Opening slide. Walk on in the tube map apron and let the audience make the connection between the apron and the screen before saying anything. This is the ordinary TfL Tube map (April 2026). Ask them to hold the picture in their heads: we are going to change every name on it. Script section 0.

Same map, every station renamed. The Engineering Icons Tube Map, made by Transport for London with the Royal Academy of Engineering for National Engineering Day, 1 November 2023. 274 stations, 274 engineers, one theme per line: the Central line is Life and Health, the Northern line Computing and AI, the Piccadilly line Transport, Mobility and Flight. Harry Beck, who drew the original diagram, is Oxford Circus; Brunel is Ealing Common; Ada Lovelace is Warren Street. Somewhere on this map is a marine engineer. Where? Isamabard Kingdom Brunel Christopher Wren Robert Stephenson Sir James Dyson Victoria Drummond

Zoom in. A red ring closes in on her name a second after the slide comes up, then pulses. Piccadilly line, dark blue, the Transport, Mobility and Flight theme. Green Park has become Sir Frank Whittle, inventor of the jet engine. One stop on towards Knightsbridge, where Hyde Park Corner should be: Victoria Drummond. The small four-pointed star beside her name means she received a UK national honour, her MBE of 1941. So who was she, and how did a woman born in 1894 end up on this map next to Frank Whittle? That is the next thirty minutes.

The whole arc on one slide, so the audience knows where we are going. Do not read it out; point at 31 times and say "hold on to that number". My daughter would like the credit for the idea of the background. This is an overview of where we we are going. Childhood - Apprenticeship - First ships - Chiefs examination 31 attempts - War Years - Chief at last - Legacy

Why Victoria Alexandrina Her father Captain Malcolm Drummond, Groom in Wwaiting to Queen Victoria. She was one of Queen Victoria's godchildren. They were mostly named Victoria Alexandrina after the queen who was Alexandrina Victoria or Victor Albert after her beloved husband. Her grandmother who was a noted wood carver and decorated much of the family home notice her neat fingers.

Megginch Castle, the family home, above; the three sisters Aged 11 at the local engineering works/garage in neibouring Village of Errols She is reputed to has asked How can I learn to be an engineer and go to sea. AT 12 she won a competition for a model boat Presented at Court 1913, 1914 the start of world war 1, "the end of a golden age".

Whe worked in a garge in Perth, a local garage. She was laid up after a 10tonne lorry fell on her but suffered nothing worse that a broken collar bone and a couple of broken ribs. Mr Malcolm the alcholic engineer was her teacher for a couple of years until he got fired and she left. Mr Malcolm's advice: keep all your fingers, a hand for yourself and a hand for your master. She then left to be an apprentice in the local Caledon shipyard. With the war, the suffragette movement this was an avenue now open to her. The two-inch steel cube filed to within two thousandths. Script section 3.

And there was a promise. On the platform at Dundee West station her father had introduced her to Mr Wirtley, a director of the Blue Funnel Line. "Let me know when you have finished your apprenticeship, and I promise you, I will give you a ship." Mr Wirtley died before she finished. In 1922, in the slump, the Caledon yard laid her off. She went to Liverpool, and Blue Funnel honoured a dead man's promise. Blue Funnel's steamers were coal burners. The Anchises had twenty-four fires. She signed on as Tenth Engineer at ten pounds a month. "I don't think I shall ever forget," she wrote, "the feeling of excited elation on signing my first articles." (page 75) It was only afterwards that she went back to the office: "Excuse me, sir, but I forgot to ask where she is going?" "Australia!" was the reply. (page 77)

They sailed from Glasgow on the second of September 1922, by way of Cape Town to Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. She kept the four-to-eight watch, scaled evaporators, overhauled pumps, and measured the coal in the bunkers with the Chief. A fortnight out she slipped at the top of the fifty-foot ladder in the after well, and a greaser caught her by the shoulder. The Chief banned her from the well. The passengers were a separate world. One lady said to her, "You must find it hot working in that, but I suppose you wear white linen in the engine room!" (page 82) In Brisbane she was the guest of the Governor. The Australian Institute of Engineers gave her a gold brooch in the shape of a rudder. She came home to Birkenhead in January 1923 and wrote: "I felt quite proud of myself, having made a voyage half round the world as Tenth Engineer. No one ever thought I would stick it out, but I did." (page 92)

She made five more voyages in the Anchises. The Second Engineer, Mr Quayle, whom she called the Hedgehog, became the closest friend of her working life. He was a standout perons He teased her without mercy. The Chief once wrote a mock entry in the log: "Between Cape Town and Adelaide Miss Drummond attacked the Second Engineer and hit him in the engine room. You will be put in irons and tried in Australia." (page 95) The evidence was a scratch from a file. The 1924 voyage went east, to Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai. At Singapore a telegram told her that her father had died. The engine room stood at a hundred and six to a hundred and eighteen degrees. "I only fainted three times from the heat," she wrote. "All the same I did not miss my watch." (page 107) They were close friends and he came to stay at Megginch Castle. Mr Freeman of the Blue Funnel line feared that Mr Quayle and Victoria were too close and told her that it would be her last voyage.

A sea coming over the bulwark, photographed from the deck. Let it sit while the Anchises voyages are told.

Every attack, injury and illness the book records, from childhood to old age; the archive, build/attacks-and-injuries.pdf from task attacks, has each with page and quote. The kinds sum to 107 because two events are both injury and illness. Injury is mostly engine-room work. Assault is mostly ashore in port, robbery and menace; aboard, the hostility took the form of harassment. Enemy action is all at sea, 1940 to 1944.

At the end of that voyage she asked Blue Funnel for a reference to sit her Second Engineer's certificate, and they let her go. When she had passed, at the third attempt, they would not take her back. "It was a great shock to me that they would not have me. I suppose they feared a scandal." (page 112) It was a three day exam and she was on the only one in her cohort to pass. She was now the first woman in Britain to hold a Board of Trade certificate as a marine engineer. It was October 1926, the month she turned thirty-two. Next, the Mulbera's map, and the Tiger, Mr Lamb. Script section 5.

The Tiger: Mr Lamb, Second Engineer of the Mulbera, April 1927 to December 1928. The book never says outright that the Tiger is Mr Lamb; the name first appears as "Tiger Cat" on page 123, in a paragraph about "the Second", and from then the two names are used in one breath (page 139). For a voyage he was helpful: called her up to see Stromboli, lent her his green glasses in the glare at Port Sudan, let her off watch for the crossing of the Line (pages 114 to 118). Then, homeward through Malta: "a wolf in sheep's clothing. He told me on the first day that he didn't want me there and since then had been alternately kind or nasty, often saying things against my work to the others. Once or twice he swore at me and he was always shouting at me, which wore down my nerves." (page 121) His weapon was the Second's say over her work, never an open fight: night work in every Indian port, an 84 hour week in Calcutta with about fifteen days of nights and no sleep possible by day (pages 135 to 136, 141); the worst job in the worst weather, brass strips on the turbine casing in a Biscay gale while he lay seasick (page 133); shore leave refused or given rudely (pages 143, 145); stories about her spread to the others, so that she dared not ask for leave at home (page 140). He hid from the Chief a piece of jointing the London shore staff had forced into the LP turbine casing, and came round "at white heat" when she mentioned it; the Chief said she was right to, there could have been serious consequences (page 131). Two men checked him: Mr Stuart, the Chief, who took her to dine ashore in Calcutta over his row and told her to come to him if the Second was rude again (pages 128, 145); and a Governor's nephew at Madras, Captain Goschen, who "got it fixed up with the Tiger" (page 149). Once, to her surprise, he found her a passenger cabin with two fans to sleep in: "I suspected they had been going at him for treating me unfairly." (page 142) Leaving, December 1928: "if it had not been for the terrible Tiger and the lack of leave when we came home, perhaps I would have stayed on her longer." (page 149) Thirty years on, in the Shun Fung at Suez: "in the Mulbera with the Tiger I had thought, 'Some day I shall go through the Canal as Chief.' And now there were so many times that I had." (page 319)

About midnight in Madras I was sent for to repair a passenger’s fan and light. When I was in the middle of doing this the passenger, an old very irate Indian Colonel, came in and demanded, “What are you?” I replied, “An Engineer Officer of this ship.” He said, “But can you do it? Can you mend it?” I said, “That is what I am here for.” He then became very polite and explained that he had been chasing mosquitoes with his bath towel. She left the Mulbera in December 1928 with the sea time for a Chief's certificate and a reference calling her "of exemplary character".

Golden Fisheries at 143 Kennington Road with Frances. The Anschluss: she refused the salute and hit a soldier with "my strong left hand". "There were so many people, we did not know which one he was." Script section 6.

Hitler enters Vienna, Monday 14 March 1938, photographed by Victoria leaning out with Frances holding her legs. The trip, from the book: February 1938: commissions for the fairs at Leipzig, Prague and Vienna, enough to pay for the trip. Page 162. Early March: Hook boat to Dresden, Hotel Union, the Leipzig fair daily. Page 162. Tuesday 8 March: Prague in falling snow. She buys in machine tools, Frances in textiles. Page 163. Friday 11 March: afternoon train to Vienna; the crowd demands the salute and they refuse. Pages 163 to 164. Saturday 12 March: German troops cross the border; Goebbels on the wireless. Pages 165 to 167. Sunday 13 March: the Vienna fair opens, "a complete flop"; Frances spends her schillings before the mark comes in. Page 168. Monday 14 March: Hitler drives past at about 3 pm; the Hook Express home that night. Pages 169 to 170.

When the war started she did her bit and became an air raid warden. She talked to the Board of Trade trying to get a job but failed to get anywhere. She still hankered after the sea and hand round the docks. In a cafe she was hailed; "Hello Fifth", it was the donkeyman from the Mulbera. The donkeyman was the engineer who had sole charge of the small auxiliary engine. They caught up and he said "If the Red Duster won't have you, go foreign.", meaning the if you can't get a ship get a ship with a foreign registration. He introduced her to the owner of a number of small tramp ships and she was immediately engaged on the Har Zion first, later lost with all hands but one. Naval inspectors "amazed and disgusted". Script section 7.

As a talented engineer she was able to get the absolute best out of these engines.

She was a great engineer and coaxed 12.5 knots out of this ship which was its faster recorded speed

While in Norfolk her sisters house was bombed, luckily they were out of the house. The goldfish were also unharmed and transferred to their cousin Maurice Drummond Head of Scotland Yard for safe keeping.

Home in a convoy of 39 ships from Halifax; four arrived.

"You would make a fine bonfire!" Captain Charlton: "Well done, Miss Drummond." She was pleased to have survived the war.

The tanker Karabagh, 1944 to 1946, on her own map: Tilbury to Onega on the White Sea, home to Portsmouth by May 1944; the D-Day run, Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight to the Normandy beachhead, June to September 1944; Newport to Antwerp for VE Day, then Kiel and Grangemouth; and the last voyage, Houston, Liverpool, the Bouches du Rhone, Haifa, through the Canal to Abadan and home to Liverpool, February 1946.

Hickory Mount. Remained in the US. Came back on the Acquitania. Very long 46 hour journey with water and no food with the Mate and 57 Indian crew who were unscrewing everything they could find as souvenirs. MV Bancinu very small, more tug sized as second engineer. Spent a month but broke her wrist before setting off.

She had passed the Panamanian Board of Trade Chiefs exam which had the advantage of not having her name or secon on the exam paper. In 1956 she gave up the examination for good, page 280. Script section 8.

The MV Lenamill Chief: "I hate having you here". "All right, get another Second." The hurricane with 9,000 tons of iron ore.

The Elsie Beth, August to December 1949: London, Hull, Trondheim, Onega on the White Sea, where she got frostbite, Alesund, Dublin. The two photographs are of the ship's crew at Trondheim in 1949, by Schrøder, Sverresborg Trøndelag Folkemuseum; the museum names but we have. I like this this picture as she looks so happy.

She came on board this as chief engineer calling at all sorts of lovely places in the Mediterranean for expenses which she didn't get. Squadron Leader Williamson

Adventuress as at the start

Adventuress envoyage

Adventuress envoyage

She came on board this as chief engineer calling at all sorts of lovely places in the Mediterranean for expenses which she didn't get. Squadron Leader Williamson Came home via the Orient express

The bunch of flowers from the crew. Thawing pipes at Dairen with a paraffin torch. "So often I had thought, some day I shall go through the Canal as Chief. And now there were so many times that I had." Script section 9. Leaving the Shun Fung, 1 November 1961, "the best ship that I have ever had": her boy Tsu came to the door of the Marine Office in tears. "Take me with you, Chief, take me with you! Never another Chief the same, Chief very, very good." Page 336.

Mr Yann came aboard the Shun Fung the day she paid off and asked her to join the Santa Granda as Chief, £50 a week, six months. At the Black Pier she saw a 10,000 ton Liberty ship "looking her age and red with rust from stem to stern without a scrap of paint on her. She looked dirty and rotten, which she proved to be." Even the porters carrying her luggage cried "Is that the ship?!" She asked when the survey was due. March. "Will I be kept on for the survey or paid off?" "Oh yes, yes, you will take her through the survey." So on she signed. Pages 336 to 337. 13 December, 2 am, pumping continuously in a head sea: the Captain asked her down No 1 hold. She slid down the mountain of iron ore and saw ten frames corroded right through at the bottom and broken across, the plating working backwards and forwards on them, warm to her hand where it flexed below the weld. With an ore cargo "she would go down very quickly, maybe in only a few minutes". Make for the nearest port; a double watch in the hold night and day; shore the frames. Four days to Whampoa. "I was never more glad in my life to have arrived at any port." Pages 340 to 341. Sunday 25 March, the last lap to Hong Kong, the Captain laid up with a broken foot from falling down a hold doing the Mate's job: she told him she did not see how they could get through a Lloyd's inspection, the ship was so rotten and carrying ore had strained her badly. In Hong Kong on the 27th the owners came aboard but nobody would say what repairs were to be done or when the survey would start. Then the Captain came in: they were not having Lloyd's, they had changed their insurance to a French company, "so they got out of the survey that way and avoided doing the repairs to make her safe and seaworthy". Her Second: "I may get money but if I am dead it is no use to me. I will leave with you. No Chief, no ship." On the 30th she told the Captain she would pay off next day; by rights she should have been on pay to May. Pages 349 to 350. All night packing and finishing her abstracts; fuel, oil and stores correct to a figure. The Captain asked her to stay a few days. The crew gave her a silver junk in a glass case, the carpenter made a box for it packed with engine room waste, and she sailed away in the wallah wallah with the Captain and his wife waving from the deck. Aged 67. "This had been my last voyage and the Santa Granda my last ship, but I did not know that then." Pages 350 to 351. Script section 9.

The old lady at the annual meetings with an exercise book. The Institute's Victoria Drummond Room was in the Memorial Building at 76 Mark Lane, left in 1999 and demolished; nothing found naming a room at Coleman Street, Aldgate House or One Birdcage Walk. Other commemorations: Abertay University blue plaque, Dundee; Scottish Engineering Hall of Fame and the Drummond Theatre at HMS Sultan, both 2018; the Nautilus International Victoria Drummond Award; and the Tube map, which brings the talk back to the apron. Never the piece of paper; always the job. Finished with Engines. Full Away. Script section 10.

The Victoria Drummond Award, set up by Nautilus (seafarers' union), is presented to women whose achievements boost the profile of women at sea. The Pilot, journal of the UK Maritime Pilots' Association, 9 January 2012: pilotmag.co.uk/victoria-drummond-award. Nautilus International's Victoria Drummond Award, presented by Sir Alan Massey at the first Nautilus International Conference, to Rachel Dunn, the only female Admiralty Pilot. To sea as a Shell Tankers cadet in 1984; Master's certificate 1993; Master with Wightlink; left in 2011 to train as an Admiralty Pilot at Portsmouth, qualifying after twelve months and due to become fully unrestricted, ready for aircraft carriers. Photo: Rachel Dunn with Nautilus chairman Ulrich Jurgens (Nautilus).

Victoria Drummond had a childhood fascination with marine engineering. Resilient in the face of prejudice, she achieved many career firsts – the first woman marine engineer in Britain, the first British woman to serve as a Merchant Navy Chief Engineer, the first woman to hold a Board of Trade Certificate as a ship's engineer (having been failed many times because she was a woman) and the first woman member of the Institute of Marine Engineers. As a result of her courage under fire at sea during World War II, she was awarded an MBE in 1941 and was the first woman to receive the Lloyd's War Medal for Bravery at Sea.

Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Drummond. Commemorations: 2013 "Women in Science" exhibition, National Library of Scotland; blue plaque on the Old College, Abertay University (then Dundee Institute of Technology), on the Dundee Women's Trail and Dundee Global Trail; 2018 Scottish Engineering Hall of Fame; 2018 the Drummond Theatre at HMS Sultan, Gosport, training the Royal Navy's marine and air engineers. Wartime: the Victoria A. Drummond Canteen in Lambeth, funded partly from Virginia. Wikipedia says IMarEST has a Victoria Drummond Room at its headquarters, which disagrees with the book and the notes on the Full Away slide.

Her grave at the Chapel, Megginch Castle: a visiting marine engineer at the end of her pilgrimage, her hand on Victoria's stone. Inset: flowers left for her 125th birthday, 14 October 2019, by Emily Buck, a 4th Class Marine Engineer. The card tucked in among them is on the next slide.

The card left with the flowers, read aloud (abridge the first part as time allows): Dear Chief, When we find ourselves facing obstacles because of who we are, we can look to your story and feel less alone in our work. It is disheartening that we still sometimes struggle to be given a chance to rise or fall on our own merits, as you also did 100 years ago. Yet, we are inspired by your practical and honest determination to take care of your ships, your crewmates, and yourself. You seem to have always found the joy in a seafarer's life whenever you could. As every year more women sail the course that [you] first charted, we treasure your example and take ever greater pride in your accomplishments. On your 125th Birthday, we take time to celebrate Victoria Drummond for her leadership, devotion to duty, determination, and bravery in the face of bombs, bullets, and bullies. Presented by Emily Buck, 4th Class Marine Engineer, for all those women marine engineers. [The card's own sign-off is hidden by the flowers after "on behalf of those of us w…"; the line above is how it is read in the talk.]