Barges and Flying Boats Combine in Gay Memories of Adventurous Local Lass

Evening Star, Issue 25895, 12 September 1946, Page 11

Barges and Flying Boats Combine in Gay Memories of Adventurous Local Lass

TOPICS FOP WOMEN

A river boat plying on the canals between the Regent Canal Docks, down Limehouse way, in London, and Birmingham, was home to a Dunedin girl, Miss Cecily Ramsay, for over two years during the war. It was a fascinating life, she told a.‘.Star ’ reporter to-day. A friend had. told her airily that to be a canal boat woman all you needed to do was to sail along the canal with your hand on the tiller, but she found that there was much more than that in the business.

“ How did you learn to be a boat woman? ” asked the interviewer.

“ Mostly by bitter experience. 1 was supposed to have a trainer on my first two trips, but he got measles and so I just had to learn it as I could. And it was quite a technique manoeuvring through the 150 "locks between London and Birmingham. There was a crew of three women on two boats, one motor driven and the other in tow. We did everything from supervising the loading of goods in the south and coal in the north, to steering, cleaning, and cooking. And we usually worked 12 to 14 hours a day.” Miss Ramsay has just arrived to visit her parents, Mr and Mrs Douglas Ramsay, after an absence of eight years, during which she. has had all sorts of interesting experiences. Before the war, and. indeed, until a few days lipfor the outbreak of hostilities, she was in Germany, learning the language, and after peace was declared she. went hack with Unrra. “ When I joined Unrra I ; was appointed to headquarters at Versailles, but,” she added in a delightfully vague manner, “ I actually

landed in the American recruiting office for relief workers in Paris. Paris was sad and depressing—and full of Americans. So I got myself transferred to the headquarters of the American zone in Germany, at Wiesbaden, and later the French zone headquarters, which eventually moved to Haslach, in the Black Forest.” It was from Haslach that Miss Ramsay made a trip into Poland, part of the way on a repatriation train, and in Warsaw she saw the terrible devastation wrought by the systematic German destruction of the. city. “It was only a skeleton of a city,” she said, “ but the people were very brave. Yet, in the restaurants, if you had enough money you could buy magnificent food. A meal would cost the equivalent of a whole week’s wages for an ordinary worker.”

After a year with Unrra, Miss Ramsay returned to England, and on her way back was astonished to see how much food there was in Belgium, compared with the rest of Europe. There was “ a wonderful black market there, too,” she said. “A fairy tale,” was how Miss Ramsay described her trip from England'to New Zealand on the last new flying boat to be delivered, to Tasman Empire Airways. The skipper of the boat to Australia, Captain H. L. M. Glover, also came from Dunedin Two other former Dunedin residents, Mr A. ,T. Riddell, of the.catering staff of the British Overseas Airways Corporation, and Flight-lieutenant G. A.. Patrick, D. 5.0., D.F.C. and bar, who is on loan to the 8.0.A.C. from the R.A.F., flew to tlie Dominion in the same boat.

Leaving London in the morning, she was dancing in Cairo that night. The Sphinx and the Pyramids, the tiny island of Bahrein in the Persian Gulf, Karachi, the beautiful pagoda in Rangoon, the famous Raffles Hotel in Singapore, Sourabaya, Darwin, and Sydney passed like flashes on a screen as the Sandringham flying boat winged its way to Auckland.