From the internet.. really interesting
America's Cup History
The First Woman
By Hamish Ross, Alinghi General Counsel
Her name was Susan Matilda Cunninghame-Graham Bartholomew. The first woman to sail in the America’s Cup was born on...
Her name was Susan Matilda Cunninghame-Graham Bartholomew. The first woman to sail in the America’s Cup was born on 11 June 1853 in Barony Lanark, Scotland to Susan Jane Cunninghame-Graham whose family were descended from the Earls of Glencairn, and Robert Bartholomew the son of a wealthy Glaswegian cotton spinner, John Bartholomew for whom Bartholomew Street in Glasgow is named.
Her mother died when she was two years old shortly after the birth of her younger brother Robert. They were both brought up by their father in a large house with nurses, servants, butlers and governesses in conservative Victorian Glasgow. Little is known of her early life but they lived comfortably on the family’s wealth from the cotton spinning business established by her paternal grandfather and on the income from large land holdings in and around Glasgow.
Susan and her brother Robert, who, at the time, was an officer in the Royal Scots Fusiliers, were sailing on the Mediterranean in a small yacht in the summer of 1877 when they met Irishman Lieutenant William “Paddy” Henn RN. Henn had recently retired from the Royal Navy and was living the leisurely life of a Victorian gentleman from the rents collected from his family’s 7,660 acres in County Claire, Ireland. Henn cruised and occasionally raced a succession of yachts. When he met Susan Bartholomew he owned the 80 ton yawl Gertrude. They were quickly married in 1877 and Susan Henn joined her husband, unusually for the times, to live aboard Gertrude and later their second yacht Galatea for the rest of their lives. They were members of the Club Nautique de Nice and spent much of their lives sailing both the Mediterranean Sea and the coasts of Ireland and Britain. On their return to the Clyde in 1879 after one such cruise Gertrude collided with another vessel and the couple was reported missing, only later to be found safe on board the boat that hit them. The Scotsman newspaper reported the incident describing Mrs. Henn as “well known and much esteeme
d”.