On 19 March 1946, while on a routine service delivery flight of a Spitfire XIV between Hampshire and an RAF base in Shropshire, the plane's engine inexplicably failed and it crashed into some trees at Button Oak at full speed. Death was instantaneous.
Joining the ATA in 1944 and chalking up 4,000 flying hours in every type of aircraft available, Rosamund King Everard-Steenkamp was to become the first recorded woman to pilot a jet when it was still in the experimental stage. Wing Commander H. Bird-Wilson had asked her to fly the Meteor Mark III to show that "even a woman can do it". She reached the speed of 600km per hour. In her personal log book she recorded the flight with one word: "Wizard!"
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| Rosamund the pilot (South African Military History) |
As one of the often-unheralded female pilots of the ATA, Rosamund should be assured of her place in World War II history, but she was so much more. She had been a farmer, a qualified judge of Ayrshire cattle and a wool classer. She was an excellent rider and shot. In addition she was a musician but it is as an artist that she received her greatest acclaim. Her work is still in demand with art collectors today.
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| Still Life with Erythrina Caffra, Copyright: everard-group.com |
Born on 20 July 1907, at Bonnefoi in the Carolina District of the Transvaal, South Africa, Rosamund was the second daughter of trader and farmer, Charles Joseph Everard, and his artist wife, (Amy) Bertha King. All the women in the family were destined to be artists of note. Rosamund's elder sister, Ruth, her daughter Leonora, and then granddaughter, Nichola Leigh, have continued the family tradition to the fourth generation.
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| Rosamund the artist Copyright: everard-group.com |
To learn all about the Everard Group, please follow the link. The following is an extract from that website:
'Ruth and Rosamund had inherited their mother's adventurous and determined spirit. After their unorthodox education on a remote South African farm, the girls were taken to Europe to further Ruth's artistic and Rosamund's musical studies. Here they were exposed to the vibrant and stimulating Parisian Art scene of the 1920's. Ruth and Rosamund developed the same liberated and strongly independent spirit that characterizes other remarkable women of the era.
Uninhibited, unconventional and beautiful, on their return to South Africa in 1926, the sisters brought back something of the glamour of the jazz age to their farm on the highveld. Always the extrovert, with the latest Art Deco- inspired dresses and jewellery from Paris, Rosamund threw extravagant parties and Bonnefoi became the social hub of the region.
Rosamund's paintings of the time dazzle with the enjoyment of Clarice Cliff type colour. The landscape undergoes an artistic transformation in a Rosamund painting as the mountains and valleys become a decorative pattern of flattened and simplified forms.
Although a successful farmer, Rosamund could not adapt to the conventional role accorded to women in farming communities and so, in 1935, embarked on a career as an aviatrix.'
Rosamund had also studied violin at the Paris Conservatoire. An extract from a biographical article about her in the South African Military History Journal has this to say:
' ...an idealist, in search of truth and beauty, her music lifted her up to sing among the clouds and inspired her with a passion for flying. As she wrote in her diary, "I sometimes felt I was walking on the clouds."'Rosamund took up flying with her brother Sebastian and came to love the landscape of the Transvaal with its:
'... panoramic views of the limitless, rolling veld where great billowing thunderheads came rolling over the green grass and the rainwashed sky was intensely blue.'Exhibitions of her paintings were held Europe in the 1930s to which she flew in her own de Havilland Puss Moth aircraft. After qualifying for a commercial licence, Rosamund took part in the Hendon Air Pageant and her solo tour of Europe and North Africa culminated in an official reception in Turkey where she was the guest of Kemal Ataturk.
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| Rosamund and her plane Copyright: everard-group.com |
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| Komati Pool Copyright: everard-group.com |
After gaining her Navigator's and Instructor's licences, Rosamund flew aircraft deliveries in Kenya. At the outbreak of war, she became the official flying instructor at the Witwatersrand Technical College and trained many pupil pilots who later distinguished themselves in the South African Air Force. Together with other female pilots, she flew Lodestar passenger aircraft on the shuttle service between South Africa and Cairo.
One of her students had been Hermanus N. F. Steenkamp whom she married in 1940. Sadly, their marriage was shortlived as her husband died in 1942 (exact cause unknown, but possibly as a result of either war service or accident). Rosamund felt his loss keenly and was convinced that an all-female flying war ambulance service could have saved the lives of many men like her husband, but her attempts to get this off the ground were met with official disapproval.
This extract from the biographical article gives us further evidence of her determination to have women aviators recognised:
'Hearing that the Russians employed women pilots, she decided to join the Russian Air Force. Getting a lift from the USAAF, she proceeded to Teheran, the wartime communication centre between the Russians and the Allies.
At the Russian military headquarters she met nothing but suspicion and distrust. Air Commodore Runciman and the British Ambassador, Sir Reader Bullard, with whom she lunched, advised her that, even if the Russians did accept her, they would not give her the work she wanted to do but would callously try to break her spirit. Thus, all her dreams and schemes to achieve a more effective role for women pilots in the war were once again frustrated.'
The closing paragraph of the article well sums up the amazing and courageous life of Rosamund Everard-Steenkamp:
It is significant that she met her end as a Spitfire pilot and thus emulated some of the immortals of the Battle of Brtain in her own 'finest hour'. Of Rosamund Everard-Steenkamp, talented musician, artist, agriculturist and flyer, it may be said, 'Whom the gods love, die young.'
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| Find-a-Grave, All Saints Cemetery, Maidenhead, Berkshire Epitaph reads: Great-Hearted, Greatly Loved Death has no dominion over her. |
Follow these links to learn more
Take a tour to the Abandoned Town of Bonnefoi
Artnet Collection of paintings by Rosamund.
South African Military History Society
Auction prices for Rosamund paintings
Life with Art page on Rosamund
A book was written in 1980, The Women of Bonnefoi, but it is rare and copies are pricey.
