Krystyna chojnowska-liskiewicz biography examples

Fear that jealousy between crew members if a woman fancied one man over another was another added deterrent, as control of the crew was important for another related reason. It seems that it was beleived that a distracted crew would anger the ocean and cause bad weather or some other misfortune or form of revenge from the sea gods no less.

Women have been the brunt of other sea stories even when they were unseen. In the early days of maritime travels, sailors would attribute any strange sounds heard at sea to sirens, mythical creatures that are half-woman and half-bird. It was believed that the fabled sirens would lure sailors to their deaths by singing sweet songs, drawing them into treacherous waters and rocky shores.

Let’s not forget the other feminine nemesis of sailors, the mermaid, half-woman and half-fish creatures mariners would blame for any strange sea noises accusing them of deception and any bad luck that befell the male voyagers.

Ironically, naked women were believed to calm the sea rather than agitate it. This is the reason that many ship figureheads depict women with bare breasts. The watchful eyes of the female figureheads were also believed to guide the ship to safety. The ship itself was also referred to as “she,” because it acted as a protective mother that sheltered the sailors from an angry sea.

Even with the pirates, women were not welcomed. But women disguised themselves and sailed under pirate flags even at the risk of death. They had to master all the skills of seamanship, swordsmanship, battle tactics, and get used to the difficult and treacherous life aboard a pirate ship. Those who did survive, went on to leave their mark on maritime history.

But during some times and some cultures, the norm was bucked and slowly through the centuries women took to seafaring professions. Viking women were trained in navigation and archery, and trained f

Captain Krystyna Chojnowska-Liskiewicz, the Polish sailor and marine engineer who became the first woman to circumnavigate the globe solo, has died at her home at the age of 84.

Born in 1936 in Warsaw, Captain Chojnowska-Liskiewicz began sailing in childhood. She moved to Gdańsk to study shipbuilding at Gdańsk University of Technology, where she met her husband to be, Wacław Liskiewicz and began serious sea sailing, receiving her captain’s licence at the age of 30.

At a time when Poland lay behind the Iron Curtain and was under the control of Moscow, travel was no simple matter and red tape connected with leaving the Eastern Bloc hindered the careers of many sailors. Nevertheless, Captain Chojnowska-Liskiewicz was able to join several ships on international passages, travelling to the likes of Norway and Scotland. Perhaps it was her skill as a skipper that helped her overcome the bureaucracy of communist-era Poland and win selection by the Polish Sailing Association to skipper the yacht Mazurek solo, around the world, leaving Las Palmas on March 28, 1976.

On board Mazurek, a Conrad 32 sloop built in Poland by a team headed by her husband, Captain Chojnowska-Liskiewicz headed west, via the Caribbean and the Panama Canal into the Pacific Ocean. From there, her route took her via Tahiti, Fiji and Australia, the across the Indian Ocean via Mauritius and round the Cape of Good Hope. Shaping her course north, Captain Chojnowska-Liskiewicz arrived back in the Canary Islands on April 21 1978. She had covered more than 31000 nautical miles in 401 days to enter the record books as the first woman to sail single-handed around the world.

She was honoured with the Order of Polonia Restituta Commander’s Cross for her achievement, and remains today a hero of Polish sailing history. She was described by the Polish sailing portal