On Orient Line ships women were employed as laundry assistants or ‘steam queens’. The work was anything but regal. It was hard, hot and wet; but the pay was better at sea than ashore. Steam queens needed stamina and a sense of humour to keep pressing on.
“These were not young women and most had been at sea during the war. During the Red Sea passage they worked their presses wearing just a towel around their waist and a bra. Professionally they were experts but they did play tricks from time to time.” Ernest French, Jnr Asst Purser, first encounters steam queens in 1948, ORCADES
P&O took a different tack. Whilst the company employed women in their liner laundries ashore, the ship's laundry was worked entirely by men, and mostly lascars. After the P&O and Orient Line merger in 1960, P&O’s crewing traditions prevailed - at the expense of the steam queens...
