Speaker 1: You're listening to a MoMA Mea podcast.
Speaker 2: Mama Maya acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
Speaker 2: that this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 1: I was a complete prisoner in this environment because I
Speaker 1: had no choice on where we would go, and often
Speaker 1: my father wouldn't even tell me where we were going
Speaker 1: to sail to next.
Speaker 3: So you're completely imprisoned in this.
Speaker 1: World and you can't even step off the boat and
Speaker 1: go to school or bring somebody up or anything like that.
Speaker 2: From MoMA may you're listening to no filter. I'm mea
Speaker 2: Friedman and when I was about seven, my parents decided
Speaker 2: we'd go on a road trip around Australia. We're away
Speaker 2: for about six weeks, but it felt like six years,
Speaker 2: and I hated every single second of it. Here's a
Speaker 2: hot tip. Most little kids don't have an appetite for adventure,
Speaker 2: not the kind of advent that takes them away from
Speaker 2: their friends and pets and grandparents.
Speaker 4: Kids like routine, They like being at home.
Speaker 2: When Susan Haywood was seven and her little brother was six,
Speaker 2: they were told by their parents that they'd be leaving
Speaker 2: the UK, leaving school, leaving their dog and their grandparents
Speaker 2: to go and see around the world for three years.
Speaker 2: Suzanne had a doubt about what that would be like,
Speaker 2: but like so many little girls, she trusted her dad.
Speaker 2: He was her hero. But as you're going to hear today,
Speaker 2: there's a fine line between adventure and survival, between an
Speaker 2: extended family holiday and well being held captive by your
Speaker 2: parents for ten years.
Speaker 4: Because what was supposed to be.
Speaker 2: A three year journey turned into a decade long odyssey
Speaker 2: where Suzanne was severely injured, hospitalized, put in a very
Speaker 2: unsafe environment with strangers as a teenage girl, and ultimately
Speaker 2: abandoned in a country where she knew nobody. This story
Speaker 2: is kind of like a Greek myth or an action adventure,
Speaker 2: complete with shipwrecks and desert islands. But for Suzanne, it
Speaker 2: was her life and it's her story. And with such
Speaker 2: a big story like this, I often think about where
Speaker 2: I want to begin these conversations, But with her story,
Speaker 2: I was curious to know where she actually begins. When
Speaker 2: she tells other people about this incredible thing that happened
Speaker 2: to her, what's the beginning for her?
Speaker 1: So the beginning for me is the moment where my
Speaker 1: father says, I want to sail around the world, and
Speaker 1: you're coming with me.
Speaker 3: It's going to be.
Speaker 1: Three years because my whole life changed at that moment,
Speaker 1: And so that is the beginning of the story. And
Speaker 1: up until that point, I'm quite a normal little girl
Speaker 1: living a normal life. I'd go to school, I've got friends,
Speaker 1: everything is normal, and then it changes because of that
Speaker 1: decision that he made.
Speaker 2: That day was in nineteen seventy six. You were only seven,
Speaker 2: Your brother John is six. You're eating your cereal and
Speaker 2: your dad Gordon announced his plan over.
Speaker 4: The breakfast table.
Speaker 2: Had he always had a fascination with Captain Cook? What
Speaker 2: exactly did he tell you all that his plan was?
Speaker 1: So he had had a fascination with Captain Cook. My
Speaker 1: maiden name is actually Cook, and he comes from a
Speaker 1: similar part of the UK to Captain Cook. And for
Speaker 1: many years I believe that we were related to him,
Speaker 1: but I now understand we're not. But it was enough
Speaker 1: of a connection for him to feel that fascination. And
Speaker 1: he'd always loved sailing. He hadn't sailed very far. They'd
Speaker 1: had various small boats, and they'd gone as far as
Speaker 1: crossing the Channel. He didn't really know how to navigate
Speaker 1: at that point, and anyway, as a six year old,
Speaker 1: you don't really question these things. Okay, So my dad's
Speaker 1: trying to sail around the world.
Speaker 3: You know, he's a hero.
Speaker 1: Hero worship my dad like a lot of little girls
Speaker 1: do with their father. Okay, you know, we're going on
Speaker 1: this adventure, and I was worried because I was leaving
Speaker 1: behind all my friends, my dog, Rusty water spaniel, my grandparents.
Speaker 1: I was very close, in particular to my Nana, my
Speaker 1: father's mother. But we were going to be back in
Speaker 1: three years and it was going to be a great adventure.
Speaker 2: You didn't question, of course, you kind of don't even
Speaker 2: get the opportunity to question things. Well, maybe kids do now,
Speaker 2: but back in the seventies, we didn't get the chance
Speaker 2: to question things when our parents told us their plans.
Speaker 2: But how did your mother, Mary, and your brother John,
Speaker 2: who was about the same agency, how did they react
Speaker 2: to the proposition, particularly your mom.
Speaker 1: So my mom was madly in love with my father
Speaker 1: and really would go along with anything that he wanted
Speaker 1: to do. They had one of these dynamics where, you know,
Speaker 1: my father made all the big decisions and my mother
Speaker 1: made all the little decisions, the day to day decisions,
Speaker 1: but the thing was my mom hated, and I knew
Speaker 1: that even as a little girl. My father would often
Speaker 1: go saiving. My mother would not go with him. But
Speaker 1: I think for my mother, the idea that he would
Speaker 1: go sailing without her was inconceivable. And then if she
Speaker 1: was going, of course us kids would go. My brother
Speaker 1: I don't really remember expressing much review. He's a year
Speaker 1: younger than me, so he was five at this point,
Speaker 1: so he didn't really have much review, certainly not at
Speaker 1: that point. But my mother was absolutely going to go.
Speaker 1: I don't remember her.
Speaker 3: Being enthusiastic about it.
Speaker 1: This was my father's dream, not hers, but she was
Speaker 1: absolutely part of it.
Speaker 2: Tell me about your mom. Your relationship with her wasn't easy,
Speaker 2: you write in your book. My father was a hero
Speaker 2: to me, and it seemed to everyone else. My mother
Speaker 2: was a glamorous, if somewhat unwilling and unmaternal accomplice speak
Speaker 2: to me about unmaternal.
Speaker 1: As a small child, I didn't really question how my
Speaker 1: mother was.
Speaker 3: She just was.
Speaker 1: I mean, you just accept your mother as the person,
Speaker 1: and she is. But as I got older, it became
Speaker 1: increasingly apparent not only that she was not maternal. I mean,
Speaker 1: at one point in the book, she leaves me overnight
Speaker 1: at an orphanage, but also she has very clear favorites.
Speaker 1: So my brother becomes very much like a golden child
Speaker 1: on the boat, and I become the Cinderella type character
Speaker 1: and talking to other children, particularly children who were taken
Speaker 1: out of the norm into very physically adventurous circumstances. That
Speaker 1: is a pattern which I'm hearing from other people as well,
Speaker 1: because of course girls are less suited for that sort
Speaker 1: of environment. And then you get into a dynamic where
Speaker 1: because the boy is enjoying it more, they're the good child.
Speaker 1: Because the girl is not enjoying it as much, and
Speaker 1: often girls are craving friendships and normality, they're the bad child.
Speaker 1: And that dynamic was one that my mother played into.
Speaker 1: My mother was always somebody who had favorites people, She
Speaker 1: liked people who flattered her. I now understand, at least
Speaker 1: I've been told, she is quite a narcissistic person. So
Speaker 1: if you flattered her and she liked what you were doing,
Speaker 1: you were wonderful. If you didn't, she disliked you. So
Speaker 1: this relationship I had with her went seriously downhill when
Speaker 1: I became a teenager, and looking back, I now understand
Speaker 1: I was probably in her eyes, competing for attention. You
Speaker 1: have become a pretty teenager. I was academic, and I
Speaker 1: think she just found me really hard to deal with
Speaker 1: on the boat. But her response to that was to
Speaker 1: be really quite unpleasant. And of course you're trapped in
Speaker 1: a tiny boat and you can't go anywhere. As a
Speaker 1: teenage girl, I couldn't go and be a friend. I
Speaker 1: couldn't get off the boat. There was nothing I could.
Speaker 2: You literally couldn't run away. You couldn't even slam a door.
Speaker 2: And you go for a walk to the park. Can
Speaker 2: you tell me your dad went and found this boat
Speaker 2: with the Wavewalker, which is also the name of your
Speaker 2: incredible book.
Speaker 4: What did the boat look like like? What was it like?
Speaker 4: The actual physicality of it on board?
Speaker 1: So wave Walker was a very beautiful boat from the outside,
Speaker 1: a very old fashioned looking boat with a raise that's
Speaker 1: called a kind of poop neck up at the back.
Speaker 1: She was a wooden boat, a schooner, which means the
Speaker 1: mast at the front is smaller than the mass of
Speaker 1: the back gaffrig, which means that the sail between the
Speaker 1: two masts square. So she looked really old fashioned and
Speaker 1: rather beautiful with a long bow sprit at the bow
Speaker 1: or the front, so she was very graceful, but the
Speaker 1: reality of what it was like to live on her
Speaker 1: was quite different. She was a very narrow boat, so
Speaker 1: down below you didn't have a lot of space, certainly
Speaker 1: not a space to live on for many years, and
Speaker 1: particularly because over time my father ran completely out of money.
Speaker 1: We were never very wealthy, but we became very poor
Speaker 1: over time, which is another thing that happens with long
Speaker 1: term sailors, because of course you often don't have a
Speaker 1: real source of income and it's very expensive to try
Speaker 1: and just keep the boat going, so there was no
Speaker 1: money for, you know, anything frivolous at all. I don't
Speaker 1: remember having a new item of clothing as a child.
Speaker 1: So he started taking paying crew on the boat six
Speaker 1: seven a crew usually men on board and downstairs down below,
Speaker 1: the space was very limited, so I was often sharing
Speaker 1: a cabin with these kind of male crews. There was
Speaker 1: only one working bathroom or head, very narrow kind of galley,
Speaker 1: one table that sat kind of five people, but not
Speaker 1: enough space for everybody to sit down, so quite constrained.
Speaker 1: And then imagine being in that environment as a teenage girl.
Speaker 1: Where you want, You want a degree of kind of privacy,
Speaker 1: you know, and of.
Speaker 3: Course you can't get off the boat.
Speaker 1: So and this is this wonderful, really interesting thing for
Speaker 1: me about the contrast between the parents' dream. My father
Speaker 1: had the dream of standing around the world, and for
Speaker 1: heim it was freedom and independence. And you know, if
Speaker 1: they fell out with somebody, which they often did, they
Speaker 1: would pull up the anchor and sail to somewhere else.
Speaker 1: But for me, I was a complete prisoner in this
Speaker 1: environment because I had no choice on where we would go,
Speaker 1: and often my father wouldn't even tell me where we
Speaker 1: were going to sail to next. So you're completely imprisoned
Speaker 1: in this world, and you can't even step off the
Speaker 1: boat and go to school or bring somebody up or
Speaker 1: anything like that.
Speaker 2: After this short break, what was supposed to be a
Speaker 2: three year voyage beginning when Susann was seven, drags out
Speaker 2: for years and years, and she becomes a young woman
Speaker 2: on the yacht, which brings a whole new set of
Speaker 2: challenges and dangers.
Speaker 4: Stay with us.
Speaker 2: Tell me about school, because I imagine when he sold it
Speaker 2: to you, the prospect of not going.
Speaker 4: To school at first for a kid.
Speaker 2: Is kind of great, But what did you do about
Speaker 2: lessons and about school?
Speaker 4: Did you do it? By correspondence?
Speaker 1: So the initial premise was that my mother was going
Speaker 1: to teach us. And my mother was a trained primary
Speaker 1: school teacher, so she had various worksheets that she was
Speaker 1: going to use.
Speaker 3: And I know you say.
Speaker 1: That the kind of promise for most kids would be
Speaker 1: quite exciting not going school, but actually I was taken
Speaker 1: out of school when I was seven, and I was
Speaker 1: quite an academic child, and I enjoyed school anyway. My
Speaker 1: mother did do a few worksheets, particularly in the first
Speaker 1: year or so, but it was very haphazard because she
Speaker 1: wouldn't do any at sea because she got seasick. She
Speaker 1: didn't really like doing them in port because then she'd
Speaker 1: want to go ashore. So every so often it would happen,
Speaker 1: but very very sporadic, and then within the first couple
Speaker 1: of years it stopped altogether. And by the time we
Speaker 1: got to Hawaii, by which point we've been at sea
Speaker 1: for four years, she's long given up any sort of education.
Speaker 1: And I'm incredibly bored, and I just to learn, So
Speaker 1: I'm trying to read every book I can find. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to talk to everybody I can kind of talk to.
Speaker 1: But I'm just desperate to learn, both for the sake
Speaker 1: of learning but also for friendships. I'm really really missing friends.
Speaker 1: And people say to me, but you know what was
Speaker 1: the problem? You know, you had the University of Life,
Speaker 1: to which I say, well, the University of Life is great,
Speaker 1: but I wanted to be a scientist. And how do
Speaker 1: you learn maths and physics and chemistry when you're sitting
Speaker 1: on a boat sailing around the world.
Speaker 2: You just said four years. I mean originally your dad
Speaker 2: had said three years. What was the intention to like
Speaker 2: sail for what a few weeks at a time and
Speaker 2: then go into port and.
Speaker 4: Like live in different cities.
Speaker 2: Or to just be spending the whole time on the ocean,
Speaker 2: Like what was the plan? And also then how did
Speaker 2: it turn out?
Speaker 1: Well, the plan was a slightly crazy plan. So he
Speaker 1: had this idea of recreating Captain Cook's third voyde around
Speaker 1: the world. And the reason why he did that, I
Speaker 1: now believe, is because that was a way of raising
Speaker 1: money to do the voyage, because it felt like, you know,
Speaker 1: something that people would donate money too.
Speaker 4: What did he do for a job? Your dad before
Speaker 4: all of.
Speaker 1: This so he first of all trained as a teacher himself,
Speaker 1: though he hated teaching and only did it for a
Speaker 1: few weeks, and then he ran various things. I remember
Speaker 1: he kind of ran a bowling alley at one point,
Speaker 1: and at the point at which we sold everything to
Speaker 1: buy the boat, he was running Warwick Castle in the UK,
Speaker 1: which is an old castle. So he was always an entrepreneur,
Speaker 1: not a very wealthy entrepreneur, but he was always an entrepreneur.
Speaker 1: He always had ideas, so that's what he was doing.
Speaker 1: And then he had this big idea that he was
Speaker 1: going to sell around the world and then he made
Speaker 1: it the Byzentinary Voyage. So he was able to raise
Speaker 1: some sponsorship for that, which was good because we didn't
Speaker 1: have a huge amount of money. So that was the idea.
Speaker 1: Now the problem we're standing around the world following Captain
Speaker 1: Cook's third voyage is Captain Cook took a very dangerous
Speaker 1: route on his third voyage. So whereas most people who
Speaker 1: sail around the world, they do so standing east to
Speaker 1: west around the equator, So you go from the UK,
Speaker 1: if you're starting from the UK, across the North Atlantic,
Speaker 1: through the Panama Canal down through the Pacific and so on.
Speaker 3: We weren't going that way.
Speaker 1: We were going the other way, which basically you don't
Speaker 1: do unless you're a very extreme sailor. We went down
Speaker 1: to South America and we sailed from west to east.
Speaker 1: That meant that we went across the Southern Atlantic Ocean,
Speaker 1: which is a very dangerous ocean, the wrong way.
Speaker 3: I e.
Speaker 1: Into the winds. And then we went even worse across
Speaker 1: the Southern Indian Ocean. And these trips, by the way,
Speaker 1: you're at sea four ten twelve weeks, weeks, weeks, yes,
Speaker 1: and there's a little kid. You're trapped down below because
Speaker 1: you can't come up on deck because it's too dangerous.
Speaker 1: And in the Southern Indian Ocean we hit a terrible,
Speaker 1: terrible storm. The ways became bigger and bigger, and eventually,
Speaker 1: and I talk about it in the book, were very
Speaker 1: badly shipwrecked. The boat or the sinks, and I am
Speaker 1: quite badly hurt because I'm flung against the ceiling of
Speaker 1: the cabin and against the wall, and I fracture my
Speaker 1: skull and break my nose. And we end up on
Speaker 1: a tiny little atoll island in the middle of the
Speaker 1: Indian Ocean called ourl Amsterdam where I have seven head
Speaker 1: operations without an esthetic, sous.
Speaker 4: That is a lot. And you're how old at this age?
Speaker 1: So I'm still seven, you're still seventh.
Speaker 4: This was in year one of the great adventure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one of the great adventure. But that's why the
Speaker 1: end of the voyage what is a major you know?
Speaker 1: The turning point of the voyage was supposed to be
Speaker 1: Hawaiian because Hawaiian was where Captain Cook was killed on
Speaker 1: his third voyage, at which point we were supposed to
Speaker 1: then turn around and come back through the Panama Canal
Speaker 1: to the UK, and that was the end of the voat.
Speaker 1: But by the time we got to Hawaii, mother, than
Speaker 1: being three years in, we were four years in because
Speaker 1: of the shipwreck. It took the best part of a
Speaker 1: year to repair the boat in Fremantle. We were in Fremantle.
Speaker 1: I went briefly to school in Fremantle, which I remember
Speaker 1: really loving.
Speaker 4: What school did you go to?
Speaker 1: I can't remember the school. It was a little local
Speaker 1: school near the boatyard in Fremantle, and I remember there
Speaker 1: were these very nice twin boys who used to compete
Speaker 1: over who would carry my school bag back to the
Speaker 1: boatyard every day.
Speaker 3: That was very sweet.
Speaker 4: You must have loved playing with other kids.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was wonderful because we were going to school.
Speaker 1: We were at one level having a somewhat normal life.
Speaker 1: At another level, we weren't because the boat was very
Speaker 1: badly damaged and in that shipwreck we lost all our toys.
Speaker 1: So we had no toys. We had virtually no money
Speaker 1: because everything was being spent that we had on repairing
Speaker 1: this boat. We were living on this boat which was
Speaker 1: half wrecked, in this boatyard. But when I left the
Speaker 1: boatyard and I put my little kind of saturl on
Speaker 1: and went to school, I could pretend to be normal
Speaker 1: and it was great. I remember kind of practicing a
Speaker 1: musical instrument, the tambourine, I seem to remember for the
Speaker 1: school band. I remember, for a little while, our life
Speaker 1: is normal, And then my father said, now we're saving again,
Speaker 1: and we set off.
Speaker 4: You must have been devastated. What was a typical day
Speaker 4: in the life for you, like as a child on the.
Speaker 1: Boat, Well, days were very governed by the weather. So
Speaker 1: when we set sail from Fremantle, we were sailing across
Speaker 1: the Great Australian Bite to Melbourne. And actually that's a
Speaker 1: pretty rough piece of sea as well, so you will
Speaker 1: have some days where you're completely becalmed with no wind,
Speaker 1: in which case I would get up in the morning,
Speaker 1: you know, find something for breakfast. We often didn't have
Speaker 1: very organized meals because everyone was doing watches. All the
Speaker 1: adults were doing watches. So it's not that you would
Speaker 1: get up in the morning and somebody would be there,
Speaker 1: because you'd have one or two adults on watch and
Speaker 1: everybody else.
Speaker 3: Would be asleep. But you would find yourself some breakfast.
Speaker 1: I'd go up if it was calm enough, I could
Speaker 1: go up and sit in the cockpit with whoever was
Speaker 1: on watch, and I could talk to them, and then
Speaker 1: I would go down and spend the rest of the
Speaker 1: day trying to entertain myself.
Speaker 3: You know. I would have a few books, I would draw, I.
Speaker 1: Would try to find things to do. But we didn't
Speaker 1: have any organized schooling, and we had very limited toys
Speaker 1: on board. The one thing I will say is is
Speaker 1: kids aren't endlessly inventive. So my younger brother and I
Speaker 1: would invent a lot of games, and I would also
Speaker 1: in ment a lot of games. I would play by myself.
Speaker 1: I mean, I remember using we had a chess set
Speaker 1: on board. It was one of the few things that
Speaker 1: we had, and I remember turning that into an entire kingdom,
Speaker 1: you know. But looking back, and particularly now as a parent,
Speaker 1: and I'm a parent of three children myself, it's a
Speaker 1: very deprived world forcing your to I mean, it's almost
Speaker 1: like if my parents have kind of locked me in
Speaker 1: a flat for a decade, we would all say that's
Speaker 1: kind of terrible. But actually being stuck at sea as
Speaker 1: a child, particularly a small child, you're down below in
Speaker 1: a very limited space with very few things to do.
Speaker 2: Like in a cell, because like kids need to run
Speaker 2: and jump and climb, how did you even You couldn't
Speaker 2: even move much.
Speaker 1: So if it was calm, you could go on deck,
Speaker 1: but there's limited deck space. You certainly can't run around
Speaker 1: very much. My brother and I had a game where
Speaker 1: we would try to kind of get from one end
Speaker 1: of the boat to the other without touching the floor.
Speaker 3: I remember.
Speaker 1: But you can't swim, and unless you're import you can't
Speaker 1: go short, so you can't play any sort of ball
Speaker 1: games or anything like that. So, yes, very limited for
Speaker 1: prolonged periods of time.
Speaker 4: Where was your mum? What would she do on the
Speaker 4: biat so my.
Speaker 1: Mum would do watches with everybody else. She got very
Speaker 1: badly seasick. So basically for the first three days, every
Speaker 1: time we left port, she would retreat to her bunk
Speaker 1: in the aft cabin at the back of the boat,
Speaker 1: and she was not to be disturbed. So for the
Speaker 1: first three days you always had to make do once
Speaker 1: you left port, and then she would appear and she
Speaker 1: would cook food. I mean, food on board was quite basic,
Speaker 1: you know, because you had to rely a lot on
Speaker 1: kind of canned and powdered food.
Speaker 4: What would you eat? What were meals like.
Speaker 1: Well, quite a lot of corned beef, quite a lot
Speaker 1: of spam. I don't really recommend. When my father had
Speaker 1: to cook when my mother was ill, his kind of
Speaker 1: go to meal was corned beef and powdered mashed potatoes,
Speaker 1: which actually I remember powdered mash potatoes being remarkably good. Actually,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure I would eat them now, but they
Speaker 1: were good. Later on, when we got into the Pacific,
Speaker 1: we had a wider range of food because we were
Speaker 1: able when we got to an island to trade and
Speaker 1: get bananas or mangoes or whatever. But certainly for those
Speaker 1: first few years. The food was very limited and we
Speaker 1: weren't really able to catch fitsch. I mean, you can't
Speaker 1: really fish in the Southern Indian Ocean again. Kind of
Speaker 1: later on, when we were in the Pacific, we would
Speaker 1: trail lines over the back of the boat, and it
Speaker 1: was very sporadic. But suddenly you would find that you
Speaker 1: caught a maimi or something and you would have a fish.
Speaker 1: But the diet was not.
Speaker 4: Great, not a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables.
Speaker 1: No, certainly not for the first few years. It got
Speaker 1: better once we were in the South Pacific, and then
Speaker 1: on the stormy day you were even more restricted because
Speaker 1: basically you weren't allowed to come up on deck.
Speaker 2: I can't get past the bit where you say your
Speaker 2: mum got seasick and she didn't like sailing, and yet
Speaker 2: you were on this indefinite journey to Hell. I would
Speaker 2: have thought from her point of view, I can understand
Speaker 2: why you wouldn't have had any say. But what made
Speaker 2: her not pull the pin or even do it in
Speaker 2: the first place?
Speaker 4: Was she just so in your father's thrall, and did
Speaker 4: he just hold all the power so she didn't have
Speaker 4: a voice.
Speaker 1: So she certainly had a voice but I think my
Speaker 1: mother's world rotated around my father and always did, and
Speaker 1: she knew this was his dream. He was going to
Speaker 1: do it whether or not she went with him, and
Speaker 1: he was the center of her world, so she was
Speaker 1: going to go. Unfortunately, because she didn't like sailing. That
Speaker 1: meant that she was often quite unhappy on the boat.
Speaker 1: Later on, when we got to the Pacific and the
Speaker 1: sailing was much easier, I think she enjoyed it more.
Speaker 1: And of course she didn't have to deal with the
Speaker 1: isolation because she was an adult, and obviously she was
Speaker 1: with my father. We were taking adult crew on the boat,
Speaker 1: so she had those, you know, those people to kind
Speaker 1: of talk to, although she often fell out with them,
Speaker 1: but she found that part of the sailing. Once we
Speaker 1: got there, she enjoyed it more and she just didn't
Speaker 1: seem to worry about the fact that she had two
Speaker 1: little kids with her who were really getting an education,
Speaker 1: weren't really able to have friendships.
Speaker 2: More of my conversation with Susanne Haywood after this break.
Speaker 2: How do you go through puberty on a boat, sharing,
Speaker 2: you know, a tiny cabin, bunk beds with grown men?
Speaker 4: How does that go?
Speaker 1: It's very difficult. It's really really difficult, and I learned
Speaker 1: I had to kind of look after myself because my parents.
Speaker 3: Just weren't really very interested.
Speaker 1: So I kept to myself, and people see in the
Speaker 1: book what I effectively do is I just become very
Speaker 1: withdrawn into myself and into my head. I have to
Speaker 1: be very careful what I do, so I very rarely
Speaker 1: go ashore on my own, because I realize if you
Speaker 1: go ashore on your own as a teenage girl, you
Speaker 1: get harassed quite a lot, or certainly you did then,
Speaker 1: so I have to be very careful about that. I
Speaker 1: keep to myself on the boat quite a lot. This
Speaker 1: is partly because my relationship my mother is such that
Speaker 1: she will kind of bully me quite a lot if
Speaker 1: I'm visible at all. So I keep very quiet, and
Speaker 1: I write a lot. I have some pen pals, kids
Speaker 1: I've met along the way, and I write letters to them.
Speaker 1: I write my diary. One way or another, you find
Speaker 1: a way to survive. I'm desperately by this point trying
Speaker 1: to study and teach myself as a way of keeping
Speaker 1: because it becomes very clear, particularly after a few years,
Speaker 1: that the reason why my parents want me to be
Speaker 1: on board is because they're using me to work on
Speaker 1: the boat, to cook and clean, and that's they.
Speaker 3: Don't want me to leave.
Speaker 1: They don't want to leave me with somebody to go
Speaker 1: to school because I'm actually useful on the boat. So
Speaker 1: I know I've got to escape because otherwise this voyage
Speaker 1: could go on forever. You know, we've gone way past
Speaker 1: four years. You know, we end up five, six, seven,
Speaker 1: eight years, were still on this boat.
Speaker 2: And did you say, hey, Dad, mum, when is this
Speaker 2: going to end? I mean, I know, even on a
Speaker 2: long car trip, my kids are like, are.
Speaker 4: We there yet? Are we there yet?
Speaker 2: Are we there?
Speaker 4: Hit? I can't like, did you just stop asking?
Speaker 1: So I did ask, and I kind of begged my
Speaker 1: father to kind of send me away to school or
Speaker 1: to let me get off the boat. But my father
Speaker 1: was somebody is somebody who will not accept somebody challenging
Speaker 1: his authority. You know, he was a very physically aggressive man.
Speaker 1: He never hit me, but I saw him hit many
Speaker 1: other people. And I was quite I mean, I love
Speaker 1: my father and I hero worshiped him as a child,
Speaker 1: but I was also quite frightened of him. You can
Speaker 1: hold both of those views at the same time, and
Speaker 1: on the occasions where I did challenge him, he became
Speaker 1: very aggressive and would kind of swear at me. You know,
Speaker 1: don't you you know, effing kind of you know it
Speaker 1: is not your you know you're the child. You're on
Speaker 1: the boat, you know you do this. There was no
Speaker 1: no debate whatsoever, and you knew that if you push that,
Speaker 1: you didn't know what would happen, you know. I mean
Speaker 1: at one point he left two members of crew on
Speaker 1: an island and sailed away. He once put me on
Speaker 1: shore and you know, refused to let me come back
Speaker 1: on the boat for a day. I remember sitting on
Speaker 1: the end of the jetty and I'm a teenage girl,
Speaker 1: and I'm quite a pretty teenage girl who gets quite
Speaker 1: harassed if you're.
Speaker 3: On your own.
Speaker 1: And I remember sitting at the end of the jetty
Speaker 1: because it felt like the safest place to be. So
Speaker 1: he was not a man that you could force. And then,
Speaker 1: of course I had no passport of my own until
Speaker 1: I was sixteen. I didn't have any money.
Speaker 3: I had no.
Speaker 1: Contact with any of my relatives back in UK because
Speaker 1: we left when I was so little. None of them
Speaker 1: had about you come to see us, which I don't
Speaker 1: blame them for but it meant I had no contact
Speaker 1: back with any of them to come back and kind
Speaker 1: of find anybody. So I just accepted I was trapped.
Speaker 1: I was completely trapped. I think it's also very difficult,
Speaker 1: and I've talked to kind of people about it, since
Speaker 1: it's very difficult as a child to challenge.
Speaker 3: Your own world.
Speaker 1: I mean, you challenge and you accept that your parents
Speaker 1: are not good parents to you. Where do you go
Speaker 1: from there, particularly when you live on a boat and
Speaker 1: there's nothing else in your world apart from that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you had nothing to compare it to, nor did
Speaker 2: your brother. And it's interesting when you talk and in
Speaker 2: the book, your experience was very different to your brother,
Speaker 2: because there's not a sense if you're in this together
Speaker 2: against your two crazy parents who've essentially kidnapped you, why
Speaker 2: is that.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting. So when we were little, we played
Speaker 1: a lot together. I described how we used to make
Speaker 1: up kingdoms and we were quite close. But what happened
Speaker 1: was when we became teenagers. So eleven twelve thirteen, my
Speaker 1: mother chose a favorite, and it was my brother, partly
Speaker 1: because I suspect he didn't rebel like I did. You know,
Speaker 1: he never questioned her. Even though I was cautious about
Speaker 1: how much I challenged my parents, I did challenge, and
Speaker 1: I was unhappy I would get off the boat. He
Speaker 1: never did, to my kind of knowledge. He enjoyed being
Speaker 1: on the boat more than I did. He enjoyed the
Speaker 1: physicality of it. He was treated very differently by both
Speaker 1: of my parents. So my father wanted my brother, because
Speaker 1: he was his son, wanted him to learn how to sail.
Speaker 1: So my brother was allowed to be on deck when
Speaker 1: we were sailing. My father believed I should not be
Speaker 1: on deck when we were sailing because I was a girl,
Speaker 1: and in fact, only bought one set of child size
Speaker 1: working life jackets, so I had an emergency life jacket,
Speaker 1: but I didn't have a set that would enable me
Speaker 1: to work on debt. He gave the only set that
Speaker 1: he had to my brother and then said, you know,
Speaker 1: you can't go on deck because you're a girl. Eventually
Speaker 1: I rebelled against that and went on deck, even without
Speaker 1: the kind of safety equipment, so my brother was able
Speaker 1: to go on deck. You know, it wasn't expected to
Speaker 1: do too many chores. I was expected to cook and
Speaker 1: clean down below with my mother. I had this terrible
Speaker 1: relationship with my mother and I. So we quickly learned,
Speaker 1: you know, once I hit those teenage years, that if
Speaker 1: my brother and I ever had a fight, I would
Speaker 1: be punished and he wouldn't. So this is kind of
Speaker 1: treating two children in such a different way. Meant that
Speaker 1: we separated, and we very rarely rowed. We just separated.
Speaker 1: I kept as far away as I could because I
Speaker 1: knew that I would be punished, you know, and he
Speaker 1: could do as I said. He could do no wrong
Speaker 1: and I could do no right. And it's very sad
Speaker 1: looking back, because I think if we had been treated
Speaker 1: in a similar sort of way, we could together have
Speaker 1: found a way to create a better life on board
Speaker 1: that boat. But because we were treated so differently, we
Speaker 1: were actually pushed apart. And to me as a child,
Speaker 1: that felt much more like there was a triangle of
Speaker 1: my mother, my father, and my brother and then there
Speaker 1: was me. And it's interesting talking to a lot of
Speaker 1: other people who've grown up in very different circumstances, that
Speaker 1: dynamic is not certainly not unique, but it all played
Speaker 1: out on this boat where you're the one who's the
Speaker 1: kind of dislike child.
Speaker 2: So I kind of thought that would be the end
Speaker 2: of Suzanne's story because you know she'd grown up. Surely
Speaker 2: she can get herself off the boat now she's sixteen.
Speaker 2: But that's actually when things.
Speaker 4: Took a really weird turn.
Speaker 2: Because before she sort of drifted away from her brother,
Speaker 2: something extraordinary happened. And here's a little sneak peek of
Speaker 2: part two of this conversation.
Speaker 1: That is the bleakest point of the whole story. I mean,
Speaker 1: even bleaker than being shipwrecked in the Indian Ocean and
Speaker 1: having all the head operations because we're effectively abandoned and
Speaker 1: have nowhere to go to and my job, and this
Speaker 1: has made very clear to me by my parents, is
Speaker 1: of course, to look after my brother.
Speaker 2: You can listen to part two of the episode right
Speaker 2: now by the link in the show notes. And what's
Speaker 2: so interesting about it is that it's really amazing how
Speaker 2: her relationship with her parents changed when she was no
Speaker 2: longer under their control.
Speaker 4: First of all, what they did to her.
Speaker 2: But then it was really not what you would expect
Speaker 2: once she was kind of out on her own. And
Speaker 2: the way this story ends is so it's kind of
Speaker 2: like out of a movie. Have a listen, let me
Speaker 2: know what you think,