Sailing Stars

Maurice Griffiths, Yachting Monthly editor 1927-1967, was married first to 'Peter Gerard'. She was a fierce champion of female equality at sea.

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'Peter' had been born Dulcie Hazel Kennard near Bloemfontein, South Africa, in 1900. As an Army daughter, her first memories were of the open veld, which later translated into a love of the open sea - or if not the sea, then the boats that sail on it. Ponies, a short skirt and a friendly old jersey brought happiness as a child, but a return to Europe and a demand for greater conformity was hard.

[...]Boats and sailing came to fascinate her and she educated herself as a journalist by subscribing to a yachting magazine and getting involved in its correspondence column under her male pseudonym 'Peter Gerard' which became her preferred name, even when she achieved a sub-editor's job on Yachting Weekly. 'I wish you were more of a man,' sighed the editor.

Peter had her first experience of sailing on holiday in the Isle of Wight. Soon, hiring a dinghy for a day sail wasn't enough and she wanted the experience of going away on a small yacht, managing for herself, realising that she wasn’t going to be constantly checking in to reassure her mother that she was all right. She was demanding her independence: ‘The shore would have no claim on me. My associates would be my own selection, whatever their social status’. She needed to escape her mother’s ‘fastidious’ upbringing. The wearing of shorts became a crucial means of asserting herself in this new life. She did her best to persuade other female sailors to wear them too. When the husband of a friend came to collect his wife ‘Mike’ from a weekend sailing with Peter and found her wearing shorts, he refused to let her step ashore until she had dressed herself ‘properly’.