Dearest friends,

Welcome to our “Sunday Special” where we serve up our hand-picked personal recommendations & life updates, like a meticulously prepared tray of hors d'oeuvres served poolside, somewhere in the hills of Italy.

Grab your swimsuit, let’s dive in…

Sunday Recs ☼

📍 Emily is:

Travelling in Tokyo, Japan, delving into vintage objects, listening to this song she discovered by stumbling upon a live performance in Atmos (a staple Japanese sneaker store), designing t-shirts inspired by roadside flowers, drinking this locally distilled gin at her new favourite bar, Nomura Shoten and recently purchased this Seiko watch.

📍 Marty is:

At home in Lisbon, Portugal, reading this book about simple living, listening to the new Japanese House tracks, drinking green wine, working on a full visual refresh for Poolsuite.net (and thus devouring every ‘80s Apple manual he can find on Archive.org), eating ceviche at… Choclo and loving this bag he bought for his partner from Barcelona brand Ölend.

LEGENDS OF LEISURE

Queen of Whale Cay: Joe Carstairs

“In 1940 an American pilot landed his amphibious plane just off Great Whale Cay, an island in the west of the Bahamas, about 150 miles south-east of Florida. He didn’t stay long. A friend, a newspaper columnist, later reported: “He came back in a big hurry, reporting in some alarm that when he landed in the water a short, stock-built dame came popping out of the house on the cay with a double-barrelled shotgun in her dukes and dull menace in her lovely orbs.”

The pilot had had a lucky escape from Marion ‘Joe’ Carstairs — a speedboat champion, heiress to an oil fortune, and the ‘Queen of Whale Cay’. Later that year, a group of American tourists moored their schooner and rowed up to a beach on the island. They were met by a group of Bajan inhabitants, faces painted, machetes in hand, and Carstairs, waving her largest cutlass, and they were taken prisoner. The tourists were marched, hands bound behind their back, to the island’s lighthouse. Carstairs emerged, dressed as a ‘Great White Goddess’, and the locals danced and chanted around her. The tourists spent the rest of the night locked in the garage, and were released at dawn. No explanation or apology was supplied. “I don’t give a fuck about the law,” Carstairs said.”

Highlights

Reserved for Premium members of the pool.

• Her fruitful life: “Marion Barbara “Joe” Carstairs was born in London on February 1, 1900, to Frances Evelyn Bostwick and Captain Albert Carstairs. Evelyn Bostwick was from a family of Standard Oil heirs and Captain Carstairs, a Scotsman, was part of the Royal Irish Rifles. From her mother’s side, Joe inherited enough money to fund her love of boats, support her racing friends, and let her become the “Queen” of her own island when she purchased Whale Cay in the Bahamas. She usually dressed as a man, had tattooed arms, and loved machines. Throughout her ninety-three years, Joe lived a life full of thrills, adventure, and speed.”
• The X-Garage: “Carstairs and three of her friends set up a female chauffeuring business in 1920 called the ‘X Garage’, based in Kensington in London. Her first employees were many of the women she had driven ambulances with during The Great War. They purchased a small fleet of Daimler Landaulettes and offered a range of services including touring holidays, trips to the Imperial War Graves and transporting the rich and famous between soirees in London. Their client list included writer James Barrie, the Sultan of Perak and actress Tallulah Bankhead – the latter becoming another of Joe’s conquests.”
• Life in the Bahamas: “An heir to the Standard Oil fortune, she abandoned civilization at the age of 34 to become the self-appointed ruler of a 9-mile-by-4-mile island in the Bahamas. There she lived for more than 40 years, attended by a kaleidoscopic parade of beautiful women, avid sports and fishing enthusiasts, hearty partygoers -- and a small leather doll named Lord Tod Wadley, whom she treated as her best friend and lifelong companion.”
• Explore Doyle’s archives from Joe’s collection
• Her ever-youthful spirit: “At 90, she proudly displayed scars from a contest with a former lover to see who could hold a burning cigarette against her own skin the longest. “I was young,” Carstairs explained loftily. “Fifty. Just a child, just a child.””
• Listen to Joe’s entire tale on this podcast or watch The Heiress With a Need for Speed
• Her Bahamian reign: “The deal was simple, live on the island, work, get paid for your work, and, most importantly, perhaps, follow the rules. Anyone who didn’t do as Joe demanded, and she required a lot, was banished from the island. Joe was the unquestioned queen, and her subjects were expected to be loyal. If you were, life was good, and Joe was benevolent. If you were not, well…”
• Her big heart: “As whimsical and self-centred as Carstairs could be, she was also generous: she gave several friends, staff and deserving strangers stipends for life. On Whale Cay she founded the Coloured League of Youth, a project to improve Bahamians’ economic and social standing. During the second world war, she led an intrepid rescue mission. The U.S. ship Potlatch was torpedoed; Carstairs set off in a schooner in the dead of night, without lights, in waters where U-boats skulked. Three-hundred and fifty miles from Nassau, she turned on her lights and rescued 47 American sailors who were close to death. They had been drifting for 30 days on an overturned schooner. Carstairs said, typically, that only when she put the sailors ashore at Nassau did they realise she was not a young man but a woman of 42.’
• Explore Whale Cay, what was Joe’s island in the Bahamas
• The Carstairs Collection of Boats
• Delve into Carstairs’ Biography: The Queen of Whale Cay: The Extraordinary Story of 'Joe' Carstairs, the Fastest Woman on Water by Kate Summerscale
• The Joe Philosophy: “Possibly the most crucial takeaway from Joe’s story is that she was ever herself. Joe marched to the beat of her own drum and did not care if anyone disliked it. The argument can certainly be made that the privilege of wealth allowed her the social freedom to do as she pleased. However, one cannot help but be inspired by her wild individualism, her pride, and her ability to deafen the naysayers. Joe was Joe to the end.”

We dearly hope you enjoyed this Sunday Special.

Sunshine always ☼
Marty & Emily