Betsy Miller

Recently I became aware of an admirable woman named Betsy Miller. Although she is not very well-known, I feel she shouldn't be forgotten.

Betsy Miller was born in 1791, the first of eight children, in Saltcoats, Ayrshire, Scotland, to parents William Miller and wife Mary. William dealt with timber and was the owner of a ship, the Clytus, which usually carried 200 tons of coal from Saltcoats to Belfast, Ireland. Carrying out their lives overlooking the harbor, the sea ran through the family's veins. Betsy began lending a helping hand to her father's business when she was fifteen years old. Her only brother, Hugh, also worked on the ship.

In 1839, when Betsy was forty-eight years old, tragedy struck the Millers. Hugh, who the family was counting on to carry on the business, drowned at Ardrossen, Ayrshire. In the same year William's health started to falter. Despite such setbacks, Betsy, who was as confident at sea as anywhere else, bravely took over the business. She needed to get her family out of the £700 debt that her father had put them in.

Betsy Miller became the first woman to be listed in the British Registry of Tonnage as a ship's captain. Although many people were at first startled to see a female captain, she received respect from the men she encountered.

According to records, Betsy always were a "white frilly cap", even though she was on a dirty coal ship. She converted the ship's deckhouse into her own private quarters so she could be apart from the men of her crew, and she was always at the head of things.

One of the key moments of her career took place in a storm just outside of Irving Bay. The captain, crew, and ship were all struggling to keep afloat. When things looked their darkest, Betsy calmly remarked "Lads, I'll gang below and put on a clean sark, for I would like to be flung up on the sands looking kind of decent ... Irvine folks are gossiping, nasty bodies!" While she was in her cabin, the situation changed drastically for the better. From that day forward her crew believed that they were alive thanks to Betsy's clothing and wisdom.


Betsy's career as the Clytus' captain ended in 1862 due to bad health. Two years later, when she was seventy-four years old, she died and was buried at Ardrossen Parish Church, which was later made into the North Ayrshire Museum. Her youngest sister Hannah took over for a little while, but the ship was not long after condemned by the Board of Trade. It was left to rot on the sea at North Pans.

In a fitting statement made after Betsy's death by the Ardrossen and Saltcoats Herald on 14 May 1864, "Her memory, her deeds and her example will live and be spoken of long after the generation who knew her personally will have passed away."