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3 months ago
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A BRIT spent her entire childhood trapped at sea after her parents dragged her along on their perilous journey sailing around the globe for a decade.
Suzanne Heywood, 55, lived an ordinary life in Southampton before she was whisked away by her Captain Cook-obsessed mum and dad on a trip that left her with a fractured skull and broken nose.
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Suzanne Heywood
Suzanne HeywoodThe family, whose last name was Cook, were inspired by the infamous explorer with the same last name to undertake a three-year voyage.
Captain Cook’s 18th century journey took him through Plymouth, Tenerife, Cape Town, New Zealand, Hawaii, and the Bering Strait via the North American coast.
But Suzanne’s wild “family holiday” would span a decade after her father decided to continue sailing, taking her and her brother through dangerous storms and icy waves at just seven-years- old.
She claims living without friends or formal education was like living in a “prison” before she was forced to “escape”.
Suzanne finally convinced her dad to grant her money for a flight to England from New Zealand.
When they left in 1976, her dad explained: “We’re going to follow Captain Cook. After all, we share the captain’s surname, so who better to do it?”
His vessel of choice was an “enormous boat with a long, curved bow, two masts and a raised deck” called Wavewalker, which her 2023 memoir is named after.
They travelled to places like Ilha de Santo Antão in the Cape Verde islands, South America, South Africa and then Australia.
Suzanne was ready to ditch life at sea when their cabin tipped backwards across the Indian Ocean.
The waves became fiercer, over 50ft high and strong gusts were blowing from the direction of the South Pole.
She was alarmed every time the waves reached their peak and her entire body was soaked every time.
The Cookes put on their lifejackets and she grabbed on to her countertop rail while clutching a cupboard door at the same time.
Wavewalker tipped backwards and the waves were so ferocious that parts of the decking collapsed inwards.
Suzanne was flung against the ceiling and they all screamed in panic as icy water flooded the vessel.
They survived the dangerous terrifying blip, and her dad managed to navigate them to Île Amsterdam in the southern Indian Ocean.
The turbulence was so bad Suzanne was left with major swelling and a fractured skull, and told by medics she could have brain damage.
She had a staggering total of seven surgeries, all done without anaesthetic.
Suzanne finally returned from “prison” aged 17, after travelling 47,000 nautical miles after hunting down tickets at a travel agents.
The cheapest route from New Zealand was still $600 but her dad gave into her desperation and reluctantly transferred the funds over.
Scarred from what her parents termed an “adventure”, after battling years of on-boat family tension and a “strange, difficult childhood”.
She wrote in The Guardian: “My parents always claimed our time on Wavewalker was wonderful and told me I’d had a privileged upbringing.
“But many parts of my childhood were worse than I’d been willing to admit.
However, the emotional strain only fuelled Suzanne’s determination to get an education.
Suzanne told Canadian talk show The Morning Show: “I was unable to have friends, go to school, do all the things you’d normally do as child.”
“You can educate yourself under the most extreme circumstances.”
“As it became clear my parents had no intention of going back and putting me back into school, I decided I had to educate myself.
“It was the only lifeline I had, the only way to get off this boat.”
She wrote in The Huffington Post: “I kept working through my correspondence lessons, posting them off each week.
“I also wrote to every university I’d ever heard of, asking if they would let me apply to be a student. Most wrote back saying that they would not consider me.”
Suzanne attributes her continual success, later becoming a top civil servant and novelist to her “extreme upbringing”.
The high-flying novelist revealed that she was forced to take up all the domestic tasks like cooking and cleaning, while her brother pursued an education.
But at 13, she used a small cabin in Wavemaker to study and at 16 her parents enrolled the savvy teen into a distance-learning school in Queensland, Australia.
Suzanne earned an interview at Oxford University, provided she could get herself to England for it.
The ambitious teen used savings she’d racked up from kiwi picking and a measly contribution from her dad on a one-way flight.
Her hard work paid off but she struggled with friendship after years of social isolation and reliance on tinned food.
She started to thrive socially and academically after her first year at Oxford and even went on to do a PhD at Cambridge.
Suzanne later underwent therapy to reverse years of damage to her mental health and is now a successful businesswoman with a CBE.
She was married to David Cameron‘s Cabinet Secretary Jeremy Heywood before he died and had three children with him.
Suzanne Heywood
Not known, clear with picture desk
English (US)