<\/p>
One day in October 1952, an old seafarer watched warily as a uniformed woman approached his ship at Avonmouth docks, on the Somerset coast near Bristol. \u201cOdd \u2013 must be a district nurse,\u201d he mused, observing the older woman preparing to board. Or maybe she was collecting alms for a seafarers\u2019 charity?<\/p>\n
As she drew closer, he recognised the purple-and-gold epaulettes \u2013 could that middle-aged lady really be their new second engineer? The ship had been waiting for this crucial team member, but a senior marine engineer who was a woman: how could that be?<\/p>\n
The men serving on the obscure little tramp steamer SS Markab<\/em> were about to encounter a 58-year-old living legend: Victoria Drummond \u2013 god daughter of Queen Victoria<\/a>, a war hero with an MBE, and one of the most path-breaking women in seafaring and engineering history.<\/p>\n The world\u2019s first female seagoing ship\u2019s engineer had overcome seemingly impossible odds to reach this position. And she did it all calmly, determinedly, and by dint of her ability, not patronage. Throughout her 30-year fight for the chance to work on ships\u2019 engines, she\u2019d been confident in her competence. She took it for granted that gender shouldn\u2019t determine what people were allowed to do. She<\/em> felt normal.<\/p>\n Born in 1894 at Megginch Castle, her ancestral home near Perth, by her teens Drummond had already developed a fancy for an oily career in the bowels of ships. Her determination was buoyed by both history and family, preceded as she was by many formidable and talented female forebears who had followed \u201coutlandish\u201d paths. As her wood worker grandmother contentedly observed: \u201cThat child\u2026 might even make an engineer.\u201d<\/p>\n Equally fortunately, because of the demand for labour sparked by the First World War<\/a>, women were allowed to undertake work outside the traditionally female sphere. For example, Eily Keary helped design aspects of seaplanes and flying oats. Other women built ships.<\/p>\n And in 1915, Drummond\u2019s father gave her the green light. \u201cPapa gave me a paint box and two Parisian sparkly shoe buckles,\u201d she recalled, \u201c[and] said: \u2018Now you are 21, you can choose your own career.\u2019 \u2018I\u2019m going to be a marine engineer,\u2019 I said, but I don\u2019t think he took me seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n It must have been a common sentiment among men. During the war, fewer than 100 women worked among the 100,000 men serving in the merchant navy. Despite the long odds, though, in 1916 Drummond donned overalls and began working her way up in engineering, starting ashore.<\/p>\n \u201cMummy got me an introduction to the manager of the Caledon Ship Works in Dundee,\u201d she recalled. And quickly, \u201cmy fellow workmates\u2026 got used to the idea of having a woman working with them\u201d.<\/p>\n During this period, doors began to open more widely. In 1919, Drummond was welcomed into the newly formed Women\u2019s Engineering Society, and two years later she became the first ever \u201clady member\u201d of the Institute of Marine Engineers (today the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science & Technology, or IMarEST).<\/p>\n At last, in 1922, Drummond started work at sea, joining the Blue Funnel Line SS Anchises<\/em> as 10th engineer \u2013 the lowest such rank aboard \u2013 for successive voyages to Australia.<\/p>\n She loved her travels: savouring snow on orange trees growing on the flanks of Mount Etna, Sicily; enjoying elaborate hospitality from distant distingu\u00e9<\/em> relatives; gathering wild flowers in remote groves; gazing at moonlit seascapes; visiting Gibraltar, \u201cjust like the picture I had drawn\u2026 from imagination\u201d.<\/p>\n Drummond\u2019s career was dealt a blow when Blue Funnel Line, fearing a scandal, raised concerns about her closeness with the (married) second engineer on the Anchises<\/em>; similar problems still face seawomen today when male shipmates mistake matey-ness for lust.<\/p>\n \u201cI could have told them it was not like that, but they wouldn\u2019t listen,\u201d she said. Forced to change companies, she joined British India Line\u2019s TSS Mulbera<\/em> as fifth engineer for a journey to east Africa. After three years on the Mulbera<\/em>, though, the second engineer\u2019s seemingly pathological hostility drove her out of that company, too.<\/p>\nSexism at sea<\/h3>\n