Seafaring Women Aboard and Ashore Network
Betzy Shell, boatbuilder. Photo taken by Elilie Sandy, courtesy of Lloyd’s SHE_SEES Project.
Women are pillars of the maritime world. As seafarers, as care workers, and as part of the shore crew, women have helped to build maritime industry around the world.
Our next project is to convene with current members of the global workforce in ocean industries to discuss how women’s labour can meet modern labour needs and also how long-standing hurdles to women’s maritime participation can be overcome.
Our conference will be fully online to enable attendance and participation from those active in ocean industries stationed around the world. Featuring guest speakers, expert panels, and discussion groups, we look forward to the next stage of the SWAAN project, promoting recruitment, retention and training of women in the modern maritime workforce.
Join us online August 19-21, 2026.
John Joy and Lisa Wojahn at the Maritime History Archive tour, April 29, 2026, consulting at Crew Agreement. The document is open at a page of workers’ signatures and vital data, one of the most dense sources of British working-class information in the world. Women formed a part of this international workforce.
We have always been here.
Women went to sea.
Women were skippers of the shore crew.
Women belong at sea.
We have always been here. Women went to sea. Women were skippers of the shore crew. Women belong at sea.
Seven men and two women standing near SS Sargona, the rescue ship of the Viking disaster. The two women are possibly the nurses Rose Berrigan and V. P. Peyton. MHA PF-315.202, 1931.
Our Story
Seafaring Women Ashore and Abroad Network is not just about looking forward, but also about challenging our collective memory of women’s role at sea to build our future in maritime industry in collaboration with Lloyd’s Register Foundation and the Maritime History Archive. Our home base of Newfoundland is important as women have long been recognized as significant maritime labourers, important economically and politically for the colony’s survival and its resilience as a province.
SWAAN’s planning committee is led by Dr. Julia Stryker, adjunct of History at Memorial University and Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Saskatchewan. She is supported by a board of international scholars and former maritime workers.
In April 2026, SWAAN hosted an academic workshop to discuss the state of the field on women’s historical presence in maritime industry. This event was attended by Canadian and International scholars who positioned women as important labourers, economic agents, and chroniclers of the maritime world.
This project is a collaboration with archivists, researchers and administrators at Memorial University’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and is funded by a generous Lloyds Register Foundation Small Grant.