Jo Stanley

Consultant in maritime history and creative lifestory

Welcome to my website

I'm a creative historian who works with the maritime industry, museums, television, theatre, social media, universities and in the community. Women who went to sea - whose travel transformed their lives forever - are my special area of expertise.

Jo Stanley As a person interested in kindness, fun, and the ways we humans seek fulfilment and transformation, my especial interest is in the stories of people who have led marginalised lives in the past - and sought adventure, freedom and the space to be all they are, and might become.

In particular this means recording people, or helping them write their stories. They tend to be people who've taken jobs at sea despite the odds - like women, ethnic minorities and LGBT+ people - for whom seagoing meant sometimes liberation and sometimes injustice.

Cut Lass Ships are hypersexualised spaces for those confined in them. As a cultural historian, that's fascinating to me. They're heterotopias (meaning other places, like Wonderland) and liminal zones, (which means they explain a lot about our societies on land.)

I live in Marsden in the Pennines, the home village of Poet Laureate Simon Armitage. He describes it as a uniquely 'transcendent and transgressive location' but I celebrate it as a warm Alternative community. And I work a lot in London and abroad. At Liverpool John Moores University I am Visiting Senior Research Fellow. At the University of Hull's Maritime Historical Studies Centre I am an Honorary Research Fellow.

What am I doing now

My seminal blog Gender and The Sea genderedseas.blogspot.com will be full of still more unusual stories about people connected to the sea. I will be carrying on exploring, explaining and sharing path-breaking information about race, gender, class, status and the many other characteristics that intersect tellingly. You'll read histories of diverse hyper-mobile people in the maritime world, with a fresh focus on emotions, identity and voyages' potential to transform lives. And you'll be able to see more illustrated PowerPoint presentations about maritime diversity, via YouTube.

I'll be especially helping you find out about:

safeguarding seafaring women today from sexual abuse at sea
the global history of LGBT++ seafarers, their culture, and the ways that trips could feel like radical universities and gay pride demonstrations
women working in maritime mission, supporting seafarers ashore in twentieth century hostels

SANITY. With my Diversity, Equity & Inclusion lenses - and completing my training as a counsellor - I'm researching mental wellbeing on ships in history. Of course it links to safety at sea, as well as connecting to sexual harassment and LGBT++ handling of destructive homophobia aboard.

DANGER. Finishing a history book on civilian women at sea in WW2. Provisional title: Dangerous Adventures: civilian women save the wartime seas. Yale University Press. Publication date tba.

RACE: Waiting on Empire: A History of Indian Travelling Ayahs in Britain. Review of Arunima Datta’s book. International Journal of Maritime History, 1-3, 1924.
doi.org/10.1177/08438714241272581 ‘From Hudson to Niger: Langston Hughes sails the big sea of Life’, in Marine Quarterly, Winter 2024.

LGBT Part of Round table review of Seth Stein Le Jacq’s Sexual and Gender Difference in the British Navy, 1690-1900, International Journal of Maritime History, 2024, tbc.

Upcoming talks by me

12th March 2025 : ‘Diversity at Sea: How sharing historical research can make a difference to the present and future of the maritime industry and public understanding’. Online. Free to members. 6.30 pm UTC. snr.org.uk/news/winter-lecture-series-2024-25/

My recent and upcoming public history contributions in maritime intersectionality, 2024-25

'It's our latest aid to recruitment'

1972 cartoon in Nautilus Telegraph, the officers' union journal. Courtesy of Nautilus International.

2024. tba.I'm pleased to announce that a wonderful anthology will be emerging soon: Erica Mezzoli, ed, Mermaids: (En)Gendering Maritime Labour and Business Histories, Brill, Leiden, 2024. My chapter discusses that key maritime period in the mid-1970s when many women increasingly got work at sea, doing non-traditional jobs. Some heterosexual men saw it as great opportunity for on onboard intimate relationships. But some queer men saw it as a death knell, because bisexual men would choose Real Women if available. See "'Invading' calculatedly Dionysian ships: women's advent/ gay stewards' loss. Gender and sex at sea in the 1970s."

Things I'm proud of doing recently

Mending maritime misery: women's emotional labour in seafarers' missions 1945-1980. Paper given at Scottish Maritime History conference, Oct 2024 LGBT+ seafarers and their changing public profile 1930-2024

LGBT+ seafarers and their changing public profile 1930-2024. Talk for Department for Transport, Journey and KPMG , London, Oct 2024

Playing a leading part in Rewriting Women into Maritime History, Lloyd's Register Foundation Heritage & Education Centre's project. That includes writing a timeline of women's maritime history https://hec.lrfoundation.org.uk/whats-on/timeline and writing the historiographic summary with select bibliography. Who wrote what when, what it meant and how to find that book or article. See bit.ly/LRFHECwomen

Interviewing women maritime pioneers and writing them up. See

Davinia Monclus, marine pilot on the Medway, https://bit.ly/LRFHECwomenDavinia
Marion Pettigrew Sambridge, Britain's trailblazing second woman marine engineer, with whom I'll be making a film
Belinda Bennett, the world's first black woman cruise ship captain, https://bit.ly/LRFHECBelindaBEnnettFilmed
" Two very early deck cadets from the early 1970s (write-ups tbc)

Adding early women maritime trade unionists in a blog that expanded the recently published history of maritime trade union Nautilus International. https://bit.ly/maritimeUnionWomen

Chairing the Rainbow Seas in Maritime Museums online peer group. https://bit.ly/Rainbow_Seas

Any time. You can still catch some of my earlier videoed talks at

"Revealing queer maritime history: international museums' LGBT+ sea exhibitions," Blaydes Maritime Centre webinar, University of Hull, May 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPqJ-8tRXeA&t=74s
"Entertaining 4 Sanity@sea: Hull's glitzy ship's steward Roy 'Wendy' Gibson and the history of shipboard entertainment", University of Hull, Blaydes Maritime Centre webinar, Feb 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGg9seH4tgg&t=646s
"Anything like Lascars? Race, Gender and Ayahs (Asian Nannies) as Working Passengers 1850-1950," Blaydes Maritime Centre webinar, University of Hull, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxBcDJx73z0&t=18s
"A Whirlwind Tour of a Jigsaw 1600-2020. 400 packed years of LGBTQI+ maritime history," Maritime UK, Pride in Diversity network webinar. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nslyxO679Po
"The Lascars Posh aunties?" Maritime UK's Black History Month webinar, Oct 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9XpXKokhmo
"Shescape - Women in Maritime," my summary of women's maritime history, Maritime Foundation 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThCniUZcYxo.
"Hello Sailor," Homotopia's filmed interview with me touring an interviewer round the Merseyside Maritime Museum version of the Hello Sailor exhibition, 2008. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFhyEGdEAJA

What they say about me

'Jo Stanley has for many years now fearlessly explored the depths of maritime history. She has discovered so many treasures that she herself has become a treasure. Read From Cabin 'Boys' to Captains and find out why.'
Marcus Rediker, author of Outlaws of the Atlantic, Distinguished Professor of Atlantic History at the University of Pittsburgh.

'Your articles are concise, revealing, heartfelt, funny, and very necessary.'
(Dr Ray Walsh, John Moores University)

'You've written probably the most innovative essay ever in the historiography of mobilities.'
(Dr Peter Norton, Editor, T2M Yearbook, University of Virginia)

'I've been a fan of your work for a long time, as it really opens new and fun horizons for maritime history.'
(Henry Trotter, author and Yale University/University of Cape Town).

'Jo Stanley is the most outspoken and published international authority on women aboard ship in all ages. Her insight and focus, credentials and publications immensely enhance our understanding of diversity in maritime.'
(Linda Collison, author, maritime historian ).

'Stanley's work is innovative, courageous, and sassy, but it's also solid, robust, and methodical.'
Professor Erica Mezzoli, Tor Vergata University of Rome (email 29 Oct 23)

MY CURRENT FAVOURITES

Favourite new novel. Kate Worsley, She Rises, Bloomsbury, London, 2013.

She Rises

This should be acclaimed as the classic women’s diverse mar hist novel. Set in Harwich and on the high seas, in the 1740s, this weaves the story of Louise, a shipowner’s maid, and Luke, a press-ganged lad. They both dare much emotionally and explore the lands beyond heteronormativity. Every line is beautifully thought through. And I’m not giving away the spoiler. Worsley’s prize-winning imagery and insights puts this novel even higher than Sena Jeta Naslund’s Ahab’s Wife.
www.bloomsbury.com/uk/she-rises-9781408835920/

Favourite podcast. The Dreadnought Hoax. snr.org.uk/the-mariners-mirror-podcast/the-dreadnought-hoax/.

The Dreadnought Hoax

This focuses on the 1910 occasion when writer Virginia Woolf tricked the Royal Navy by playing a visiting BIPOC prince. But it’s about far more: intersectionality – gender, race and class. Sam Willis interview Danell Jones, author of The Girl Prince: Virginia Woolf, Race and the Dreadnought Hoax. danelljones.com/the-girl-prince-virginia-woolf-race-and-the-dreadnought-hoax/

Favourite old novel. Winger’s Landfall by Stuart Lauder, 1962. Pacey fiction by seafarer about gay life at sea 1950s. Awful plot, great detail. Path-breaking because it doesn’t fetishise gay seafaring men as low life some early fiction, such as Querelle of Brest, does.

Winger's Landfall

See my discussion at genderedseas.blogspot.com/2024/06/gay-mystery-on-liner-50s-style-fiction.html

Favourite autobiography. Drink Up and be a Man: Memoirs of a Steward and Engine-Room Hand, by John J Mahon, 2011. Truly honest account by a heterosexual steward of his difficulties as a man of 4’ 9”, an unhappy person in a boozy culture in the 1960s, who conquered his alcohol addiction.

Drink Up and be a Man: Memoirs of a Steward and Engine-Room Hand

www.amazon.co.uk/Drink-Up-Man-Memoirs-Steward/dp/1906266190

Favourite item on social media. Lieutenant Commander Ami Burns, RN, a submariner, tells her very important story of being on of the first in the UK Royal Navy.

Ami Burns

Interview recording and transcript at submarinersstories.uk/profile/ami-burns/

New

New exhibitions:

The She_Sees exhibition is at the National Museum of the Royal Navy, Portsmouth. It features some of the many hundreds of inspiring women maritime pioneers. Free. On till August 2025. portsmouthhq.org/

She_sees

The exhibition is created by the Lloyd’s Register Foundation Heritage and Education Centre. It’s part of the full Rewriting Women into Maritime History Project, which can be visited at hec.lrfoundation.org.uk/whats-on/rewriting-women-into-maritime-history

Women of the RNLI. Celebrating 200 years of lifesaving at sea, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich UK. Free. Until 1 December 2024. bit.ly/4eZhLJx

Women of the RNLI

New reports of significance

October 2024: Royal Navy investigating claims women harassed on submarines, bit.ly/RN_SASHprobe

New website:

Rewriting Women into Maritime History project, Lloyd's Register Foundation Heritage & Education Centre: bit.ly/LRFHECwomen