Maiden Voyages takes a look at the women who worked and sailed on ocean liners during the Golden Age. It is well researched and very interesting.

The women, who worked on these liners, paved the way for the women who work on cruise ships now
Only 2% of employees on cruise ships are women. The women who worked during the Golden Age faced ridicule from crew members. Many women left home to have a life on the sea to support their families.

When you read this book, you will meet some interesting women. The unsinkable lady, the first woman engineer, the stewardess who worked on the ships to support her ailing mother, nurses and many others. These women not only worked on the liners during peace time, but many worked on the ships during WWI and WWII in different positions.

If you like history, I recommend this book. I enjoyed it, but gave it 4 ⭐'s because in some places it I felt it got bogged down.

Thanks to Netgalley, the publisher and author for the Kindle Version of this book. Happy Reading 😊

This was a really interesting book for any history buffs out there! It was a fascinating look at the era of ocean liner travel and how women fit into that bygone time. The only woman covered in this book that I was very familiar with is Violet Jessie, so I enjoyed learning about so many other women and their many reasons for their choices and their often fascinating lives.

One of the other things I enjoyed most about this book was watching as changes came as we move from th me Edwardian era through WWII. It was like reading a little slice of history through women’s eyes.

I had previously read the author’s book ‘Life Below Stairs’ and if you enjoyed reading this book, I strongly encourage you to give that book a read as well! I’m looking forward to picking up many of Sian Evans’s other books which sound interesting too.

“Maiden Voyages” is a very well-written, very enjoyable 20th-Century history about ocean liners and the women who sailed on them as passengers or crew. It covers the period from the sinking of the Titanic to the 1950s and encompasses WWI (“The Great War”), the “Roaring Twenties,” the “Great Depression,” WWII, and the post-war years. Author Siân Evans takes us aboard some of the most famous vessels of those times: Titanic, Lusitania, Olympic, Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, Normandie, Ile de France, Bremen; and gives us glimpses into the lives of celebrities such as Tallulah Bankhead (star of Hitchcock’s “Lifeboat”), Hedy Lamar (Hollywood A-lister and inventor of technology now used in cell phones), Gloria Swanson (“Sunset Boulevard”), reporter Martha Gellhorn, and Wallace Simpson (for whom King Edward VIII abdicated the English Throne).

But “Maiden Voyages” is not a “gossipy tell-all.” In addition to recounting incidents involving some of the rich and famous, it covers a variety of less famous women involved in business, commerce, and design as well as working women who served aboard-ship as stewardesses, “conductors,” chaperones, and even engineers. It is a serious examination of how these women and the ships they sailed affected history; and how the industry contributed to the expansion of women’s independence, their participation in endeavors that had once been for men only, and the furtherance of their careers.

I was most impressed by the range of topics Ms. Evans managed to cover, including ship-building and design; disasters at sea; ship-board life and the differences between 1st, 2nd, and 3rd class accommodations; crew accommodations; immigration/emigration; post-WWI economies, crossings as generators/facilitators of business opportunities and contacts, Edward VIII’s abdication (and how it might not have occurred but for one particular crossing), the rise of Nazi Germany and the role ships played carrying Jewish refugees to new lands; conversion of liners into troop transports; convoying and German submarine “wolf packs” during WWII, Prime Minister Churchill traveling under an assumed name; post-war reunification of families; and much more.

Kudos to Ms. Evans for what, IMO, is a 5-star performance. Indeed, I liked “Maiden Voyages” so much that I may go back and read it again.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for inviting me to read an advance copy of this work. The above review is my own, independent opinion.

Pros :: Really enjoyed this book! So interesting how the author intermingled less famous people (Violet Jessops, The Unsinkable Stewardess,” or Edith Sowerbutts) and the well-known like Hedy Lamar who “staked everything she possessed on a single transatlantic ticket in order to secure a film contract,” or Hilda James, the world champion swimmer who reflects how hard life can be and yet the ships were able to provide her opportunities to transcend her difficult beginnings to Martha Gellhorn, the fabulous WWII correspondent, and Tallulah Bankhead to pivot to background info on the Queen Mary (Cunard ship.) Nice summaries at the end of each chapter. Well written; reads smoothly and enough historical information accompanied by statistical data to make this well balanced without becoming dry. Hope this author will write a similar book about ships going across the Pacific. Also intrigued about the authors family connections to the shipping industry as well — well placed and interesting. “For many, the Queen Mary had come to embody the triumph of dogged determination and willpower over the enervating effect of the Great Depression.” Page 219

Cons :: Nothing

Cover art :: 5 out of 5 Gorgeous!

This is a non-fiction book which is something I don’t usually read but when St Martin’s Press asked if I would read it I did so. It is an interesting story of the numerous women that worked on ocean liners throughout the glory days of sea travel.

As it has been with other occupations women were not utilized or paid as they should have been. Reading the harrowing tails that some of these women endured made me wonder why they would want to return to sea but the lure of the sea kept them going back.

The details on the ship building was not all that informative as it doesn’t interest me but the rest of it was interesting and informative not to mention educational.

I believe this book would be of great interest to those that like ocean liners, WWI and WWII, the women’s movement and the rich and famous of olde.

This was a fun and intriguing book, as it focused on women working at sea, usually on a ocean liner, both before and after the Great War, during the heyday of those big ships. After WWI, many women had lost husbands, fathers, fiances, etc., and needed to find work to survive on their own, and some decided to try their luck at sea. They worked long, hard hours, but found the independence they wanted, as well as the opportunity to see some of the world. So many men from England and the Commonwealth died during the war that there simply were too few men of that generation for all the women left behind, and some were able to meet and marry men they worked with on board ship. A few women were featured , which I liked, as it really personalized the whole experience. Overall, a great book about a vanished age.

Kindle Copy for Review from NetGalley and St. Martin Press.

I received a free, advance copy of this book and this is my unbiased and voluntary review.

It is about a quick historical journey of maiden voyages and the women who worked and travelled on them. A fascinate read that will sweep you into a world of ocean liners.

The famous women who used them as a mode to travel while the cross the oceans. In a world before the use of planes, we see both worlds as they collide.

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I found this book very educational and extremely well researched, many times quoting from journals and interviews of the area. It describes the sailings of numerous very well known ships, such as the Titanic, the Carpathia, the Lusitania and others and also lesser known ships. The lives of many of the real women sailing the ships as stewardesses, servants, passengers are described in detail. I found similarities to our current situation with immigration to that of the restrictions made in the early 1920’s.
Overall, a great educational book. However, I found it was overly repetitive describing both first class and third class ( steerage) conditions over and over and following the passengers after arrival was too much unneeded detail, not really the subject of the book. Overall three stars. Thanks NetGalley, the publisher and the author for the advanced copy.

“Maiden Voyages: Magnificent Ocean Liners and the Women Who Traveled and Worked Aboard Them,” is a fascinating glimpse into the lives of the newly independent women who traveled across the Atlantic on the great ocean liners between the time of the Two World Wars and shortly after the Second World War. The book features biographical sketches of well-known women, such as Tallulah Bankhead, Josephine Baker, and Hedy Lamarr, as well as lesser known women, such as stewardesses, mechanics, a swim instructor and a “conductress,” who cared for unaccompanied women and children on the North Atlantic route.

This interwar period has always held a fascination for me, as its vibrant culture and frenetic party scenes provided such a sharp contrast to the austerity and pathos of the two world wars. I am also particularly interested in the ocean liners of that period, so I was overjoyed to be provided an ARC copy of the book for my review. The book was very entertaining and enlightening, especially with its emphasis on women’s new-found independence following the greater roles they were provided during World War I. I particularly enjoyed the chapters which focused on the Queen Mary, describing the history of its construction, the women who designed certain of the ship’s interiors, as well as the celebrities who voyaged on her. In addition, the author does an excellent job of depicting the Queen Mary’s service during the war as a troop transport ship, and the little known role it played in saving German Jews escaping Nazi Germany.

I had one minor quibble with the book, and that was an error I found in Chapter 6, in which the author incorrectly referred to the “Majestic” as the sister ship to the ill-fated Titanic and Britannic. The actual surviving sister ship was the “Olympic.” (In fact, these three ships were categorized as the Olympic Class ships). This error was an apparent oversight, as in a later chapter, the author correctly identified the Olympic as the sister ship. Hopefully this type of error will be corrected before the book is published.

Notwithstanding the one issue identified above, I found the book entertaining and enlightening and would highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in the role that transatlantic ocean liners played in offering women social and financial independence.

Maiden Voyages by Sian Evans

368 Pages
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Release Date: August 10, 2021

Nonfiction (Adult), History, Travel

This book covers the women that worked in the ocean liner industry beginning in the early twentieth century.

Chapter 1: Floating Palaces and the ‘Unsinkable’ Violet Jessop
Chapter 2: From the Ritz to the Armistice
Chapter 3: Sail Away: Post-war Migration and the Escape from Poverty
Chapter 4: The Roaring Twenties
Chapter 5: Edith Sowerbutts and Her Contemporaries
Chapter 6: For Leisure and Pleasure
Chapter 7: Depression and Determination
Chapter 8: The Slide to War
Chapter 9: Women Under Fire
Chapter 10: Romance, Repatriation and Recovery
Conclusion: Sailing into the Sunset


I was unaware that women were required on ocean liners to act as companions and chaperons to unaccompanied women and minors. These are the women included in the book.

Josephine Baker
Tallulah bankhead
Victoria Drummond
Thelma Furness
Martha Gellhorn
Hilda James
Violet Jessop
Nin Kilburn
Hedy Lamarr
Mary Anne MacLeod
Maida Nixson
Marie Riffelmacher
Edith Sowerbutts

The research on the women and the working conditions was impeccable. The author presents the information in very easy to read format. I learned so much about the women and the industry. If you enjoy reading about women’s history or travel stories, I believe you will enjoy this book as well.

This book provides a fascinating glimpse at the by-gone age of ocean liner journeys, when the only way to travel across the world was by ship. Though I’ve read several history books about ocean voyages and their perils, the focus on women as staff and passengers was a refreshing perspective. Since opportunities for female workers were scarce in those days, a stewardess position aboard an ocean-going ship was highly sought after.

Evans outlines the stories of these women in a compelling, easy to read style. I admired them not only for their bravery – it took a lot of guts to sail across the world with the threat of storms, shipwrecks, and looming icebergs, not to mention the cramped and closed quarters – but also for the pioneering, adventurous spirit many of them seemed to possess. In short, this a very informative, well researched work of history.

For a history buff, this would probably be the icing on the cake. And I do like historical books. I’ve read extensively about WWII. But I just couldn’t get into this one. It’s about ocean liner travel and the roles women played. My Mother taught me that if I couldn’t say anything nice about something, to keep my mouth shut! I’m going to listen to my Mother on this one. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read an advance copy for my honest review.

Women have worked on ships since Victorian times; Dickens mentions gratitude for the woman who assisted his family. The numbers rose and the types of jobs during the twentieth century. Sian Evans in this work profiles the working class women who found financial independence on the ships as well as the women they cared for. Recognizable names are scattered throughout, women who made a name in entertainment, politics, reporting and royalty. The work is filled with facts, anecdotes, quotes and much research to support their stories. Individual ships are highlighted and their long or short careers through years of war and peace. Many of the working women survived sinkings, along with Prohibition and the Depression, learning new skills such as nursing, secretarial, cruise directing and mariner positions. They adapted as well as the ships to society’s needs. On the whole, the lives of these women prove far more interesting than their “onboard” celebrities for they demonstrate tenacity, courage, creativity and sacrifice.

If you like historical books about ships then you will love this novel. The author touched on the sinking of The Titanic and even flappers from the 1920's.

Depending on your interest, you might favor certain chapters over an other. I don't know why but I didnt even consider that trafficking and prostitution would be a problem on a transcontinental ship. Women chaperones helped prevent this. You can learn more through one of the stories of a chaperone.

I was disappointed that pictures were not included. Though the authors uses excellent descriptions, I would have liked to see pictures of some of the ships, that I had not heard of,

Thank you to St. Martin's publishing company for an ARC review of this novel. My review will also be shown on Goodreads.

Maiden Voyages told the story of the rise of women during ocean voyages from the Titanic to wartime. The stories were very interesting and very well researched. The intersection of the stories really tied the book together well and I found myself wanting to see what came next.

A highly entertaining and informative social history of the women who worked and traveled on board ocean liners during the golden age of transatlantic travel. Through a series of biographical sketches covering women of all classes, the author shows how ocean travel, particularly between the two World Wars, afforded women a level of independence that they often could not attain on land. Readers are introduced to, among others, the “unsinkable” Violet Jessup, a stewardess who survived the sinking of the Orinoco, the Titanic, and the Britannic; Victoria Drummond, a ship’s engineer during World War II; Edith Sowerbutts, a conductress for unaccompanied women and children resettling in Canada, Hilda James, a champion swimmer who escaped a physically abusive family situation by becoming a swim instructor for Cunard Lines, and Thelma Furness, Gloria Vanderbilt’s twin sister and the longstanding mistress of the Price of Wales. Her sea-borne love affair with Aly Khan led Edward VIII to find a new mistress, Wallis Simpson for whom he would abdicate the throne.

In addition to showing how sea voyages altered the lives of women who worked and traveled on the ocean liners, the author also highlights how the tumultuous events and seismic changes of this era altered sea travel. For example, the sinking of the Titanic led to a new focus on ship safety. Too woo back reluctant travelers, the industry added more lifeboats to existing ships and changed the structural design of new vessels. Modifications to the structural design of the Aquitania, which was already under construction when the Titanic sank in 1912, included a double hull and watertight compartments so that a collision was less likely to sink the ship. The growing number of women taking to the sea also transformed ship design. In 1874, Cunard introduced the first lounge exclusively for women and in 1929, Elsie MacKay, the third daughter of Lord Inchcape—the chairman of the steamship line P & O—was appointed to oversee the interior design of twelve of the company’s liners. The revamped ships included modern conveniences such as passenger lifts, electric radiators, and air ventilation, as well as furnishings inspired by various periods in British history. Similarly, the public spaces and staterooms of the Aquitania were specifically designed to please women—so much so that it was labeled “the Ladies Ship.” Of course, this level of luxury did not extend to those traveling in third class. Cabin accommodations for these passengers were on the lower decks and initially consisted of a windowless cell containing two rows of upper and lower bunks, separated by a toilet seat placed over a bucket. Yet, by the early twentieth century, many liners began introducing improvements here too, prompted by new business possibilities.

War also transformed the liners; ships, such as the Aquitania and the Queen Mary, were transformed into troop carriers and/or hospital ships. Many of these repurposed passenger ships did not survive the wars, prompting a postwar boom in ship building that incorporated new technologies developed during the two world wars. The author also tells of the many Jews in the wake of Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 who sought escape from persecution and death through transatlantic travel. One such traveler was the Viennese-born actor and inventor Hedy Lamarr (Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler). Lamarr became a Hollywood sensation in the 1930s and was the co-inventor of an early version of the frequency-hopping spread spectrum communication, originally intended for torpedo guidance. Through the eyes of Edith Sowerbutts, the reader also experiences the ill-fated voyage of the City of Benares. The ship had been charged with transporting children from London to Canada; it was thought that they would be safer there. However, on its fourth day at sea, it was torpedoed by a German U-boat; most of the children did not survive.

Yet despite the many stories of the two world wars and of how Prohibition in the United States impacted foreign liners, there is one noticeable gap in the narrative. We hear little or nothing about the “Spanish flu” pandemic. Yet, without doubt, it was ocean-going vessels that contributed to the spread of this disease. Thus, it is rather surprising that this story goes uncommented on. Perhaps, this silence reflects a silence in the primary documents that the author consulted. The book is based largely on English-language sources, and both the US and British government were keen to suppress stories that they perceived as a threat to the public morale; this included news of the pandemic. In Britain, Sir Arthur Newsholme, chief medical officer of the British Local Government Board went so far as to suggest it was unpatriotic to express concern about the flu, rather than the war, and the 1918 Sedition Act had a similar effect on reporting about the flu in the United States.

Yet, this oversight does not detract seriously from the narrative. Of more concern is the author’s focus on the “life-affirming” dimension of sea travel. Although she notes the back-breaking labor that women performed on ships, their substandard wages compared to that of their male colleagues, the threat that sea travel posed to their on-land reputations, and the dangers (from storms to abusive male co-workers), her decision to focus almost exclusively on the success stories, that is, women whose lives largely were transformed for the better by their experiences at sea, results in a somewhat lopsided narrative of how transatlantic travel impacted women’s lives. We hear only briefly of the women who gave up everything for a ticket to the new world only to have their hopes dashed at Ellis Island. We hear nothing of the lives of the single women who disembarked from ships with high hopes only to be pushed into prostitution. Without these stories to counterbalance the success stories, the picture painted is likely too optimistic. Still, this book is well worth reading, as it gives the reader a glimpse into a bygone age of transatlantic travel and the women who benefited from it.

Unfortunately this book isn’t for me. I found it rather dry. I thought I would get first person stories; instead I found small, bite-sized quotes and far too many statistics.

this was an interesting read for fans of early cruise line history and the women who served on them.
Violet Jessop who survived 3 different sinking voyages is one of the women profiled.
An Upstairs/Downstairs for cruising fans.

Maiden Voyages manages to be both a romantic and starry-eyed travel adventure as well as an ambitious and sometimes sobering account of women's lives at sea. The book works it way through the heyday of the grand ships, starting in the late nineteenth century and concluding in the nineteen fifties, when international air travel reduced ships to a pleasure option. Evans focuses primarily on women, showing the battle initially to serve on a ship, to roles specifically for women serving female passengers and their children across the different classes. It covers the dangers travelers undertook during the World Wars, and the pleasures and excitement of celebrities and royals, and the excessive luxuries the ships were fitted out with to ironically enough, help passengers they were even at sea. Unique and fascinating, Maiden Voyages is a quick-reading non-fiction story perfect for anyone fascinated with nautical history, women's history and history of the earlier years of the twentieth century.

Since we live in a predominately "traveling on a jet plane" world these days, it's been easy for me to forget - to overlook, rather - that transatlantic travel was the major and most popular form of exodus transportation for over half of the 20th century. Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr fell in love while on a luxury ocean liner in An Affair to Remember, which is an old film I adore, but I never gave much thought as to why that setting could be or had been culturally significant. Nor did I take adequate time to assess what that said about, how it rolled into, so to speak, the social history of the time period.

Similarly, I don't think I was conscious of how profoundly the Golden Age of Ocean Travel affected women in particular. At least, I wasn't prior to reading this.

Maiden Voyages helped to broaden my mind in that respect through use of well-researched history and anecdotal exposition.

At face value, what I learned from this book is that transatlantic travel from the 1900-1950's altered entire trajectories for women. It changed many of their lives. Evolved gender roles. Set new standards for employment. Going deeper than that, though, the female passengers and crew members who sailed on these vessels were privy to all sorts of opportunities that had never been extended to them before this. Jobs afloat, for one. Some financial independence. Even a semblance of freedom, with the ability to cross seas, to visit countries around the world, whether it was for work or for leisure.

Some of these women worked as stewardess, conductresses. Others were nurses or engineers or hairdressers. There were those who survived shipwrecks, like "the Unsinkable Stewardess," Violet Jessop, who lived through three, and more still who lived through torpedo bombings, smuggling incidents, or hurricanes. Picture Brides traveled across oceans to marry men in foreign lands they'd never met, never seen, except in pictures they'd exchanged in letters.

Around the time of the Great Wars, there were influxes of migrant and refugee women who were looking for better lives, fleeing persecution, especially from Germany once it fell under Hitler's Nazi regime. Luxury "floating hotel" cruises appealed to the rich and famous, to film stars and aristocrats and other celebrities, many of whom had their favorite ships or scurried onboard to indulge and imbibe during America's Prohibition Era. The author even makes the case that Thelma Furness's sea-borne love affair may have been a catalyst for Prince Edward's eventual abdication from the British royal throne.

Amazing!

In other words, whether they were passengers or seafarers, all the women who traveled by sea in the Golden Age had their own experiences, motivations, circumstances, or necessities for doing so. This book did a good job of giving voice to that. Telling those untold stories.

Informative as well as absorbing! Recommended to those of you who have an interest in women's history.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sara Beth over at St. Martin's Press for the ARC.