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.

Cadet Geveza's death exposes shipboard sexual harrassment

This week South African media are reporting the tragic death of Akhona Geveza, a nineteen-year-old South African woman cadet on a cargo ship.

Clever, beautiful and set for a career at sea, she disappeared from the British-registered Safmarine Kariba on June 24. Her poor body was found drifting in the sea off the Croatian coast three days later.

Was she killed by shipmates? Did she kill herself?

Either way,the key seems to be that the day she died a fellow cadet reported (on Akhona's behalf, and against her wishes) that a senior officer, had repeatedly raped her.

Cadet Nokulunga Cele stated that Geveza had said that the Ukrainian officer first tried to kiss her while he was teaching her to swim early in May. Later he apologised to her and called her to his room. But there he allegedly raped her.

Cele said Geveza was not willing to report the matter to the shipmaster because she feared that nobody would believe her. What a lonely, terrible, situation. What an indictment of the shipboard regime.

There is no way that people trying to do their job should ever, ever, be allowed to be abused. It is especially outrageous when the victim is young and at sea because of economic need. (Akhona's father John Geveza, said the career of his only child had represented hope for her unemployed parents in the Eastern Cape).

It is even worse again when their abuser has additional social power over them - such as the ability to enable promotion, or even just daily wellbeing.

Akhona Geveza was a cadet on the Transnet National Port Authority’s maritime studies programme. It was set up as part of a campaign to encourage young women to become seafarers.

But the few stories leaking out so far suggest just how much the merchant shipping industry still has to learn about respecting and supporting vulnerable women - and young men - at sea. More than encouragement is needed. A decent working situation, free from violence, is crucial.

Geveza’s fellow cadets subsequently revealed that there was systematic abuse of power by senior officers at sea “who threatened cadets’ careers if they did not perform sexual acts” reported the South Africa Sunday Times. A woman had to have two abortions, after being raped at sea. Two male cadets were raped by senior officials.

At 10am on June 24 Shipmaster Klaudiusz Kolodziejczyk heard about the rape. He says he immediately confronted the officer and convened a conference with him and Geveza for 11am.

When she failed to arrive for the meeting,he organised a search. Kolodziejczyk, alerted by some pills and a bottle of thinners found on the forecastle of the ship, sounded the alarm and called Sea Rescue at Rijeka.

Captain Kolodziejczyk was no doubt well-intentioned in organising the three-way conference But really! It's insane to subject a victim to that, especially when she was to work with that officer for a long period in an enclosed institution far out at sea. Doesn't Kolodziejczyk know how bullying and social pressure work?

Not only would the rest of her voyage be torture. It's also wrong to treat a rape as a personal dispute between two parties. Rape is a crime. Doesn't officer training include basic procedural advice about how to support the victim? Even the newest police officer ashore knows how traumatising a confrontation could be.

The very least that should be done by Transnet is ensure that this can never again happen on any ship. Akhona's death should alert all masters and shipowners to the very drastic need for training. All ships should be respectful workplaces, where, if there are any such crimes, they are dealt with appropriately.