Eileen Ramsay

Eileen Ramsay (5 December 1915 – 8 February 2017) was a British photographer who made work about yachting and powerboats.

Early life Ramsay was born in Sanderstead, Surrey, and grew up in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, where she attended the nearby Chesham Grammar School. After leaving school, she went to Scandinavia to be a nanny for some friends of the family, where she first encountered sailing. Ramsay said that her independence and determination enabled her to receive commissions and roles that her male peers could only have hoped for.

Her work stood out from that of her contemporaries because she photographed boats from water level and at acute angles to create a sense of movement, rather than taking direct side-on shots. Ramsay described how one of her contemporaries, the Cowes-based photographer Keith Beken, took photographs using a plate camera while standing up on his boat, so she purposefully tried to develop a very different style, from a much lower viewpoint and taking advantage of reflections and calling herself an "impressionist" photographer. She was admired for how her images captured the surroundings around the boat such as waves and clouds to frame the main subject. Ramsay took photographs of some of the first vessels of their type, including Enterprises, Fireballs, 505s, GP14s, Mirrors, Ospreys, and Optimists. Two of the most notable yachts she photographed were Sceptre and Evaine, the first British entrants to the America's Cup, in 1958. As well as yachts and dinghies, she was also an active powerboat photographer, especially the ones built on the Hamble river. She photographed some of the first offshore powerboat racing races such as the Cowes Torquay Cowes in 1961 and the 1969 Round Britain races. Each August, she recorded Cowes Week. Her photographs were sold both to the press, and to her competitors.

Later life, death, and legacy In 1971, following the death of George Spiers in a riding accident, Ramsay gave up photography. She moved further inland to Droxford, a village in Hampshire, and focused on gardening, and painting flowers and wild birds. She died on 8 February 2017 at the age of 101.

In her late nineties, Ramsay asked PPL Media to handle her archive, and they now hold it alongside the official archives of Sir Francis Chichester, Robin Knox-Johnston and Chay Blyth, and other sailing-related material dating back to the mid-19th century. At the time of the gift, it was noted that few other women, with the possible exception of Kos Evans, had achieved anywhere near the same success and name-recognition as a yachting photographer as Ramsay had.