Audrey Sale-Barker

Audrey Florice Durell Drummond Sale-Barker[1] (1903 in Chelsea, London[2] – 21 December 1994 in Dorset, England[3]), nicknamed Wendy,[4] was a British alpine skiing champion and prominent aviator. She was the daughter of Maurice Drummond Sale-Barker and the grand-daughter of children's writer Lucy Sale-Barker.[5] After her marriage to George Douglas-Hamilton, 10th Earl of Selkirk in 1947, she became Audrey Douglas-Hamilton, Countess of Selkirk.

Flying in 1932
Skiing in 1939
Audrey Sale-Barker
Medal record
Representing  United Kingdom
Women's Alpine skiing
World Championships
1932 Cortina d'AmpezzoSlalom

Skiing career

An inaugural member of the Ladies' Ski Club organized by Sir Arnold Lunn, she was the first female skier to win the diamond badge at the prestigious Arlberg-Kandahar race, signifying at least four top-three finishes in the combined race. She won the combined title at the second A-K race, held in St. Anton in 1929.[6]

American skier Alice Kiare described Sale-Barker as a striking figure:

Audrey Sale-Barker made an extraordinary impression on everybody who saw her ski. Very tall, extremely slim, her height accentuated by trousers so long that they touched the ground around her boots, pale honey-coloured hair, a vague dreamy expression, and when she skied I can only describe her as a sleep-walker. She stood very erect, with both arms slightly lifted in front of her, she had little or no reserve strength in a race, gave everything she had, and often collapsed and fainted when a race was over. She had incredible courage, and I will never forget seeing her take the last steep slope of Dengert at the finish of the 1928 Arlberg-Kandahar absolutely straight, with lifted arms like someone in a trance.

— [7]

In 1929 a letter was received inviting the British to send skiers to compete in an event in Poland. The organisers in Zakopane were surprised to find that the British team included Sale-Barker and another LSC founder member Doreen Elliott. Elliott and Sale-Barker were allowed to join the skiing competition and the skiers were impressed when they finished 13th and 14th.[8]

Sale-Barker was captain of the British women's team at the 1936 Winter Olympics, held at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, the first Olympics to include alpine skiing.[9]


Five ATA flyers Lettice Curtis, Jenny Broad, Audrey Sale-Barker, Gabrielle Patterson and Pauline Gower in 1942 by an Airspeed Oxford trainer

Aviation

In 1929, Sale-Barker earned her 'ticket' from the Royal Aero Club (RAeC).[10] In October and November 1932, she and another female pilot, Joan Page, flew from London to Cape Town in a de Havilland Gipsy Moth. They were held up for a time in Cairo when the Sudanese authorities wouldn't permit them to fly through the country.[11] On their return from Cape Town, they crashed near Nairobi; Page broke her leg, and Sale-Barker suffered a minor head injury. According to one contemporaneous account, the women were sighted by scouting plane and then located by a rescue party.[12] But according to another, more persistent account, the aviators were saved when a Maasai tribesman came upon them, and Sale-Barker sent him for help with a note written in lipstick, reading "Please come and fetch us. We've had an aircrash AND ARE HURT."[13][14] She had the note framed and it hung in her Dorset home.

In June 1940, Sale-Barker joined the Women's Section of the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA), the organisation responsible for ferrying military aircraft from the aircraft-factories to the RAF units.[15] She was a close friend of famed ATA pilot Amy Johnson.[3] On 30 November 1945, it was Sale-Barker who was charged with lowering the ATA flag for the last time.[16]

Marriage and later life

On 6 August 1947, she married fellow-aviator George Douglas-Hamilton, 10th Earl of Selkirk, one of the legendary Douglas-Hamilton brothers, all four of whom had distinguished wartime careers in the RAF. The couple had no children.[5] She died in 1994, just one month after her husband.[17] In a remembrance written a few days after her death by her sister-in-law, Elizabeth Douglas-Hamilton, Duchess of Hamilton and Brandon, she described her postwar married life as a selfless one, dedicated to supporting her husband and those in need.[17]

Her nephew is the Scottish Conservative politician James Douglas-Hamilton.[3]

References
  1. Ancestry.com. London, England, Electoral Registers, 1935 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com, 2010.(subscription required)
  2. FreeBMD
  3. The Countess of Selkirk, The Herald (Glasgow), 24 Dec. 1994.
  4. Channelography Archived 11 March 2011 at the Wayback Machine
  5. thePeerage.com Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, 106th ed., (Crans, Switzerland: Burke's Peerage (Genealogical Books) Ltd, 1999, vol. 2, p. 2578
  6. Google Books Arnold Lunn, The Story of Ski-ing. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1952, pp. 87, 97, 207.
  7. Google Books Alice Kiare, in Skiing, the International Sport, ed. Roland Palmedo. New York: Derrydale Press, 1937. Quoted in Arnold Lunn, The Story of Ski-ing. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1952, p. 96.
  8. raulasturias. "Ladies Ski Club". Nevasport.com (in Spanish). Retrieved 1 May 2017.
  9. Whittell, Giles. Spitfire Women of World War II. London: HarperPress, 2007, p. 83-85.
  10. "The Royal Aero Club of the United Kingdom, Official Notices to Members," Flight, 25 Oct 1929. via Flightglobal
  11. "Girl Flyers to the Cape Held Up." Flight, 10 Nov. 1932. via Flightglobal
  12. "Girl flyers, hurt, rescued in Africa" (AP), New York Evening Post, 17 Jan 1933, p. 3. via Fulton History
  13. "Aeronautics: Lost & Found," Time, 30 Jan. 1933.(subscription required)
  14. Nigel Griffiths , "A salute to the ATA, 60 years on." General Aviation, 18 Mar 2008. IAOPA Europe
  15. Alan Long,"ATA First Eight." British Air Transport Auxiliary, 2001.
  16. Whittell, Giles. Spitfire Women of World War II. London: HarperPress, 2007, p. 272
  17. Elizabeth Douglas-Hamilton, "The countess on her wedding day in 1949," The Herald (Glasgow), 24 Dec 1994.
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