Maid Matelot - new publication

August 25th 1943 was the date that the WRNS accepted 17 year old Rozelle Pierrepont. From being Lady Frederica Rozelle Ridgway Pierrepont, sole surviving child of 6th Earl Manvers, she became 65152 Wren Stoker Pierrepont. Her first, possibly most dauting task was to learn to make her own bed. After that she scrubbed floors and doorsteps diligently until she was finally promoted to oiling, greasing, assembling, disassembling, wire-brushing, priming, cajoling the variety of more or less elderly or recalcitrant engines that would power the mainly open boats that ran men and supplies to and from their ships in the preparation for D-Day. Idyllic perhaps on a sunny day with the engine purring and the sailors joking: tough in the dark and the wind and the freezing winter. Boats Crew Wrens and Wren Stokers were at work in all weathers whenever they were required.

Rozelle found a beauty and satisfaction in this life that she’d never previously experienced. It was hard, when the war ended and the Navy took back the boats. Rozelle pasted her photos of the young men and women she’d served with into the photo album that we have used for this new edition. In a forthcoming review Claudia Myatt describes this book as a ‘gem’: Rozelle’s cousin, Hugh Matheson calls it ‘a shout for freedom’. It’s more than another war book, it’s the story of a determined, distinctive personality beginning to understand who she is and what will matter in life. It won’t be the politeness of the debutante’s ball but the feel of the tiller in her hand, simple good fellowship and the responsiveness of a small boat in wide waters.