01-27 TABLE of CONTENTS: Women Ship's Captains DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS QUOTE by Stacy Allison. Women Ship's Captains       In an attempt to avert disaster, a captain and three crew members were dropped onto the ship by helicopter. After eight hours of fighting 20 foot swells, the four had the Lyra safely anchored off shore. In command was Debbie Dempsey who holds the highest mariner's ranking possible: a ship captain with unlimited master's license.       No one appears to be sure how many women hold Captain's licenses, but the seven U.S. maritime academies are seeing a surge in women seeking their stripes. It was in the mid-1970s that blocks against women entering the marine academies were lifted. By 1994, women were 10% of the classes and by 1999, an estimated 18%. Many shiplines appear to be actively seeking women with third-class licenses.       Captain Dempsey was at the top of the 1976 Maine Maritime Academy in Castine.       Women and the sea are not new, regardless of histories. Six of the 50 mariners in the Kings Point Maritime museum are women. Among the honorees are Mary Patten, the 19-year-old daughter of a sea captain who put down a mutiny and guided a clipper ship with $400,000 worth of cargo round Cape Horn and to San Francisco in 1856 WHILE SHE WAS PREGNANT and her captain-husband critically ill.       Nettie Johnson was the first woman licensed as a master on the inland waterways and captained her own Mississippi River steamer while raising three children.       And probably best known is Ida Lewis who acted as keeper of the Lime Rock Light in the Newport, R.I., harbor and is credited with 18 rescue missions during storms and the saving of dozens of lives.             -- Excerpted from various newspaper and magazine clippings. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | 01-27 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS B. 01-27-1886, Bessie Beatty, American author, journalist, and radio commentator who did a series of reports from around the world during World War I. Lived for nearly a week during World War I with the notorious Russian Battalion of Death which was made up of all women. Some Russian historians are now claiming the battalion did not exist and that women did not take part in the fighting.       BB was in Russia for the Bolshevist and Kornilov uprisings and then the Bolshevist revolution. She edited McCall's Magazine 1918-1921, was director of National Label Council to get Americans to read labels and buy American, and had a news-talk radio show. B. 01-27-1892, Soong Ch'ing-ling, second wife of the Chinese revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen and one of the most revered of modern Chinese women, especially by the People's Republic of China. She held to the revolution's socialist ways and opposed her sister and her husband (Chiang Kai-shek) who temporarily changed the Chinese government course to right-wing capitalism. SC organized medical relief during the Sino-Japanese war. B. 01-27-1900, Georgia Neese Clark, first woman to hold the office of Treasurer of the United States (1949). B. 01-27-1921, Donna Reed, won Academy Award for her work in From Here to Eternity (1953) but best remembered for her TV series in which she has become part of the American vernacular for her portrayal of the idealized nuclear family housewife, always in high heels, in full make-up, and deferential to her man. B. 01-27-1934, Edith Cresson, France's first woman prime minister, served from May 15, 1991, to April 2, 1992. A longtime socialist, she had previously held the ministerial posts of agriculture, tourism, foreign trade, and European affairs. She was major of two French cities. EC was noted for her outspoken personality and as premier defended France's economic interests and social equality. A European-wide recession enabled President Mitterand to replace her with a man. B. 01-27-1944, Mairead Corrigan who along with Betty Williams organized the Community of Peace People in Northern Ireland, a grassroots movement of Roman Catholic and Protestants attempting to end the violence there. The two shared the 1976 Nobel Peach Prize.       Both resigned when the organization's leaders changed the direction of its efforts. Event 01-27-1964, Senator Margaret Chase Smith (R-MA) announces her candidacy for the presidency of the United States at a Women's National Press Club luncheon. In her statement she acknowledged that many think that "No woman should ever dare to aspire to the White House - and that this is a man's world and should be kept that way." She received 27 votes at the national convention which nominated Barry Goldwater. Event Jan. 27, 1977, the Vatican reaffirmed the Roman Catholic ban on female priests. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | QUOTES DU JOUR ALLISON, STACY:       "I had to realize that self-worth isn't built upon one's accomplishments. It's built through years of setting goals and reaching them."             -- Stacy Allison after she scaled Mt. Everest on her second attempt. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE |