Shipyard Girls author pays tribute to Sunderland's inspirational new statue

Last week saw the unveiling of Molly on St Peter’s Riverside, a public artwork that celebrates the Wearside women who played a vital role in keeping the shipyards afloat during WWI and WWII.

A life-size steel sculpture created by Dr Ron Lawson, an artist and senior lecturer at the University of Sunderland, whose own career began on the docks of Wearside, Molly is one of very few statues in the area to depict a female figure and is set to inspire future generations.

Commissioned by Sunderland City Council and the Sunderland branch of the Soroptimists, an organisation supporting and championing women and girls across the globe, the sculpture is the latest piece of public art to be added to the city’s growing sculpture trail and follows the success of the Sunday Times best-selling Shipyard Girls series.

Here, the author of the series, Amanda Revell Walton, who writes under the penname Nancy Revell, pays a heartfelt tribute to the hundreds of inspirational women who risked life and limb to ensure Sunderland played its part in the war effort.

She said: “‘These women might have downed tools at the end of the war almost eighty years ago, but they are still such an inspiration for the women of today – especially the younger generation – in showing how resilient, hardworking and incredibly brave, women can be.”

Ever since stumbling upon an article in the BBC archives about the women who worked in the Sunderland shipyards during both world wars, Amanda says she was ‘in awe’ of what they had done, but also ‘incensed’ and began researching the women, using resources including the Sunderland Echo archive.

Amanda, who returned to her hometown to write the 12-book series, said: “These amazing women had been totally forgotten – and never revered for the critical and crucial work they had done during such a hugely important period of our history. I felt like shouting about these extraordinary women from the treetops.”

Instead, Nancy combined ‘fact with fiction’ and created the 12 book saga series spanning 1940-1945 about a group of women welders who worked at J.L Thompson’s shipyard.

The series The Shipyard Girls became a repeated Sunday Times bestseller, has now sold well over half a million copies, been translated into foreign languages, and has fans as far afield as Norway, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

“Every time I was interviewed about the series, I’d end up talking about these women, relaying the kind of physically gruelling work they did in the shipyards – they worked as welders, plater’s helpers, riveters, crane operators, and red-leaders – these were the women who coated the hulls of the ships with anti-corrosive paint.

“They learnt on the job and often worked time and a half, seven days a week, in all weathers.

“The conditions were harsh and hazardous, and there was scant regard paid to health and safety. Shipyard work had always been labour-intensive but also notoriously dangerous – and often fatal.

“And because Sunderland was the Biggest Shipbuilding Town in the World and was producing a quarter of Britain’s merchant shipping at the time, these women were also working and living under the constant threat of attack from the German Luftwaffe.

“And, if all of that wasn’t enough, these women had to live with the terrible worry about their husbands, fiancés, brothers, and sons, who were fighting abroad. Or worse still, they were having to cope with grieving the death of a loved one.

“And, of course, many of the shipyard women were mothers, so were returning home at the end of a shift to care and cook for their family.

“But if these seven hundred Sunderland women hadn’t stepped in to fill the gaps left by the men who had gone off to war, then the huge number of ships needed to transport food, fuel, troops and ammunition would not have been build, and ultimately the war would not have been won.”

After the first book in the series The Shipyard Girls series was published, Nancy was contacted by Suzanne Brown from the Soroptimists International Sunderland who was equally as aghast that these women had been totally overlooked throughout history.

“We resolved that there had to be some kind of public artwork or statue to shine a light on the forgotten shipyard women to whom we, as a nation, owe so much.

“Writing The Shipyard Girls series was one way of ensuring their legacy was never forgotten but to see the first ever statue paying homage to these great women is wonderful to see.

“Finally, Sunderland now has ‘Molly’, but hopefully this will just be the beginning, and more public artworks celebrating the women shipyard workers will soon be appearing, not just in here, but in the rest of the North East, and other towns and cities in the United Kingdom where women built ships.’