Born: 5 July 1915, United Kingdom
Died: 17 September 1940
Country most active: International
Also known as: NA
The following is excerpted from a conversation with Dr Nina Baker about her book, Supposed Killed or Drowned by Enemy Action at Sea, about Scottish Merchant Navy women who died as a result of enemy action in the First and Second World Wars.
Nurse stewardess Agnes Wallace was lost when the City of Benares was sunk in September 1940. She was from the Highlands of Scotland, and it’s unusual in the women that I’ve discussed in that she was absolutely a middle-class woman who chose to go to sea. So she was born in Ullapool, and her father was a doctor, the local doctor. She had worked in the local primary school, but she was clearly an adventurous girl because she was the Scottish girl guide, the Scottish girl guide who was picked to be a representative of Scotland when a chalet was opened by the World Association of Girl Guides in Switzerland. So that must have been a remarkable adventure for even a middle-class girl to go all the way to Switzerland with a few other girl guides from the rest of Britain for that. She joined Ellerman City Line as an assistant stewardess in 1936, and first joined the City of Benares in 1937. She, having worked in a primary school, must have been an exceptionally well-trained sort of person to take on running the children’s room on the ship, and indeed the brochure for the ship makes a special point of emphasizing how the company was taking a special interest in its child passengers by having a well-equipped children’s room. By no means every ship would have had one, even if they were carrying plenty of children passengers. And although this job was not normally a high-status one, with Ellerman City it was because Ellerman decided that they were going to promote this provision as part of their selling effort. So it was a very nice room, very well equipped. But then when the ship was lost in 1940, the loss of Agnes Wallace was widely reported because she was so well known in her hometown in Ullapool. “There is deep sympathy with Doctor and Mrs Wallace, and the sad news they have received of their daughter, who is missing, believed drowned, as a result of the sinking of the evacuee ship, City of Benares.” So this was another one that made huge headlines because it was an evacuee ship. Everybody put their children on the ship thinking they were going to somewhere safe, and they weren’t. So “the loss of such an active and useful young life is deeply regretted.”