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.

Pioneering trans ex-Wren dies: Mark Rees WRNS

Trans rights advocate and author Mark Rees, who died 26 July, was the second former Wren  (member of the Women's Royal Naval Service) to transition.* The funeral was 23 August.

Mark used the pronoun 'he' later. He was first trans person to take a case to the European Court of Human Rights. While not successful in 1987, his campaigning in Press for Change had a major impact for decades.

Christine Burns, trans actvist, was the first to make the announcement on social media. She's interviewed Mark too.

# hear her very moving interview at  https://lgbtplushistorymonth.co.uk/2008/02/interview-with-trans-pioneer-mark-rees/. 

# see chapter 7 of her book Trans Britain. 

--

Mark (1942-23) was known for activism much later, not for being a 'lady Tar'. He was a WRNS driver 1962-64: a 'Motor Transport Wren'. **

I tried to interview him, for my book, Women in the Royal Navy, and then for an article on Trans seafarers. He never replied to my correspondence. I respected his choice - but regretted it. 

His dad Hubert Rees, known as William, was a merchant seaman who became an officer. Mark wanted to go to sea too. But women in the WRNS were not allowed to do so in until 1990. It appears that he didn't consider joining the MN.

Mark's career as a Wren included being interviewed aboard Captain Scott's Discovery at the Embankment; trained at Burghfield, then at RNAS Culdrose, Cornwall; and later drafted to HMS Excellent in Portsmouth. 

Mark was treated as a 'homosexual' when in the WRNS. At the time it was a homophobic organisation. The word 'trans' was barely used.

'I explained that it was my lack of femininity which posed more problems than my supposed sexuality,' Mark said in his autobiography (p56). 'Because of the lack of information, I regarded myself as some kind of "deviant" lesbian. I couldn't find another label.'

The Navy was far from understanding about diversity at that point. And some WRNS friends and officers were troubling too. But he was helped to a degree by:

# Ken, the RNAS Culdrose chaplain, with whom he remained in touch for 40 years

# the Senior Medical Officer at Culdrose, who nevertheleess 'was unable to offer any other hope regarding a "sex change". "No doctor would do that; he would regard it as a mutilation" .  The doctor was obviously unware there had been two female-to-male changes in the 1940s UK.

# a kind psychiatrist at the Portsmouth naval barracks who wanted Mark to do psychoanalysis twice a week for two years. 'I couldn't understand what the point of it all was. They'd not succeed in making me feminine unless they gave me a brain transplant.'

# warmly supportive WRNS Second Officer Nancy Thomson 'was probably of more help than the psychiatrist . I remain indebted to her.' (Nancy went on to become Deputy Director of the WRNS in 1977, active in WRNS Benevolent Trust, and was always renowned for humanity).

# Netley Military Psychiatric Hospital, who labelled Mark 'homosexual' and recommended a medical discharge as 'I was never going to settle in the service ... [so] it was almost a relief.' 

He transitioned in 1971 and published his memoir, "Dear Sir or Madam" (Cassell) in 1996. https://www.abebooks.co.uk/.../Dear-Sir-Madam.../plp. The WRNS bit is on pp50-67.

Other Wrens and diversity

*The first known Wren to transition was Stephen Davis, in 1961. Born in 1936 in rural County Durham. On marriage to a navy artificer this Wren found they could no longer pretend all was well in terms of identity. They and their husband split up. Stephen re-joined the WRNS, left again, and later transitioned F to M in the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle upon Tyne. Later they worked as a market clerk and planned to marry their cis girlfriend. No more is known.

**  Other path-breaking 'Motor Transport Wrens' were the famous lesbian WW2 Wren Nancy Spain. (top pic). Later a broadcaster, Nancy(1917-64)  was never formally out. 

Her partner was another Wren driver, publisher Joan Werner Laurie 1920-1964.  (Middle pic) For a time Nancy and Joan had a triangular arrangement with racing driver Sheila Van Damm. (Lower pic). 

If only Mark could have met them back them. His 1960s would have been a little easier.

Sex, gender, and the US Navy

TRANS PEOPLE

The good news is that on Monday 25 Jan the new US president Joe Biden reversed a Pentagon policy that largely barred transgender individuals from joining the US military.

This reverses the ban ordered by Donald Trump, in a tweet, during his first year in office. An estimated 15,000 out of 1.5 million active-duty troops are affected.  Working on that basis, I calculate the decision will matter to around 1% cent of the 336,978-strong US Navy.

Protesting in 2017: Stop Transgender Military Ban rally at the White House.

 Image by Ted Eytan 

 

I

It’s been a long fight, with many challenges along the way. Kristin Beck (pictured), who’d served 20 years and  became the first US Navy SEAL to come out as transgender in 2013,told Trump “Let’s meet face to face and you tell me I’m not worthy.” 

Kristin declared a person’s gender identity made no difference to their ability to do the job. (Independent. 26 July 2017)

 TIMELINE: TRANS IN THE US MILITARY

• From 1960-2016 all trans people were banned from serving in the US military
• From 2016-2018 they were allowed to serve to serve in their identified or assigned gender, upon completing transition.
• From 2018-2019 they could enlist in the United States military only on condition that they had been stable for 18 months in their identified or assigned gender
• From 2019 they were not allowed to serve/ enlist, except if serving 'in their original sex' 

Here’s an interesting US article from 2017, with troubling responses:  Should Transgender Persons Serve? https://tinyurl.com/Trans-serve.

SEXUAL HARASSMENT

The other good news is that Lloyd Austin, the new Defense Secretary, plans to end the ‘scourge’ of sexual violence in the US armed forces.

“You do agree that we can’t keep doing the same thing that we’ve been doing for the past decade?” Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (pictured), a New York Democrat, said during Austin’s confirmation hearing. 

“Do I have your commitment to be relentless on this issue until we can end the scourge of sexual violence in the military?” https://tinyurl.com/Gillibrand-to-Austin. Yes, he assured her.

What’s the scale of the problem? The latest figures (fiscal year 2019) show there were 7,825 reported assaults involving military members of the US armed forces as victims or subjects. That's a 3 per cent increase on the previous year.

Women were roughly 4 times as likely as men to be targets (aka 'victims'). Of people on active duty an estimated 24% of women and 6% of men reported being sexually harassed. https://tinyurl.com/sex-assault-2019

I could not find information broken down to show the 52,391 women currently in the US Navy. This figure would have been very interesting, especially if it had showed sexual harassment levels on ships. For example, is it that the longer or harder the voyage, the greater the number and severity of the sexual difficulties?

 

IN 1983 PROBLEM WAS KNOWN

Naval Officer Maribeth Coye wrote a very useful MSC management thesis, Sexual Harassment and Rape in the Navy. She produced it in 1983 and it was released in 2013. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/36728426.pdf

Maribeth Coye Decker today

After surveying 322 women Maribeth found 'sexual harassment and rape are significant problems in the US Navy.’

Under-reporting was, and still is, a major issue. But officers are more likely to report their experiences than ratings. 84% said they had been harassed.

Was it worse on ships? No. She found that ‘especially outside the continental United States, some men may act in ways they would never dream of doing ...but believe is "expected of a REAL sailor” in overseas ports.‘

Macho attitudes didn’t help. Their officers, ‘especially if they have no women on board, may ignore or tolerate these behaviors' as just 'letting off steam'. Evidence refuted the illusion that sexual harassment was merely courtship behaviur that went too far.

Did it even happen on ships? 

Sexual harassment happened mainly in the workplace (30% of cases). The majority of attempted rapes happened off-base (44%).

Women at that time were seldom assaulted on vessels because women were not allowed to serve on naval ships until 1978, and only on combatant ships from 1994.

At this date Navy Counselor First Class (NC1) Cheryl Ann Cassarella (pictured) was one of the first  59, on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower.  The sexual harassment cases she surely faced are not revealed to the public.  

 ‘IGNORANCE’  AND CONSEQUENCES

Maribeth found that in the 1980s women were only 7% of personnel, (by comparison to 16% today) and were mainly clustered in low-status ‘women’s work.’ This meant they were in a weak position in relation to men.

Their more senior male colleagues had been in the Navy at a time when women were denied a place at sea 'Therefore they had no role models for dealing with women as co-workers' but only as wives or girlfriends. 

As one male officer said '"I had to develop a whole new concept of what women are. It is very difficult when overseas and the primary woman contact was a hooker.'"

Buy hey, there's been time to learn in the four decades since 1983, when the first guidelines and grievance procedures were only just being put in place.

Change matters because women who’ve been assaulted can be left with STDs and lifelong trauma. They resign instead of developing their potential after years of training.

But if women did have sex at sea – wanted or unwanted – only 18% of ratings and 3% of officers became pregnant while on ships, according to the 1998 Pregnancy and Single Parenthood in the Navy study. Contraceptive pills were invaluable.https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA353976.pdf. 

WOMEN IN UK NAVY TODAY

Is it a similar situation for the 9.4% women in the 30,000-strong Royal Navy Royal Marines’ regular forces today?

In 2015 a report was issued: Royal Navy and Royal Marines Sexual Harassment Survey. It found only 2% of respondents reported being sexually assaulted and this number had been stable for years.

For more on the various kinds of sexual harassment see https://tinyurl.com/RN-RM-report-2015.  Firm guidelines are in place. But cultural changes are slow.

The very day I write this blog the Daily Mail is reporting that a naval technician has just been court-martialled at Bulford. The 22-year-old AB was found guilty of sexually assaulting a junior colleague. It was on an unnamed naval ship at Tokyo in October 2019, which Prince Charles had just visited.

The woman said that her assailant ‘”was in my bed and he wrapped his arms around me. He started kissing my neck and his hands were going towards my shorts.”’ 

She began kicking him off and ‘he told her to “shut up you stupid c***” and began knocking items off the drawers in her cabin before slumping down naked in a chair.’

‘She helped him put his boxer shorts back on before going to find the duty officer who helped remove the drunken sailor from her cabin.’

In mitigation he claimed his margaritas must have been spiked. No chemical evidence was found. www.dailymail.co.uk › news › article-9197237 › Royal.

The first ship’s doctor to transition

Dr Michael Laurence Dillon (1915-62) was the first known female-to-male person to be a doctor in the Merchant Navy.

Now there are plans afoot to celebrate him with a blue plaque.

 Also St Anne’s College, Oxford, his old alma mater from 1934-38, is beginning a series of public lectures in his name.  Michael Dillon LGBT+ Lecture Series. So far there is no indication that any of these talks will refer to his time at sea, 1952-58.

To my knowledge there are just two women doctors who concealed their identity on ships. Army surgeon James Miranda Steuart Barry (1789-1865) sailed out to postings, but was not a ship’s surgeon.   And circa 1927 a US merchant marine doctor was found, on her death, to be female.  No one suspected.

Doctor Michael wrote an autobiography in 1962 which was only published in 2017. He’s got a Wikipedia entry and two other biographies too.

 Recent blog entries focus on his links with St Anne’s, where Michael studied Greats from 1935-38:

•  Dr Jay Gilbert, "We Have Always Been Here": Michael Dillon and Transmasculinity in Pre-War Oxford
• Duncan  Jones, L.M. Dillon at Oxford, L.M. Dillon at Oxford

At the moment I’m trying to track down Michael’s situation in the shipping industry by speaking to seafarers.

 Born Laura  Dillon, this ex-Girl Guide and Oxford Blue had been sailing, unsuspected, for six years after pioneering surgical and hormone treatment in the 1940s.

 In his autobiography, Out of the Ordinary, he describes how well the ship’s agents and his fellow officers aboard Ellerman's City of Bath behaved when he was outed by the press while stopping over in Baltimore in May 1958.

 He went to see the captain ‘praying he might be in his paternal mood ...  he became kindly and sympathetic at once, and promised to do all he could do to help ... cabled the agents in New York asking for a police guard for the gangway.’

 When Dr Michael went to find out how his shipmates were reacting  to the news ‘The Second poured me out a gin, raised his glass, and knocked mine and then said .... [he and the Sparks]  had discussed it at length over beer the night before ... [They] had come to the conclusion that I had had a rough deal ... since they had liked me before and I had not changed overnight they saw no reason for letting it make any difference.’

 The chairman of Ellermans replied to Michael’s news offering ‘his sympathy’. 

The medical superintendent said he '“still hoped I would stay with the company and would back any arrangements I liked.”’

 ‘But it would have been an impossible situation ... I would have been the target for speculation and whispers, until they got to know me.’

And so ‘Doc Mike’ asked to be discharged from the City of Bath in India. Just after his 43rd birthday be began a new life and went on to become the first western Buddhist novice. He died in 1962.

 By contrast April Ashley had joined the Merchant Navy as a seaman in 1951, sailing on the Pacific Fortune: See.April Ashley's Odyssey   (Picture of April in 2000.)

She had been born in 1935 and sailed the year before Michael first sailed. She became famous for her male-to-female transition after 1960, long after she had left the sea. 

I have met seafarers who regarded her, and Christine Jorgensen in 1952, as inspirational. By contrast Michael was the focus of very little publicity at the time.