Transatlantic first

It's 70 years since Ann Davison became the first woman to sail solo across the Atlantic. Katy Stickland looks back at her achievement

- Katy Stickland

Amisty, drizzly November morning greeted Ann Davison as she steered Felicity Ann up the Hudson River in New York to tie up at Pier 75.

This was the end of the challenge the 40-year-old had set herself - to sail, alone from England, across the Atlantic Ocean and then to New York. The voyage took 18 months, but along the way, Davison became the first woman to sail across the Atlantic solo. Although she'd made history, this was not her main motivation.

Three years earlier Ann Davison had lost everything: her husband, Frank, their 70ft converted fishing ketch Reliance and the dream of a new life living in the Caribbean. The couple had left the UK from Fleetwood bound for Cuba in May 1949 but were battered by heavy weather almost from the start; neither had the seamanship skills to sail safely through the conditions. Reliance was also not finished, as the boat had been threatened with repossession. Nineteen days later, with no working engine and the "sails blown out", Reliance was wrecked off Portland Bill. Both of them made it into a liferaft but it was swept out to sea by the race. Frank was killed, but Ann made it to shore, climbing the cliffs "to start life again, alone."

Fear of the sea

As she admitted, fear of the sea and her need to overcome it was vital if she was "to find a key to living".

"If I could navigate a ship across the ocean on my own, it might be that I would be well on the way to learning how to live," noted Davison in the book of her transatlantic voyage, My Ship is So Small.