Sonia de Borodaewsky Delouteau

A text inherited from the register of seafarers created by Colbert in the seventeenth century barred women from appearing on a crew list — the only document granting the right to a wage, to social protection and to a pension. Sonia went into commercial fishing all the same, with her own trawler, the Voluntas Dei, in a state of semi-legality.

France's first woman seafarer persevered, through many conflicts with the maritime authority. She entered the La Rochelle navigation school, an institution that had never had a woman on its benches, and graduated. That is how she came to be entered on the crew list as an engineer — without, for all that, being allowed to take the helm alone. Her administrative battle succeeded on 28 January 1963: the ban fell for every woman. She herself remained an engineer and the owner of her own boats.

"Fourpence of thread"

One morning her skipper told her, awkwardly, that he could no longer take her aboard: the harbour officer had invoked a text inherited from Colbert forbidding women to be entered on crew lists.

Nicknamed thereafter "Fourpence of thread" or "Sonia the minnow", for her small build and apparent fragility, she refused to be beaten and decided to buy her own boat. A family friend agreed to lend her the money; she would repay it tide after tide. She found an old tub called the Voluntas Dei. But although she owned her vessel, merchant navy regulations refused her the seafarer's registration book because she was a woman. As the owner of her boat she had to hire a skipper in charge, and would be counted as a passenger on board.

The situation outraged her. She put up with it for a time, but began a permanent struggle with the administration, wringing out one exemption after another. After eight months of persistence, she obtained her professional book as a "fishing assistant, third class". She could now work and be paid as a deckhand, but had no right to take the helm alone.

La Houle, and the Maryse Bastié Prize

In 1957, illness kept her in a hospital bed for six months. She took up her notes again, completed them, and so gave birth to a book: La Houle. She picked a publisher at random, Julliard. By return of post, a contract arrived. Not only was La Houle published, in 1959, but it won the Maryse Bastié Prize, awarded each year to a woman writer who has made her way in a dangerous trade and drawn her inspiration from it.

The book was a considerable success, with translations into several languages. She gave many interviews and was often invited to literary events, receptions and evenings alongside Minou Drouet and Françoise Sagan, the two other stars of the pen in the late 1950s. After the open hostility of the people of Royan, this recognition moved her, and the brilliant world of Parisian intellectuals held a certain fascination. Julliard signed her for five novels. She wrote La Fille du vent, in the direct line of La Houle, but the publisher asked her to spice it up with a love story. She refused outright and broke the contract. Farewell, then, to literary Paris and to novel writing: back to Royan.

Marine engineer, against the headmaster's will

She then enrolled at the La Rochelle navigation school to learn marine engineering. The old and respectable headmaster protested: if that woman entered his school, he would leave. Sonia was admitted after appealing to the ministry concerned — being famous helps — and a few weeks later the headmaster resigned.

At the end of 1961 she came out with an excellent ranking and a qualification: the certificate of fishing-vessel engineer, sixth class. It was the first such certificate ever obtained by a woman. A victory — but the law still forbade her the helm.

Her fight went on. It was then that, following an act of sabotage, the Voluntas Dei sank in Royan harbour. Undeterred, she took part in Pierre Bellemare's radio programme Vous êtes formidables ! on Europe n° 1 to raise the money for a new boat. It was named Rodolphe-Maryse. With it she had ample opportunity to deepen her mechanical knowledge, so frequent were its engine failures.

28 January 1963: the sea opened to women

Once she put down the spanner, she carried on fighting for full equality of rights with men. She was no longer alone: the maritime registrar at La Rochelle supported her case, and she wrote to a great many members of parliament until André Lacaze — mayor of Cozes from 1947 to 1973 and deputy for the Charente-Maritime — decided to back her. He knocked on the right doors and knew how to be persuasive: on 28 January 1963 her victory finally took shape. A decision of the merchant navy administration released women from the ban inherited from Colbert and opened the maritime schools to them.

The term "registered seafarer" itself did not disappear until two years later: it was the law of 9 July 1965, abolishing the register of seafarers, that replaced it with "merchant navy seaman".

Equal to men, women obtained the right to a wage, with no discriminatory quota. To celebrate her victory, Sonia had a large red and white trawler built, the Tantaë, delivered in 1964 and designed by Amédée Delouteau — her skipper since April 1961 — whose innovative plans she drew up with him and a naval architect. It came out of the Chantiers L'Entente at Les Sables-d'Olonne, where it belonged to a series. She would go to court against Berliet, the engine maker, for defective workmanship. At last she could live her passion for the sea to the full.

Carried by her own momentum, she bought a fishery at Le Verdon and set up a marine engineering school for women. It did not last, the number of volunteers being limited.

Amédée

She married Amédée Delouteau in 1972. The couple later divorced for purely administrative reasons, before remarrying in 1992. Her dealings with this strong-willed man had long been professional: she had hired him as skipper, and he fully intended to shoulder that responsibility. On a day of disagreement he had made clear to her that he meant to be sole master on board. Recognising that truth of the sea, she did not hold it against him. Quite the reverse: on a day in port at Port-Bloc, at Le Verdon-sur-Mer, she had shown him her gifts as a musician and a singer on the neglected piano of a harbour bar. How could he have resisted? From then on they never parted, until the death — in February 1999 — of the woman thereafter known as Sonia de Borodaewsky-Delouteau.

* Registered seafarer: a seafarer recorded with the maritime authority. The register of classes created by Colbert from 1665 became the inscription maritime in 1795; it was abolished by the law of 9 July 1965, which replaced "registered seafarer" with "merchant navy seaman". Before national service was abolished, a registered seafarer was called up into the French Navy.

** Tantaë, named after the Latin phrase tantae molis erat romanam condere gentem! ("So great a task it was to found the Roman nation!"): built in 1964 at Les Sables-d'Olonne by the Chantiers L'Entente, registered M 10 231 in the maritime district of Marennes. Length overall 14.39 m, beam 4.70 m, gross tonnage 23.54 tons, Berliet diesel engine of 140 horsepower. Struck from the fishing register for destruction on 24 December 1991, after twenty-seven years of service under three successive names.

Vessel record of the Tantaë · PDF (French)

"I have always loved the sea." So begins La Houle. For a long time Sonia de Borodaewsky did not dare admit it to herself. Then, one April morning, sitting on a coil of rope watching the harbour at Royan, she gave in.

That day she was thirty years old with five children. She went to sea.

What follows is no seafaring daydream. It is the harbour at low tide, the muddy water at the foot of the quays, the oyster gatherers bent double, hands cut open by the shells. It is a split trawl pouring a swarming mass onto the deck: the shrimp rasping, the crabs crackling, a cuttlefish clucking like an angry hen. It is fourteen hours at sea, five hours to land the catch, do the shopping and see her children, five hours of sleep. And begin again the next day.

Sonia writes what she sees, without embellishment. The octopus she puts back in the water rather than kill, and the deckhand who mocks her pity. Confectioner's knots instead of a reef knot. The warp guide broken, fifteen thousand francs. The humiliation of learning a trade in front of men who watch you learn.

The book won her the Maryse Bastié Prize in 1959 and opened the Paris salons to her. She went home to Royan. What she wanted was not fame: it was to be on the crew list like the men, with the wage, the social protection and the pension. She obtained it in the end — and obtained it for every woman who would come after her.