Sue Cook was seven years-old when her father and mother announced that they were going to quit their jobs, sell their house and belongings, and embark on a three-year sailing adventure on board the Wavewalker to honor Captain James Cook’s epic third voyage around the world. “After all, we share the captain’s surname, so who better to do it,” Gordon Cook tells his children, while Sue nearly chokes on her corn flakes. 

That three year tour, however, turned into a ten year nightmare for Sue, who at various times begged her parents to let her go back to a normal life in England. Her pleas were labeled as selfish by her father. (Her mother, Mary, would often call Sue’s behavior “mardy,” and stop speaking to her daughter.) Despite the obstacles, Sue managed to complete her coursework remotely and gain admittance to Oxford, eventually completing a PhD at Cambridge. 

Suzanne Heywood (Photo Credit: Exor)

Sue married Lord Jeremy Heywood, who died in 2018 after a battle with lung cancer. Following her husband’s death, Lady Suzanne Heywood completed his memoir, the title, What Does Jeremy Think? reflecting the high regard in which Heywood, who directly served four Prime Ministers in various roles, enjoyed in England. 

She realized, however, that she needed to complete the book she had begun about those ten years on the Wavewalker that had affected her life in so many ways. According to interviews in the British press, Suzanne’s father and brother, Jon, refute what’s in the book, instead talking about their time at sea in glowing terms. (Suzanne’s mother died in 2016.) Small details, of course, can be debated, but Suzanne includes so much information in Wavewalker that’s it’s hard not to view that the years she spent sailing around the world were traumatic. 

In order to bankroll the trip Gordon placed ads in newspapers offering spaces on the Wavewalker for travelers. While these passengers paid, they were also required to serve as crew on the ship. How helpful these pseudo adventurers were varied. Some were eager to learn more about sailing and didn’t mind cooking. Others were content to sunbathe and complain about the food. When the crew included less cooperative people, Sue had to assist her father to sail Wavewalker and her mother to cook three meals. Her brother was exempted from time in the galley kitchen.

Gordon’s plan was flawed from the start, traveling from west to east, rather than as Captain Cook did, from east to west, a route that ensured the Wavewalker would encounter horrific weather in the Indian Ocean. Sue’s descriptions of the rough waves the ship braved are so vivid as to induce seasickness even when reading while sitting in a chair. During the worst interval, Sue suffered a serious head injury. Arriving on the small, remote Île Amsterdam, they discovered that the only doctor on the island did not have any painkillers. Cutting into the wound to remove a  clot, a procedure which was repeated seven times, Sue screamed in agony. Her mother remained outside the operating room, calmly reading a book.

Mary and Gordon were teachers and they had promised they would home school Sue and Jon while at sea. Once underway, however, teaching always fell to the bottom of the to-do list. While Jon seemed happy to put aside schoolwork, Sue was distraught, knowing falling behind would make it difficult, if not impossible, to go to university. She enrolled in a remote course and often went without much sleep, struggling to complete her lessons. During times when the Wavewalker stayed in one port for an extended period of time (usually so Gordon could find work to fund the trip), Sue was able to send and receive her lessons by mail. At one point, she feared she would miss an important mailing because Gordon insisted on leaving before her papers arrived. The postal clerk said it would cost $100 to forward the mail to the Wavewalker’s next port of call. Sue pleaded with her father and he reluctantly agreed to pay the fee. (He ignored that fact that he borrowed $100 from Sue’s babysitting money and refused to pay her back.)

As difficult as Sue’s time on the ship was, she faced other challenges when her parents left her and Jon in a remote part of New Zealand, with little money and Sue’s visa in question, and went sailing off on their own. At one point, Sue actually called a child helpline to plead for assistance. While the woman she spoke with was sympathetic – even horrified at what Sue told her – there was no followup call or visit. 

Determined to gain admittance to university, Sue mailed out letters to prominent ones in the U.K. and the U.S. (Her letter to Harvard was addressed “Harvard University, Harvard, America.”) How would these top institutions regard a young woman who spent her formative years sailing around the world? She received her answer when she’s invited to apply to Somerville College, Oxford. Her father agreed to give her the airfare. After two days and many transfers she arrived in the country she left behind ten years ago. 

Having fallen in love with creatures, seaworthy and otherwise, Sue decided to study zoology. All of her reading onboard, as well as close encounters with everything from sharks to whales, prepared her well for her Oxford interview. She nailed it and she was in.

Memoirs from authors who can write about their terrible childhoods (one, Tara Westover’s Educated, is mentioned on the back of the copy of Wavewalker I received), are creating a new category. Suzanne Heywood’s is a valuable addition to this genre. These memoirs, however, are written by the survivors, those who suffer the abuse but are able to escape and create a meaningful life. We can only imagine those who are still trapped and unable to find a way out. Heywood and others can have an impact and show the way forward.

Wavewalker
Suzanne Heywood

Top photo: Gordon, Sue, and Mary on board the Wavewalker. Photo courtesy of Suzanne Heywood