A Limerick nautical pioneer: The daring life of Lady Ernestine Hunt

Today, 83 O’Connell Street is home to Kilmartin Education Services, but this elegant Georgian building has quite a story to tell – a tale about crossing oceans and exploring distant lands. Once a family home in the heart of Limerick’s Georgian town, no 83 stands as part of a charming terrace of brick houses built around 1830.
One of the most well-known families associated with no 83 was the Hunt family, prominent members of local civic society who lived and worked in the house from about the 1880s to nearly 1920. In 1867, William Lewis Hunt married Mary Brady, daughter of Luke Brady of Brookville, Co Clare. William hailed from South Villa (sometimes Southville), a large manor house that was situated on South Circular Road, Limerick. The house was rented to several families over the course of the nineteenth century. On January 13, 1898, Lt.-Cdr. Harry Brady Hunt, son of William and Mary Hunt of South Villa married Lady Ernestine Mary Alma Georgiana Brudenell-Bruce (1871-1953). She was the daughter of Henry Augustus Brudenell-Bruce, 5th Marquess of Ailesbury and Georgiana Sophia Maria Pinckney. One might ask, how did the daughter of a senior English nobleman meet the son of a land agent from Limerick?

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Contemporary accounts of Lady Hunt state that she was recognised as a ‘new woman’ who ‘loves the sea and owns a yacht which she frequently sails.’
It was, therefore, a natural progression that she applied for a master mariner’s certificate, the highest professional qualification for a mariner, allowing them to command any ocean-going vessel worldwide. She sat the examination and passed with full marks; however, such was the time that she was refused the certificate on account of being a woman. On the same day she was refused, a ‘young, handsome merchant sailor – Mr Harry Hunt of Limerick – was also taking the examination.’
Ernestine and Harry were married shortly after. The account of their chance meeting was reported in the Freeman’s Journal.
Lady Ernestine Hunt was a remarkable woman. She was a noted ‘entrepreneur, horse breeder, rancher and dealer, an intrepid ocean-going yachtswoman, Boer War auxiliary nurse, and founding member of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry in 1909.’
She also became a lieutenant of the First Yeomanry Corps, a contemporary image printed in the Saturday Observer captured Lady Hunt in her in full uniform and taking the salute from a superior officer.
Whether at sea or on land, Lady Hunt led an enterprising life for a woman of the time. In about 1906, she established a horse ranch at Calgary, Alberta, Canada on a 40,000-acre farm and set about transporting horses across the Atlantic. She personally supervised the transport of horses to England. The horses were then shipped to Dublin to be broken in and sold. According to a report in the Evening Echo, ‘the horses were in a half-wild state, and throughout the voyage across the Atlantic, Lady Hunt had little or no assistance. She succeeded in winning the confidence of the animals and impressed the deckhands by her ability to touch them without fear, while they kept a safe distance.’
Lady Hunt was the first woman who ever brought livestock across the Atlantic by herself.
An account of her extraordinary achievements was reported in the Belfast Letter of September 20, 1906. Lady Hunt stated ‘since I was 20 years of age, I have been facing the battle of life by myself. As long as I can remember I have had a roving disposition and have been fond of two things - horses and the sea. By the age of 24, I had rounded the Horn of Africa, and I was a volunteer night staff nurse during the Boer War. A few months later, I went to Australia in a sailing boat, returning in another vessel. I returned to Ireland for two years and then I sailed with my husband to Nagasaki. For five months we cruised in Japanese waters, visiting many places never before visited by Europeans. Upon my return I was a nurse at Liverpool and at the Dudley-Guest Hospital, Worcestershire.’
Lady Hunt was an advocate of emigration and encouraged girls to become qualified and educated with a focus on the acquisition of practical skills. In about 1910, she established the Colonial Training School for Girls at Portsmouth with the objective to train girls to be ‘useful colonists’.

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The school taught practical subjects including ‘housewifery, home nursing, gardening and driving.’
The school was the first of its kind and as such attracted a lot of interest and requests to visit. Visiting the school in 1910, a journalist stated that a ‘deep silence brooded over the building… and it might have been uninhabited; had not the feint smell of Irish stew pervaded the halls.’
The reporter discovered that the school had failed, and that Lady Hunt had closed the establishment.
Tragedy struck Lady Hunt and her husband in April 1918 when their only child, Hamo Lewis Brady Hunt was killed in action in France. Hamo was just 19 years of age. Her husband died in 1926. Lady Hunt was also involved in the Suffragette Movement and was a member of the Irish Women's Franchise League.
In 1928, Lady Hunt was finally awarded her master mariner’s certificate and joined a small but determined group of women who had sought to overcome such obstacles. The Brisbane-based newspaper, the Telegraph announced: ‘the days when women could become nothing more than stewardesses [on vessels] have passed.’
When in Ireland, Lady Hunt and her husband lived in several different places including Southvilla, Limerick, Ballylean House, Kildysart, Clare, Caragh Villa, Kerry, Lusty Islands, Fermanagh, and Blair’s Cove House, Durrus, Cork. Known affectionately as 'Ernie', Lady Ernestine Hunt, died aged 82 in May 1953 and according to The Times, her funeral took place in Bristol.

Dr Paul O’Brien, assistant professor in Pedagogy of History, Faculty of Education, Mary Immaculate College