Victoria Drummond

Victoria Drummond was born at Megginch Castle in Perthshire, into a family so well connected that Queen Victoria was her godmother. She was expected to marry. Instead, when the First World War opened jobs to women, she apprenticed at a garage in Perth and then at a shipyard in Dundee, doing the same work as the men and covered in the same oil.

In 1922 she became the first woman member of the Institute of Marine Engineers and went to sea as tenth engineer on a cargo liner to Australia. Promotion depended on passing the Board of Trade examinations for second and then chief engineer. She passed for second engineer but sat the chief engineer's examination 37 times without success, failing on the oral or on details that her colleagues believed were invented to keep a woman out. She never gave up, and eventually took a Panamanian ticket instead.

In August 1940 she was second engineer on the SS Bonita in the Atlantic when a German bomber attacked. She ordered her men out of the engine room and stayed alone, keeping the engines going as bombs fell around the ship and pipes burst, coaxing more speed out of them than they were built for. The ship escaped. She was awarded the MBE and became the first woman to receive Lloyd's Medal for Bravery at Sea.

She served as chief engineer on foreign-flagged ships until she retired in 1962.