’s own experiences of racism on board? She finds ‘I often can’t see whether the hostility was racism or sexism. It’s hard to tell the dividing line. You’re just getting negativity and you’ve got to deal with it.’ 

She was born and grew up in the UK. Her dad was a seafarer. Her mother Haida Khan was a renowned poet. Both supported her 'unusual' wish to go to sea

During her training at the Merchant Navy College in Greenhithe she was one of 3 women among 300 men on her course. ‘You learn to toughen up. You fight your corner.’ 

The hostility at that point was about gender. ‘After a while, it became water off a duck's back. Thinking back, it was probably quite character-building!’ The other two women were white, as were 98 per cent of the students. A few foreign male students from the Bahamas, Middle East were on short courses. 

Women at sea take care of all aspects of their personas so that they don’t get extra-victimized. Fazilette had thought ‘”Fazilette” sounded quite sweet - a bit of a pushover. But “Bobby” has a feisty resonance about it! It was actually my pet name since I was a kid. So on the tankers etc I was “Bobby”. And on the cruise ships I was “Fazilette”.’

She enjoyed the life, mainly. But on a tanker very early in her career she had a bad feeling even as she walked up the gangway: the only woman.  Men expressed hostility verbally and informally, mainly in off-duty moments. She identifies the slurs that she encountered as racial rather than gendered. 

But she was determined to carry on with her career. After all her years on investing in training she would not let a minority of bigots drive her out of the profession she had worked so hard for. 

Fed up with their constant goading, Fazilette decided to tackle the situation head-on. She used the analogy of the Klu Klux Klan's practice of hooded men burning crosses as they persecuted black victims to death in the US. 

As she stepped into the onboard bar one night in Rotterdam she challenged them from the threshold: ’Listen! Are you going to burn the crosses tonight? Or can I come in and sit in peace?’ 

They were quite taken aback, she recalls. ‘I don't know whether this was because I was no longer prepared to take it on the chin, or the fact that I was comparing their attitudes with such a prejudiced organisation. Either way, it worked!’

Her shipmates hadn’t realised that their so-called ‘banter’ was having a huge negative effect on her. Her challenge led to the racists backing off. Men even increasingly isolated the ring leader for his hostility too.

She tackled gender and race matters sassily. On a couple of documents that asked about her complexion she wrote ‘permanently tanned.’ 

One time, to halt a resentful but superstitious officer who was trying to make her life a misery, she made a BluTack voodoo doll in front of him. Quickly ‘he was cowering under the settee vowing to never bother me again. Sometimes having a thick skin and a smile like the Mona Lisa just isn’t enough!’

Fortunately Fazilette encountered many fair-minded shipmates over the years, who urged ‘give the girl a chance.’ (She was one of the pioneer non-Marconi operators, changing shipboard radio culture, which meant she faced discrimination on those grounds too.)

These days she’s seeking publication for an expanded version of the salty sailor articles she wrote for maritime magazine TradeWinds  in the 1990s.  

Learn more:

• her memorabilia are on display at Merseyside Maritime Museum’s ‘Life on Board.’ (pictured). Her artefacts are in the archive.
•  See also https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/stories/fazilette-khan-making-difference. 
•  The National Maritime Museum’s Making Waves online exhibition features Fazilette’s story  as a campaigner against maritime pollution: https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/making-waves/fazilette-khan

ACTION NEEDED

So what’s to be done about women facing racism on ships today? Many maritime professionals are working on diversity, equity and inclusion. See Maersk event this year (pictured), for example.

Fazilette thinks women need to assert themselves too. ‘Nowadays we are led to believe that our managers have the authority to deal with any and all problems. The reality is, it is simply not true.’

 As bigotry will continue, she advises women to do as she did and challenge the perpetrators. 'Don’t just complain to HR, who may not be effective enough. Deal direct with the men – even captains – who don’t play fair.’ She’s done so, and been surprised at how oppressors have backed down. Respect can indeed come.  

The off-the-record stories she’s told me show how much the tables can be turned by a brave challenger. But to my mind, systemic united team efforts, education, a changed culture, and enforced policies really help too.

I look forward to other women of colour getting in touch and telling me about life at sea for them before DEI policies began and sea women were even more isolated.

UK Navy appoints first woman admiral

It's taken 120 years of women being in naval services. But on 26 May the Royal Navy finally appointed its first female admiral. 

Commodore Jude Terry, OBE, (47) will become a rear admiral next year and the highest-ranking woman in the Navy. 

Women have, of course, worked with the Navy informally and formally for centuries, including in uniform as members of the QARNNS, WRNS, and VAD. They were also in many roles such as nursing aides afloat and wives who funded their office husband's career. 

But until 1991, seven years before Jude joined, women were not allowed to serve at sea. This meant that, however able, they could not attain senior positions. 

The decision to appoint Jude Terry follows the  controversial culling of 'excess' admirals in 2019 (when there were 34 male admirals), as well as decades of equal opportunities efforts. She stands on the shoulders of giants. I know about those shoulders: I've been tracing the pioneers' progress.

Her current role is Deputy Director People Delivery Royal Navy, and next summer she will be fully the Director.This task involves handling 33,520 Regulars. 

Of these, about a tenth are women. Since 1960 the Navy's usual number of women has been just over 3,000. 

The goal is now that women will be 20 per cent of the Navy by 2030. Observers suspect that this improved ratio may be achieved by further cutbacks in male numbers.

PIONEERING FORBEARS

Commodore Terry's most pioneering UK predecessor was Katharine Furse, the first director of the new Women's Royal Naval Service in 1917 (pictured right). 

Dame Katharine wrote in her autobiography that when she showed off her new uniform at the Admiralty: 

'The First Lord ... pointed to one of my new buttons and said. "those are Admiral's Buttons, why has she got them?" The Second Sea Lord explained that the Director [WRNS] had equivalent rank for certain purposes and therefore ought to wear the buttons... they were approved.' 

Women were civilians in very separate naval services. Some naval men had trouble seeing their value and respecting their authority.

Initially women were permitted to wear dashing tricorne hats. But when it came to insignia they were only allowed blue braid, not gold, because gold was 'definitely the prerogative of the men' and would be 'wasted' on women. 

Today such discrimination would be unthinkable. Jude Terry will be working in a changing culture. 

Making women leave on marriage, or when pregnant, is a thing of the  past. Earlier than the 1990s Wrens and QARNNS became activists and took the MOD to court for discriminatory behaviour. 

Women also fought for the right NOT to go to sea: see CPO Jacqueline Cartner' s 2012 struggle (pictured, left). More recently women pressed for combatant statues. 

The Naval Servicewomen's Network, which Captain Ellie Ablett (pictured right, in uniform) founded in 2013 helped women work collectively for a fairer deal, including access non-traditional roles. 

At that time no-one would bet on when a woman would finally become an admiral.

FINDING OUT MORE 

~ If you want to know about Commodore Terry the best place to start is a Youtube interview with her made by students at Barnhill Community High School in 2020. They interviewed her for 20 minutes and she was frank. See Captain Terry Interview https://youtu.be/XSspBCcT0cI. 

In it she said she had 'always been a tomboy' and was 'fiery.'  (However, she married in 2009. See picture of her wedding to a Merchant Navy pilot, Captain Noel Charlton. He's on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/noel-charlton-55982556/?originalSubdomain=uk).

She spoke of her father being in the RN, and her mother's initial opposition to Jude joining. 

Asked about role models Jude named three men: Nelson Mandela; a really good RN commanding officer Richard (inaudible); plus the inspirational General David Hancock. 

~You may also like to look at social media. Jude Terry tweets at https://twitter.com/judeterry9. 

~ On LinkedIn she can be found at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jude-terry-29723a53 

~ And for the fullest details, free of pay walls, see the article below. I have lifted from the website of the Association of Wrens and Women of the Royal Naval Services:https://wrens.org.uk/2021/05/26/royal-navy-appoints-first-female-admiral/.

"For the first time in the centuries-long history of the Royal Navy, a woman officer will be appointed to the rank of admiral. 

"Commodore Jude Terry, who has served her nation and Navy for nearly a quarter of a century, has been selected for promotion to rear admiral – making her the most senior woman in the Royal Navy, past or present. 

"She will be responsible for sailors and Royal Marines from the moment they are recruited to their final day in Service – spanning their entire careers by overseeing training, welfare and career management. 

MAKING HISTORY 

"The 47-year-old from Jersey will be promoted to rear admiral next year and take over as the Royal Navy’s Director of People and Training and Naval Secretary. Of making history she says simply “someone has to be first”. 

"She continued: “I have always thought of myself as a naval officer first, then a logistics officer, then Jude and finally as a female. The Navy genuinely doesn’t look at your gender and is an equal opportunities employer – it wants you to be part of a team and deliver outputs to support operations. 

"“I have been really lucky throughout my career. I’ve enjoyed great jobs, wonderful support from my family, worked with great people, seized the opportunity to see the world and contribute to a number of operations which have made a difference to people’s lives including Afghanistan, Somalia and Sierra Leone to name a few.”

"She currently serves as deputy director of the department she is earmarked to take over, with the goal of helping to shape the Royal Navy and its people up to 2040.

"First Sea Lord Admiral Tony Radakin [pic left] said: “I am delighted with Commodore Jude Terry’s selection for promotion to Rear Admiral. Jude is part of a cohort of trailblazers in the Royal Navy who have seized the opportunities on offer, and risen to the top. 

"This builds on a rich career of naval and broader Defence appointments, all of which she has excelled at.”

"Commodore Terry hails from a naval family and joined the Navy in 1997. 

"She has spent the bulk of her seagoing career in Plymouth-based warships, including survey vessel HMS Scott and two spells with helicopter carrier HMS Ocean.

HMS OCEAN 

"Of her 12-month second draft to HMS Ocean she spent ten away from the UK in the Baltic and Gulf and was responsible for working with a documentary team producing the series Warship for Channel 4. 

"Her career has taken her to the Gulf and Middle East, Indian Ocean, Far East and the Caribbean. 

"Numerous staff appointments have included the Royal Navy’s logistics branch manager, dealing with issues as varied as recruiting and training, retaining experienced personnel, ensuring ships and submarines have enough chefs, review of tattoo policy, and a review of welfare provision across the service. 

"And Commodore Terry was awarded the OBE in the New Year’s Honours List in 2017 for her efforts during three years at the UK military’s operational hub, Permanent Joint Headquarters, during which she was involved in: 

# the end of Britain’s front-line operations in Afghanistan

#  overseeing the closure of bases at Lashkar Gar, Bastion and Kandahar 

# the successful efforts to curb the spread of the Ebola virus in West Africa in 2014 – 2015. 

HOME IN JERSEY 

"Away from the Royal Navy, Commodore Terry still lives in Jersey, enjoys its shoreline, outdoor activities and water sports ... as well as travelling, reading, good food and good weather."