Tag: Betty Snelling

• Boatwomen Training Scheme: Press & Correspondence

  Much of the correspondence about the Training Scheme can be found in the Grand Union Canal Carrying Co. Ltd. pages of this website, plus some on the Severn & canal Carrying Co. Ltd. page. Here we have press cuttings and other correspondence.

  

  

  The following letter from Cecily Ramsay to Molly gives an insider view of the various characters involved in the Training Scheme at the end of 1943. It is quite a revealing account of the inter-personal dynamics and rivalries, and gives a very different perspective to the glamorous image of the young women portrayed in the Daily Sketch article above.

  

  

  

  

  Two of the characters in the letter above, Betty Snelling and Mary Whitley, feature in the two following press photographs:

  

  

  

  

  

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  Cecily Ramsay, incidentally, gave several talks about her life during the war when she got back home to Dunedin, New Zealand. This short piece is from the [Dunedin] Evening Star, 3 October 1946:

  The story of her experiences on a boat on the English canals during the war, trading between London and Birmingham, was the subject of an address given by Miss Cecily Ramsay to the Travel Club, which met in the Tudor Hall, Savoy, yesterday morning.

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  Website by Crispin Partridge – Grandson of Molly Traill.

  November 17, 2024

  Ann Nicholson, Betty Snelling, Boatwomen Training Scheme, Cecily Ramsay, Daily Sketch, Dipper, Dodona, Elizabeth Coxhead, Frankie Campbell-Martin, Grand Union Canal Carrying Co. Ltd, Idle Women, Mary Ormsby, Mary Whitley, Ministry of War Transport, Rosheen Ormsby, The Lady, Three Girls On Two Boats, Vela

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• Grand Union: Correspondence

  Here are the letters Molly received from the GUCCC. There are no copies of the letters she sent to the company. First – Eily Gayford sets the scene:

  A meeting with Molly that afternoon; the next day down to the Grand Union depot at Southall, then over to the head office at Ruislip, and at last back home. Everything was now settled. Daphne was not coming with us, but staying where she was on the Heather Bell, and in the new year Molly and I were to do a trip with a pair of boats worked by regular boat people, to learn the route and the management of a pair.¹

  

  

  

  

  

  

  1942 started with real winter weather, ice and snow, and not the kind which soon disappears. At the end of January, we were still waiting to join the Grand Union. We had written reminding them how anxious we were to start as soon as possible, but they had replied that all transport was being seriously affected by the severe weather conditions, and owing to other difficulties they were unable to say definitely when we could come. So that was that and there was nothing we could do about it.²

  

  

  

  There is then a six month gap in the correspondence while Molly and Eily Gayford did their training trip with Ciss and Albert Sibley.

  

  

  The correspondence then moves on to March 1943:

  

  

  A telling off from the company:

  

  

  Her TGWU card:

  

  The question of publicity is raised again:

  

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  1. The Amateur Boatwomen, Eily Gayford. p.53 ↩︎
  2. Ibid p.54 ↩︎

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  Website by Crispin Partridge – Grandson of Molly Traill.

  October 26, 2024

  1942, Albert Sibley, Betty Snelling, Boatwomen Training Scheme, Ciss Sibley, Eily Gayford, Frances Marion Traill, Grand Union Canal Carrying Co. Ltd, GUCCC, Lily Gayford, Ministry of Information – American Division, Ministry of War Transport, Molly Traill, Newdigate Colliery, Ration Book, Transport & General Workers’ Union

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