It is actually impossible to break down Joe Carstairs' life into a few paragraphs without leaving out an interesting anecdote. After all, the millionaire heiress and racing boat pilot broke several records in the 1920s and was also one of the first openly queer style icons of her time. Today, on International Women's Day, we want to revisit her story.
Carstairs: "I came out of the womb queer"
Joe Carstairs was born on 1 February 1900 in Mayfair, London, under the name Marion Barbara Carstairs. As the granddaughter of Jabez Bostwick, a co-founder of the Standard Oil Company, she was the heiress to an immense fortune. Her childhood was privileged but unstable. Her legal father, Albert Carstairs, disappeared from her life shortly after her birth. Her mother, Evelyn, struggled with alcohol and heroin addiction. She rejected her female identity early on: "I came out of the womb queer," she later said and adopted the name "Joe".
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From military service to heiress to millions
She developed her technical expertise at an early age - including during her deployment in the First World War. At the age of just 16, she drove ambulances for the American branch of the Red Cross along the French front line. Immediately afterwards, she served for a while with the Women's Legion Mechanical Transport Section in Dublin and northern France.
When her mother finally died in 1921, Joe Carstairs received a huge inheritance from her grandparents' Standard Oil fortune. With an annual income of around 145,000 US dollars at the time, she was no longer dependent on working. According to reports, Carstairs once said of herself that as a child she admired nothing - except boats. Thanks to her wealth, she was able to pursue this passion without compromise. She consistently invested her money in racing and had several boats built by Sammy Saunders in Cowes, the so-called Estelle series. Later, she even opened her own shipyard with the Sylvia Yard.
When aircraft technology takes to the water
From a technical perspective, she was a true pioneer: she was the first woman to install powerful aircraft engines in racing boats. Her boat "Estelle IV" was powered by two Napier Lion engines. These 12-cylinder engines were known at the time for their high performance and relatively low weight. This conversion of aircraft technology for use on the water was an immense technical challenge at the time.
And sporting success was not long in coming either: in 1926 she won the "Duke of York's Trophy" and set a new world speed record on the water in 1927. Despite several attempts, she never managed to win the Harmsworth Trophy. In addition to her own races, she also supported Malcolm Campbell with £10,000 for his record-breaking car "Blue Bird". He then reverently described her as "the greatest sportsman he knew".
Private life: sovereignty and eccentricity
Carstairs not only made a name for herself on the water, but also in her private life. She lived out her homosexuality openly, which was unusual at the time. She collected over 120 portraits of her lovers, including Hollywood celebrities such as Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo. She also deliberately dressed masculine and behaved contrary to the prevailing image of women at the time. She can be seen in several pictures with a cigarette in her mouth, short hair and oil-stained suits in front of her boats.
A racing boat pioneer who pushed boundaries
In 1934, she bought the Bahamian island of Whale Cay for 40,000 dollars. She built a large part of the infrastructure there - including a lighthouse and a school. At the same time, she banned alcohol and penalised adultery. During the Second World War, she organised rescue operations from there to save shipwrecked sailors.
In 1975, Carstairs sold the island and moved to Miami, Florida. She died in 1993 at the age of 93. She meticulously documented her life in diaries and photo albums, which only became accessible to a wider public decades later. What remains is a woman who pushed technical boundaries as a racing boat pioneer, while at the same time breaking social norms as a queer style icon.
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David Ingelfinger
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