(Image Credit: Goodreads)

In this nonfiction book, author Siân Evans examines the lives and careers of women who faced the unknown and took jobs aboard passenger liners from the early 1900s until the end of the 1940s. In these four decades, women worked, fought, and preserved to have successful careers at sea and often pave the way for women in the coming decades. Yet, we hear surprisingly very little about these women in today’s literature and Ms. Evans attempts to fill this gap by sharing the stories of a variety of women, all in the context of the changing landscape of the twentieth century.

I have had a love and interest for the “golden age” of passenger liners from an early age, in part due to my fascination with the Titanic. However, as I have grown older and learned more about the other liners that traveled to and from Europe during this time, my interest has continued to grow. Yet, in my research I find very little information concerning the women who worked alongside their male counterparts. They are mentioned in generalizing terms and it is often hard to come by any real information about them. So when I discovered Ms. Evans’ book (courtesy of a YouTube video) I decided to impulsively pick this up.

For the most part I’m glad I did that. The book is very well-researched and looks at several different women during the time period. It is also a fairly easy read, with no too much jargon that can confuse the reader. I can honestly see myself returning to this book as a resource for future research and historical blog posts.

There are some aspects of the book I was not particularly fond of, mainly the broad generalization Ms. Evans gives to the male crew members and their behavior towards their female co-workers, and the focus on female passengers. For the first point, I found that Ms. Evans’ description of male crew members, particularly ship officers, to be a bit vague and perhaps not always 100% true. There is no doubt that these women faced sexism and harassment from their male counterparts, but I’ve also done a fair amount research to find that this wasn’t always the case and some of these individuals could be quite progressive in their way of thinking about females and their roles in society. Again, perhaps this was a rare occurrence but I thought the broad generalization could have been taken back a little bit. The second issue, concerning the focus on female passengers, I found a bit boring and repetitive. I was much more interested in learning about the female crew members than the women traveling aboard the passenger ships.

Overall this is an excellent resource for anyone wishing to not only learn more about passenger liners during this time period but also of the crew members who spent their lives sailing the seas, looking for adventure.

4 out of 5 stars