Maiden Voyages: women and the Golden Age of transatlantic travel

We often take for granted the advances that have been made by women in the past. Their struggle against much greater odds than we contend with nowadays, slowly opened doors that we just walk through without giving it much thought.This book charts the course of the large shipping companies and their employment of women to work on board their ships. At first they employed the widows of crew members who had died in service, thus giving the widows a way of supporting their families. Continuing through increased employment of women as the sailings became more popular and frequent and women passengers preferred to have stewardesses tend to their needs. Plus the increasing number of emigrants crowded down below decks were also better tended to by female crew. The book follows a number of the women who survived shipping disasters, two world wars, and onto today’s leisure cruises. Fascinating social history of women’s positions in all classes and their struggle to gain some independence. The book is excellently researched and reads easily.

I'd often thought that a really good social history of life on the transatlantic and other long-haul liners would be a wonderful book to have, but the devil of a book to research and write. Maiden Voyages is not that book. It crashes through the waves at pace, occasionally driven off course by a heavy swell, but deals very entertainingly with the life of women on board. It helped me to imagine the life of my great-aunt Blanche Carrally, who rose to the position of chief stewardess on the Aquitania in the last years of a career from which she retired in 1934. Very helpfully, Maiden Voyages pointed me in the direction of the memoirs of Violet Jessop, who occupied a similar role to Blanche. I have not yet finished reading, but barring any steep decline I expect the entertainment to continue till we dock safely in my native Liverpool.

Well written and enjoyable review of women at sea. Some celebrities but equally important crew members, anecdotal and engaging.

Very enjoyable book. Definitely a recommended read.

Most enjoyable read, full of interesting facts.

interesting and informative really enjoyed.

A fascinating book containing lots of little known facts and stories from women’s history excellently retold. Highly recommend for anyone interested in maritime or women’s history.

I loved this book so much. I wasn’t planning on writing a review for it right away, but I couldn’t wait to shout about it!This book is about ‘Women and the Golden Age of Transatlantic Travel’ (as the subtitle says) – this covers a fairly short span of actual time in which a huge amount happened. It opens with Violet Jessop (more about her later) joining her first ship as a stewardess in 1908 and ends with transatlantic ocean crossings being overtaken by air travel in the late 1950s.Only fifty years, but a period encompassing the end of the Edwardian era, World War I, the interwar years, World War II and its aftermath. And – wow – how the world changed in that time!I’ll admit, I was drawn to this book as I was hoping for stories of glitz and glamour – having seen the excellent ‘Ocean Liners’ exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum a few years ago, I wanted to read more about the people who travelled in such style and opulence. It absolutely covers that. However, this book is also so much more.What I loved is that it is the story of women of all ages, classes and backgrounds who chose – for various reasons – to travel by sea. Some, like Violet Jessop, worked aboard the ocean liners in order to support families back home. Others travelled on the ships to new lives in America, escaping the Old World and (in some cases) persecution before World War II or joining their GI husbands after the war. Luckier women, the wealthy and famous, relied on the ‘Atlantic Ferry’ for leisure or work purposes. A common theme though was the importance of the transatlantic crossing in the women’s lives.It would be hard to pick favourite bits from the huge range of material that Evans has squeezed into this book – I found myself being carried along with the narrative as Evans moved seamlessly between people’s lives, great ships, historical context and some great stories.I did love the story of the ‘Unsinkable’ Violet Jessop who managed to survive the sinking of Titanic and her sister ship, Britannic. She was also on board a third ship that was in a massive collision. Her fortitude and courage in the way she kept returning to sea was amazing, especially when she was made redundant by she shipping company at the start of World War I but retrained as a nurse to join a hospital ship in the Aegean Sea. An amazing woman – but one that I would have worried about sharing a ship with given the fates of her previous ones!Including Violet, this book is packed with amazing women who survived all kinds of hardships and who led fascinating lives. Although the conditions were often tough on the transatlantic route – for reasons of inhospitable weather or the treacherous conditions of war – these women continued to travel, work and live on board the ships.In short, I came to this book for the glamour of the ocean liner, but stayed for the immersive accounts of real women whose lives were connected by the need to cross the Atlantic. Indeed, the stories of bravery, determination and grit are staying with me now the book is finished.I’d wholeheartedly recommend the hardback version of this book (before the paperback is due for publication in June) – it has two sections of photographs that allow you to put faces to some of the women in the book, plus see some shipboard scenes. This is a glorious book and worth every penny I paid!