Opening slide. Walk on in the tube map apron and let the audience make the connection between the apron and the screen before saying anything. This is the ordinary TfL Tube map (April 2026). Ask them to hold the picture in their heads: we are going to change every name on it. Script section 0.

Same map, every station renamed. The Engineering Icons Tube Map, made by Transport for London with the Royal Academy of Engineering for National Engineering Day, 1 November 2023. 274 stations, 274 engineers, one theme per line: the Central line is Life and Health, the Northern line Computing and AI, the Piccadilly line Transport, Mobility and Flight. Harry Beck, who drew the original diagram, is Oxford Circus; Brunel is Ealing Common; Ada Lovelace is Warren Street. Somewhere on this map is a marine engineer. Where?

Zoom in. A red ring closes in on her name a second after the slide comes up, then pulses. Piccadilly line, dark blue, the Transport, Mobility and Flight theme. Green Park has become Sir Frank Whittle, inventor of the jet engine. One stop on towards Knightsbridge, where Hyde Park Corner should be: Victoria Drummond. The small four-pointed star beside her name means she received a UK national honour, her MBE of 1941. So who was she, and how did a woman born in 1894 end up on this map next to Frank Whittle? That is the next thirty minutes.

Open with the nursing home in Sussex, Christmas Day 1978, the holly and the one word "Christmas". Then the two telegraph phrases: Finished with Engines, Full Away. Script section 1.

The whole arc on one slide, so the audience knows where we are going. Do not read it out; point at 31 times and say "hold on to that number".

Her father Captain Malcolm Drummond, Equerry to the Queen; her mother an Amherst. The pendant in the safe. The nursery carpet as the sea and the cardboard lifeboat. Script section 2.

Mr Morton smiled at the pink sunbonnet. Presented at Court 1913, Normandy 1914, "the end of a golden age".

Mr Malcolm's advice: keep all your fingers, a hand for yourself and a hand for your master. Aunt Ayia: "my niece who is doing war work in a garage". The two-inch steel cube filed to within two thousandths. Mr Wirtley's promise on Dundee West platform, honoured by Blue Funnel after his death. Script section 3.

The fifty-foot ladder in the after well. The passenger who assumed white linen in the engine room. The mock log entry: "Miss Drummond attacked the Second Engineer". Her father's death reaches her at Singapore, 1924; the engine room at 118 degrees; fainted three times, never missed a watch. Script section 4.

The Tiger, Mr Lamb: "a wolf in sheep's clothing". Eighty-four hour weeks in Calcutta. Script section 5.

She left the Mulbera in December 1928 with the sea time for a Chief's certificate and a reference calling her "of exemplary character".

Golden Fisheries at 143 Kennington Road with Frances. The Anschluss: she refused the salute and hit a soldier with "my strong left hand". "There were so many people, we did not know which one he was." Script section 6.

"If the Red Duster won't have you, go foreign." Har Zion first, later lost with all hands but one. Naval inspectors "amazed and disgusted". Script section 7.

Norfolk, Virginia: a canteen for Lambeth funded from America. Home in a convoy of 39 ships from Halifax; four arrived.

"You would make a fine bonfire!" Captain Charlton: "Well done, Miss Drummond." She was pleased to have survived the war.

The Trieste Chief: "I hate having you here". "All right, get another Second." The hurricane with 9,000 tons of iron ore. In 1956 she gave up the examination for good, page 280. Script section 8.

The bunch of flowers from the crew. Thawing pipes at Dairen with a paraffin torch. "So often I had thought, some day I shall go through the Canal as Chief. And now there were so many times that I had." Script section 9.

The old lady at the annual meetings with an exercise book. The Institute's Victoria Drummond Room was in the Memorial Building at 76 Mark Lane, left in 1999 and demolished; nothing found naming a room at Coleman Street, Aldgate House or One Birdcage Walk. Other commemorations: Abertay University blue plaque, Dundee; Scottish Engineering Hall of Fame and the Drummond Theatre at HMS Sultan, both 2018; the Nautilus International Victoria Drummond Award; and the Tube map, which brings the talk back to the apron. Never the piece of paper; always the job. Finished with Engines. Full Away. Script section 10.

The Pilot, journal of the UK Maritime Pilots' Association, 9 January 2012: pilotmag.co.uk/victoria-drummond-award. Nautilus International's Victoria Drummond Award, presented by Sir Alan Massey at the first Nautilus International Conference, to Rachel Dunn, the only female Admiralty Pilot. To sea as a Shell Tankers cadet in 1984; Master's certificate 1993; Master with Wightlink; left in 2011 to train as an Admiralty Pilot at Portsmouth, qualifying after twelve months and due to become fully unrestricted, ready for aircraft carriers. Photo: Rachel Dunn with Nautilus chairman Ulrich Jurgens (Nautilus).

Victoria Drummond had a childhood fascination with marine engineering. Resilient in the face of prejudice, she achieved many career firsts – the first woman marine engineer in Britain, the first British woman to serve as a Merchant Navy Chief Engineer, the first woman to hold a Board of Trade Certificate as a ship's engineer (having been failed many times because she was a woman) and the first woman member of the Institute of Marine Engineers. As a result of her courage under fire at sea during World War II, she was awarded an MBE in 1941 and was the first woman to receive the Lloyd's War Medal for Bravery at Sea.

Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Drummond. Commemorations: 2013 "Women in Science" exhibition, National Library of Scotland; blue plaque on the Old College, Abertay University (then Dundee Institute of Technology), on the Dundee Women's Trail and Dundee Global Trail; 2018 Scottish Engineering Hall of Fame; 2018 the Drummond Theatre at HMS Sultan, Gosport, training the Royal Navy's marine and air engineers. Wartime: the Victoria A. Drummond Canteen in Lambeth, funded partly from Virginia. Wikipedia says IMarEST has a Victoria Drummond Room at its headquarters, which disagrees with the book and the notes on the Full Away slide.

Her grave at the Chapel, Megginch Castle: a visiting marine engineer at the end of her pilgrimage, her hand on Victoria's stone. Inset: flowers left for her 125th birthday, 14 October 2019, by Emily Buck, a 4th Class Marine Engineer. The card tucked in among them is on the next slide.

The card left with the flowers, read aloud (abridge the first part as time allows): Dear Chief, When we find ourselves facing obstacles because of who we are, we can look to your story and feel less alone in our work. It is disheartening that we still sometimes struggle to be given a chance to rise or fall on our own merits, as you also did 100 years ago. Yet, we are inspired by your practical and honest determination to take care of your ships, your crewmates, and yourself. You seem to have always found the joy in a seafarer's life whenever you could. As every year more women sail the course that [you] first charted, we treasure your example and take ever greater pride in your accomplishments. On your 125th Birthday, we take time to celebrate Victoria Drummond for her leadership, devotion to duty, determination, and bravery in the face of bombs, bullets, and bullies. Presented by Emily Buck, 4th Class Marine Engineer, for all those women marine engineers. [The card's own sign-off is hidden by the flowers after "on behalf of those of us w…"; the line above is how it is read in the talk.]