WOMEN SAILORS.

Shannon News, 11 March 1924, Page 3

WOMEN SAILORS.

RESTRICTIONS REMOVED.

The recent decision of the mercantile marine department of the Board of Trade, removing the sex disqualification in connection with their examinations, brings into prominence the interesting subject of women at sea. Whether women will now rush to embrace a calling which has its fair share of risks and hardships remains to be seen. In the past, however, not a few of the gentle' sex took to the water surreptitiously, and learned their business in the hard school of experience. The prowess of one female naval character (says “C.E.T.” in the “Blue Peter”) is borne testimony to by a monument in Chelsea Old Church. Anne Chamberlayne, “throwing off the habiliments of her sex,” adopted those of a mah, and gallantly fought in a fireship against the French in the 17th. century. The epitaph records: . . on the 30th. June, 1690, on board a fireship in man’s clothing, as a second pallas, chaste and fearless fought valiantly for six hours against the French, under the command of her brother—snatched, alas! how soon by sudden death unhonoured by a progeny like himself, worthy to rule the the main!—Returned from the engagement, she married to John Spragg, Esq.” In recounting the story the editor of the "Naval Chronicle” for 1814 added. “One hardly knows which to admire —the courage of the heroine or the gentleman who married her. If she happened to be a shrew. It would have been a Herculean task to have tamed her.” Quite a number of female sailors lived to ripe old age One such was Elizabeth Taylor, who, dying in 1887, was buried near Warrington. For years she affected masculine attire and was known as “Happy Ned." As a sailor she saw service during the American War of Secession, and afterwards found employment in the Liverpool Docks.