Viola Irene Cooper

Viola Irene Cooper (née Buckley; March 19, 1894 – March 22, 1951) was an American writer and traveler. She is known for her 1929 book Windjamming to Fiji, an account of her 1926 voyage as one of two female midshipmen aboard the French barque Bougainville on its final Pacific crossing.

Early career

Viola Irene Buckley was born on March 19, 1894, in San Jose, California, to Hester (Cobb) and Alfred Buckley.

Her earliest known publication was an article titled "Gandhi and the Untouchables", which appeared in The Open Court, a philosophical and religious journal published in Chicago, in June 1926. No institutional affiliation was listed for Cooper in the article.

Voyage of the Bougainville

In 1926, Cooper was living in New York City when she learned that the barque Star of Peru, a 63 year old iron hulled sailing vessel originally built in 1863 in Sunderland, England, would make a final voyage to the Pacific before being retired as a storage barge. Cooper and her companion Jean Schoen sought passage on the ship. According to the dust jacket of Windjamming to Fiji, the two women faced "many rebuffs in San Francisco shipping circles" before persuading the ship's commander, Captain Leon Chateauvieux, to take them aboard as midshipmen. The book ran to 295 pages and included a frontispiece photograph of the Bougainville, 21 full page photographic plates, and map endpapers tracing the ship's route. At least one publisher indicated they would print the work if she obtained a letter from Lincoln Colcord confirming the story's authenticity.

Later life Cooper died on March 22, 1951, at Goldwater Memorial Hospital on Roosevelt Island in New York City.

Archival materials

Four items connected to Cooper are preserved in Box 10 of the Hartzell Spence Papers at the University of Iowa Special Collections. Spence (1908–2001) was an American journalist and author who served as founding editor of Yank, the Army Weekly. The nature of the Cooper materials in the collection has not been described in the publicly available finding aid.

Works

Windjamming to Fiji (New York: Rae D. Henkle Co. Inc., 1929) "Gandhi and the Untouchables," The Open Court, vol. 1926, no. 6 (June 1, 1926)