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The Eastham ArchivistRecording Eastham’s History

£2.00Issue No 24 March 2016

Who do I hear you ask? Wellit’s about time that the story ofthe first woman to sail the

Atlantic single-handed became betterknown. It is a story of tragedy andtriumph, of love and adventure and ofincredible determination in the face ofadversity. It is the story of anindomitable woman conquering theAtlantic Ocean without the aid ofmodern conveniences such as sat-navs,constant radio communication and anon-hand support team. She achievedthis in 1952 in a little 23 foot, wooden-hulled sloop built in Cornwall andnamed Felicity Ann.

Ann Davison (nee Longstaffe) had livedin a house on Rivacre Road in Easthamwith her husband Frank. The house still

stands today on the perimeter of the oldHooton Aerodrome. Frank had boughtthe old WWI airfield in 1934 and wasbuilding up a successful aviationbusiness. However at the start of WWIIthe RAF requisitioned the airfield andthey were forced to move to a smallholding on Thornton Common Road –Mere Brook House.

This then is her story interwoven with thepeople that had so much influence on herlife. It is a story of adventure and

danger, of marriageand divorce, of suddendeath and finaltriumph.

Margaret AnnLongstaffe was born atCarshalton, Surrey on5th June 1913; herparents were JosephinaPattison Boutflour andWilliam Longstaffewho had married inHartlepool in 1912.Ann, she preferred hermiddle name, had a

passion for horses and a desire for travel.By the age of 15 she had twice voyagedto Philadelphia on the SS “LondonMariner".

Adventure was obviously in Ann’s bloodand for her 21st birthday she embarkedon the SS “Hardwicke Grange” on 3rdJune 1934 for a voyage to BuenosAires. She was to spend a holiday ona prairie farm which just happened topossess an old WWI trainingaeroplane. It was here that Ann was toexperience her first taste of flying

when the owner, Sandy MacDougal, tookher up and let her take the controls. Shewas hooked; from then on horses tooksecond place to her new love -aeroplanes!

With help from her father she took flyinglessons and gained her aviation certificateon the 5th February 1935 at Hanworth.For the next two years Ann made asketchy living as a professional pilotoffering charter flights, deliveries andbanner towing. Her life was to changehowever when in 1937 she answered a‘Utility Airways’ advertisement for a joy-ride pilot at Hooton. She got the job andjoined the team – which, significantly,included Frank’s then wife Joy.

The Remarkable Ann Davison

“It’s about time that the storyof the first woman to sail the

Atlantic single-handedbecame better known”

Left & centre Ann Davison aboard her yacht‘Felicity Ann’ Above the house in Rivacre Road -the home of Frank & Ann during their aviation days.Surely worthy of a ‘Blue Plaque’?

Frank’s first wife Joy with an airliner thatshe had just flown from London to Hooton

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Recording Eastham's History

Frank Davison had been born inDarlington in 1899 but by 1921, withFrank now a qualified engineer, thefamily had moved to ‘Greenbank’, GreenLane, Great Sutton.

In 1925 Frank moved out of the familyhome to ‘Yew Tree Villa’, Chester Road,Little Sutton. By 1929 he had movedagain - to ‘Oak Vale’, Red Lion Lane,Little Sutton and remained there until1931. In 1933 Frank married fellowaviator, Toronto-born Elsie Joy Muntz, atChester and in 1934 Frank Davisonbought Hooton Airfield. It was adecision that was to have a profoundeffect on his life and ultimately, his death.

Frank registered his company, ‘UtilityAirways’, at Hooton in 1936 with bothFrank and Joy Davison being shown asdirectors. The main business wasoperating charter, army co-operation andaerial photography flights, later extendedto include joy-rides for holiday makers atBlackpool.

The flying was fast and furious off thesands of Morecambe Bay with eagerLancashire holiday makers. They stayedin Blackpool during the season but flewdaily to and from Hooton at the end of theseason when there was less trade. It wasa happy go lucky time for all of them,doing the job they loved and getting paidfor it.

Then the inevitable happened - withouteither of them realising it Frank and Annhad fallen deeply in love. Frank’sdivorce from Joy was amicable with norecriminations; Frank and Ann weremarried in 1939. Joy joined the AirTransport Auxiliary (ATA) and was

killed in a flying accidentthe following year at RAFUpavon (Wiltshire).

But now Hitler intervened in their livesand flying from Hooton was over. Theirhouse along with everything else wasrequisitioned by the RAF. Theaeroplanes and all the paraphernalia thatwent with them were bundled out of thehangars and stored under the disusedgrandstand of the old Hooton Racecourse,where, as Ann puts it in her book, ‘LastVoyage’, some irresponsible dolt startedup one of the aircraft engines – just to seeif it would – the engine started, fired backand up it went dope, fabric and all theplanes still with petrol in their tanks.

Frank Davison (centre) with the two women inhis life. Left - his first wife, Joy, from Torontoand (right) his second wife Ann

The grandstand at Hooton racecourse in 1903 - seton fire in 1939 destroying all of the Davison’saircraft that had been used for joy riding atBlackpool.

Above - an early view of Mere Brook House as it might have looked when the Davisonsmoved in. & left (upper) part of a letter written by Frank Davison to a local paper fromMerebrook House.Left - Mere Brook House today, a country house hotel, run under the expert guidanceof Lorna Tyson.

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Recording Eastham's History

There was a court of enquiry but thefindings were never revealed.

So Frank and Ann started again. Theymoved to the five acre small holding ofMerebrook on Thornton Common Road.Ann describes the land “There were twoorchards, two minute paddocks, severalsmall gardens for kitchen produce, softfruit and flowers, leading off one anotherand enclosed by hedges. There werelawns and rosebeds, a sunken garden anda lily pool. All in the most appallingtangle. All this appealed to me becauseit was in such an awful mess”.

However by 1943 fed up with localbureaucracy and with the wanderlusttaking over they moved to the idyllicisland of Inchmurrin in Loch Lomand.Their fascinating adventures in that placewould take too much space to describebut by 1947 they were on the move again.Frank had always been a keen sailor andindeed in their early days at Hooton hehad given Ann her first taste of sailing in– ‘a half gale and pouring with rain’ – onLake Windermere. She describedFrank’s enthusiasm as being‘exaggerated’ and ‘as a determination toendure exacting privation and intensecold’!

So against this background they went offto buy a boat. The Reliance was a mess,a 70ft ketch moored at Fleetwood quay.“No mast or spars and with a gangrenouscopper funnel leaning drunkenly above abattered wooden engine coaming” washow Ann described the vessel. Clutterand squalor everywhere; so they boughther in 1947 for £1450. For two yearsthey laboured to restore the wreck tosomething resembling a sea-worthy craft.Their trials and tribulations makefascinating reading but on May 17th 1949,ready or not and it was really ‘not’,Reliance set sail – for Cuba!

It was two days later, off thesouth coast of Ireland that thefirst intimation of a problemcame. It was a problem thatwas to turn into a disaster. Amighty Atlantic storm wasbrewing and neither Reliancenor her crew of two were inany fit condition to face it.After several days of violentweather and a disastrous mixup in reading the charts toascertain their position,Reliance eventually becameuncontrollable as her steeringgear seized and she ended upwrecked on the rocks ofPortland Bill.

Ann & Frank, who had beenwithout sleep for several daysas they struggled against theelements, donned their lifejackets and launched theirsurvival raft, only to find thatthe fierce current which hadfinally done for Reliance hadturned and was taking themout to sea. The cold wasintense, time and time againthe mountainous seas sweptthem off their life raft and timeand time again they managedto re-board.

Eventually it was too much forFrank as Ann writes - He putout a hand, pressed mine,reassuringly smiled at me.The smile became fixed andmeaningless and terrible andfaded into a slow delirium….When we broke free of the nextfoaming crescent sweepinginescapably down on us Frankwas dead.

Top - the wreck of ‘Reliance’ at Portland BillCentre - Ann Davison with her yacht ‘Felicity Ann’ at the newYork boat exhibition of 1953Bottom - ‘Felicity Ann’ under reconstruction at the NorthwestSchool of Wooden Boat Building at Port Hadlock, Washington

AcknowledgementsResearch - Christine McConnell

Lorna Tyson - Mere Brook HousePortland Museum & Geoff Kirby

Northwest School of Wooden Boat Building - Washington‘Last Voyage’ - Ann Davison

‘My Ship Is So Small’ - Ann Davison

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The seas calmed down and the little liferaft was swept back towards Portland Billwhere it eventually made landfall leavingthe exhausted Ann to climb the 50 feetcliff to the top.

This terrible ordeal, a million light-yearsaway from those carefree days at Hooton,had not only brought an end to all herdreams but had also so cruelly deprivedher of the man she had loved. It isdifficult to imagine how any normalperson could regain their composure aftersuch a devastating experience, but Annwas no normal person. This remarkablewoman, showing indomitable courage, asteely determination and a refusal to bebeaten bought a Cornish-built, 23ftwooden-hulled sloop ‘Felicity Ann’.She taught herself to sail and three yearslater she was ready to face her Atlanticnemesis once again.It was 18th May 1952 that she set out inFelicity Ann, or ‘FA’ as she always calledher, to conquer the Atlantic - thisuncertain ocean that had taken so muchfrom her already. She took her time,

sailing first to France, then to Gibraltarand finally to the Canaries before makingthat big jump across the ocean toBarbados. It took her 65 days when shewas out of all contact with the land,although as newspaper reports mentionshe was occasionally spotted from the air.She made landfall in Dominica on the23rd January 1953. Ann wasn’t going tobe beaten – and she wasn’t.

Ann married twice more, the first was justa brief affair but her third and lastmarriage to Bert Billheimer, an Americansailor and a free spirit like herself, lasteduntil her death in South Florida in 1992.

And what of Felicity Ann? She hassurvived! She is currently being restoredat the Northwest School of Wooden BoatBuilding in Port Hadlock, Washington,USA So perhaps one day ‘FA’ will sailagain to remind us of the strength of thehuman spirit and of the unquenchabledetermination of one woman – AnnDavison.

Above - the inquest into the death of FrankDavison from the Western Gazette June 17th 1949Left - Sunderland Daily Echo & Shipping Gazette13th August 1953