Whilst nursing sisters were an established part of the ship's company from the 1930s, female surgeons didn’t appear on P&O ships until the 1970s and 1980s. She-surgeons were so rare as to be considered mythical. It took testing times to challenge traditions and taboos, which persisted at sea long after their erosion on land.
War and women tended not to mix - at least not on the front line - but the sudden eruption of the Falklands Islands conflict in 1982 rapidly amended the rules. For Dr Susie West, one of 15 civilian women volunteering to sail with CANBERRA, there was no time like the present for the blindingly obvious: “I was a doctor and it didn’t matter what sex I was.”
