Stars to Steer By: Celebrating the 20th Century Women Who Went to Sea, by Julia Jones; Bloomsbury, Adlard Coles, 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, U.K.; 336 pp., $27.00
Available from The WoodenBoat Store
Julia Jones, who is the literary editor of Yachting Monthly and a longtime contributor to other yachting publications in the U.K., has researched a solid book on some of the accomplished British women sailors, from Lady Anna Brassey in the 1870s to Tracey Edwards in 2018. Although the subtitle specifies women who went to sea in the 20th century, the book encompasses a lot more: half of the 19th century and the early decades of the 21st century. The subjects are all British adventurers, as you might expect from Adlard Coles, a venerable British publisher.
The most interesting thing about this new book is, as often happens, the author herself. Julia Jones grew up aboard a stout wooden motorsailer named PETER DUCK, a Laurent Giles ketch built in 1946, and one of the first boats to be built after the end of the World War II. PETER DUCK was commissioned by the beloved Arthur Ransome, the author of a series of children’s adventure books, most notably Swallows and Amazons. One of his later books was titled PETER DUCK. Julia’s parents purchased the cruising ketch in 1957 and kept the boat on the River Deben in Woodbridge, on the East Coast of England across the North Sea from the Netherlands.
Julia was not quite three years old when the family began cruising aboard the 28' PETER DUCK, and she writes that the boat was the key element in her childhood. The photographs from that happy time show the author, probably age six, boldly steering while standing on one foot, and in another photo she is somersaulting around the pinrail, sea and sky beyond. She reports that much of her time aboard was spent reading in her bunk while mishaps occurred aboard ship, occupying her parents’ attention. To this she credits her love of reading, and a literary career in boating publications. But it gets better.