In the Second World War she served at sea as an engineering officer in the British Merchant Navy, and received awards for bravery under enemy fire.

[11] Drummond used to visit the engineering works of Robert Morton and Sons in Errol,[12] which built steam-powered and petrol-engined lorries and buses.

[26] About a month later, on 25 August, she was instructed to sign on the 10,000 GRT passenger liner Anchises for a trial trip from Liverpool to Glasgow as an Assistant Engineer.

Drummond was friends with the usual Second Engineer, Malcolm Quayle, who supported her career, was her escort for social events ashore and whom she called her "protector".

[38] In port in Aden on 11 May 1928, Drummond received an air mail letter telling her that aboard her former ship Anchises on 13 April her friend Malcolm Quayle had died.

From about 1919, Drummond's sister Jean ran the Queen Victoria Girl's Club at 122 Kennington Road, Lambeth, south London: a job that included a flat at the top of the building.

Frances worked as a commercial artist and she and Victoria also developed a business, the Golden Fisheries, trading goldfish that they kept in their garden pond and in tanks in the house.

[45] In response to their experience, the Drummond sisters helped several Austrian children to enter the UK as refugees, and sponsored them by finding schools, accommodation and paying their expenses for a year.

Despite her good service on liners of two of the most prestigious companies in the Merchant Navy, and glowing references from numerous superior officers, all her many applications were declined.

Therefore, on the eve of World War II she joined Jean and Frances enlisting as Air raid wardens in Lambeth, London.

[50] Her officers and crew were a mixture of Arab, Czech, Egyptian, German, Hungarian, Russian, and Spanish, and the ship's dog was Polish.

Drummond mastered disciplinary problems among the engine room crew[52] and then in drydock in Antwerp completed enough furnace and boiler repairs for Har Zion to pass its Lloyd's Certificate inspection.

[55] In August 1940 a Panamanian company, Compañía Arena Limitada, gave Drummond a berth on its 4,929 GRT cargo ship Bonita at a salary of £46 10s – £5 a month more than on Har Zion.

[56] On the morning of Sunday 25 August 1940, Bonita was in the North Atlantic about 400 miles (640 km) from land when Luftwaffe Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor aircraft attacked.

She ordered her fireman and greaser to open the fuel injectors and main steam throttle to increase speed and then get out of the engine room in case they needed to abandon ship.

[58] The Master, a Captain Herz from Hungary, used the extra speed to change course sharply and avoid being hit whenever a Condor bombed the ship.

[60] In Norfolk, Drummond made friends with a Virginian woman, Mrs Julia Davies, who was engaged in charitable work collecting goods to send to Britain that were in short supply because of the War.

In raising funds Davies and a Mrs Leitch had even enlisted the poet Robert Frost to give a public reading of his works.

[63] The ship was in Lisbon so a skeleton crew including Warner and Drummond sailed out to join her on Yeoward Brothers' passenger liner Avoceta.

[75] At the end of August 1942, Drummond and Warner joined the 2,660 GRT cargo steamer Danae II at Boston, Lincolnshire as First Mate and Second Engineer.

After leaving Perseus in September 1943, she returned to her sisters in Lambeth, where Restormel House had been damaged by a bomb but their flat remained intact.

[83] In April 1944, Drummond signed on as Assistant Engineer of a diesel ship, the Baltic Trading Company's 6,427 GRT oil tanker Karabagh, with which she sailed on an Arctic convoy to Onega in the USSR.

[84] After D-Day on 6 June 1944, the tanker spent three months shuttling supplies such as aviation spirit across the English Channel for the Invasion of Normandy, initially from the Solent and later from Newport, Wales.

[87] In April 1946, Blue Funnel appointed Drummond to return to Caledon in Dundee to supervise the completion of the 10,200 GRT sister ships Rhexenor and Stentor, which she did until July.

[93] This turned out to be a year-long voyage that included the Suez Canal, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, the US, the Caribbean, Argentina, Brazil, Cape Verde and ended in Antwerp in January 1954.

[96] Drummond returned home to Kennington Road until May 1958, when she began a two-month voyage as the engineer of an old motor yacht, My Adventuress, from Southampton to Istanbul.

[109] After the iron ore was unloaded, ship surveyors allowed the damaged Santa Granda to leave to make for Hong Kong for repairs.

Christmas was spent in Hong Kong, with Drummond arguing against Jebshun representatives who wanted to postpone many of the repairs essential to make the ship safe.

[114] Two days later, Santa Granda reached Hong Kong, where Jebshun told the Master they would transfer the insurance from Lloyd's to a French company.

[118] Drummond recovered physically but her state of mind deteriorated and she was discharged to St George's Retreat, a church-run nursing home in Burgess Hill in East Sussex.