Flying in 1932 Audrey Sale-Barker skiing

Audrey Florice Durell "Wendy" Drummond Sale-BarkerAncestry.com
London, England, Electoral Registers, 1935 atabase on-line Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com, 2010. (1903 in Chelsea, LondonFreeBMD
/ref> – 21 December 1994 in Dorset, EnglandThe Countess of Selkirk
''The Herald'' (Glasgow), 24 Dec. 1994.) was a British

alpine skiing Alpine skiing, or downhill skiing, is the pastime of sliding down snow-covered slopes on skis with fixed-heel bindings, unlike other types of skiing ( cross-country, Telemark, or ski jumping), which use skis with free-heel bindings. Whether for ...

champion and prominent

aviator An aircraft pilot or aviator is a person who controls the flight of an aircraft by operating its Aircraft flight control system, directional flight controls. Some other aircrew, aircrew members, such as navigators or flight engineers, are al ...

. She was the daughter of Maurice Drummond Sale-Barker and the grand-daughter of children's writer

Lucy Sale-Barker Lucy Elizabeth Drummond Sale-Barker, née Davies, known also by her first married name Lucy Villiers (1841–1892) was a British children's writer. She began her literary career with occasional articles for '' Dublin University Magazine'' and ' ...

.thePeerage.com
''Burke's Peerage and Baronetage'', 106th ed., (Crans, Switzerland: Burke's Peerage (Genealogical Books) Ltd, 1999, vol. 2, p. 2578 After her marriage to George Douglas-Hamilton, 10th Earl of Selkirk in 1947, she became Audrey Douglas-Hamilton, Countess of Selkirk.

Skiing career

An inaugural member of the

Ladies' Ski Club The Ladies' Ski Club was founded in 1923, at the suggestion of Arnold Lunn, by Doreen Elliott, Mrs Duncan Harvey and Lunn's wife, (Lady) Mabel Lunn. It was the first club for women who wanted to ski. History The Ladies' Ski Club (LSC) was founded ...

organized by Sir Arnold Lunn, she was the first female skier to win the diamond badge at the prestigious

Arlberg-Kandahar The Arlberg-Kandahar race (often abbreviated A-K or AK) is an annual alpine skiing event. The first edition of the race was held in 1928 in St. Anton, in the Arlberg district of Austria. The location originally alternated between St. Anton and M� ...

race, signifying at least four top-three finishes in the

combined Combined may refer to: * Alpine combined (skiing), the combination of slalom and downhill skiing as a single event ** Super combined (skiing) * Nordic combined (skiing), the combination of cross country skiing and ski jumping as a single event * T ...

race. She won the

title at the second A-K race, held in

St. Anton Sankt Anton am Arlberg, commonly referred to as St Anton, is a village and ski resort in the Austrian state of Tyrol. It lies in the Tyrolean Alps, with aerial tramways and chairlifts up to , yielding a vertical drop of . It is also a popular s ...

in 1929.Google Books
Arnold Lunn, ''The Story of Ski-ing''. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1952, pp. 87, 97, 207. American skier

Alice Kiare Alice may refer to: * Alice (name), most often a feminine given name, but also used as a surname Literature * Alice (''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland''), a character in books by Lewis Carroll * ''Alice'' series, children's and teen books by ...

described Sale-Barker as a striking figure: 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. Sale-Barker was captain of the British women's team at the

1936 Winter Olympics The 1936 Winter Olympics, officially known as the IV Olympic Winter Games (german: IV. Olympische Winterspiele) and commonly known as Garmisch-Partenkirchen 1936 ( bar, Garmasch-Partakurch 1936), were a winter multi-sport event held from 6 to 16 ...

, held at

Garmisch-Partenkirchen Garmisch-Partenkirchen (; Bavarian: ''Garmasch-Partakurch''), nicknamed Ga-Pa, is an Alpine ski town in Bavaria, southern Germany. It is the seat of government of the district of Garmisch-Partenkirchen (abbreviated ''GAP''), in the O ...

, Germany, the first Olympics to include alpine skiing.Whittell, Giles. ''Spitfire Women of World War II''. London: HarperPress, 2007, p. 83-85. Five ATA flyers Lettice Curtis, Jenny Broad, Audrey Sale-Barker, Gabrielle Patterson">Jenny_Broad.html" ;"title="Lettice Curtis, Jenny Broad">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). 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

Sudan Sudan ( or ; ar, السودان, as-Sūdān, officially the Republic of the Sudan ( ar, جمهورية السودان, link=no, Jumhūriyyat as-Sūdān), is a country in Northeast Africa. It shares borders with the Central African Republic t ...

ese authorities wouldn't permit them to fly through the country. 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."Girl flyers, hurt, rescued in Africa" (AP)
''New York Evening Post'', 17 Jan 1933, p. 3. via Fulton History But according to another, more persistent account, the aviators were saved when a

Maasai Maasai may refer to: * Maasai people *Maasai language * Maasai mythology * MAASAI (band) See also * Masai (disambiguation) * Massai Massai (also known as: Masai, Massey, Massi, Mah–sii, Massa, Wasse, Wassil or by the nickname "Big Foot" Mas ...

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.""Aeronautics: Lost & Found,"
''Time'', 30 Jan. 1933.Nigel Griffith
, "A salute to the ATA, 60 years on."
''General Aviation'', 18 Mar 2008. IAOPA Europe 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.Alan Lon
"ATA First Eight."
''British Air Transport Auxiliary'', 2001. She was a close friend of famed ATA pilot Amy Johnson. On 30 November 1945, it was Sale-Barker who was charged with lowering the ATA flag for the last time.Whittell, Giles. ''Spitfire Women of World War II''. London: HarperPress, 2007, p. 272

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. She died in 1994, just one month after her husband.Elizabeth Douglas-Hamilton, "The countess on her wedding day in 1949," ''The Herald'' (Glasgow), 24 Dec 1994. In a remembrance written a few days after her death by her sister-in-law,

Elizabeth Douglas-Hamilton, Duchess of Hamilton and Brandon Elizabeth Ivy Douglas-Hamilton, Duchess of Hamilton, OBE, DL (25 May 1916 – 16 September 2008), was the daughter of Alan Percy, 8th Duke of Northumberland (1880–1930) and his wife, Helen. She was born as Lady Elizabeth Ivy Percy at Alnwick ...

, she described her postwar married life as a selfless one, dedicated to supporting her husband and those in need. Her nephew is the Scottish Conservative politician

James Douglas-Hamilton James Alexander Douglas-Hamilton, Baron Selkirk of Douglas, (born 31 July 1942) is a Scottish Conservative Party politician who served as Member of Parliament for Edinburgh West and then as a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for the Lo ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sale-Barker, Audrey 1903 births 1994 deaths People from Chelsea, London British female alpine skiers Air Transport Auxiliary pilots British women in World War II British women aviators Selkirk