Joan Grigsby

JOAN GRIGSBY was born in Hampshire in 1909. A love of the sea was evident early in her life – many journeys and many reports of them led to a blossoming journalistic career. Her first book, Longshore and Down Channel, was published in 1932, the year after her working trip to Shetland. That trip was commemorated in her second and most famous book, An Island Rooing, published in 1933. A dashing air pilot and squadron-leader, Peter Bryer, wrote her a letter of appreciation soon after their publication; she married him in 1934, and they went on to have two sons. She combined married life with further sea adventures and travel, publishing several more books, including works on yachting, cookery at sea and local history. She died six weeks after her husband, in 1994, at the age of 84.