Sheila Hirsch, North Shields retired trawler skipper, was the star of a news item recently on BBC’s Look North.

Julie Smith, a journalist from the evening news programme interviewed Sheila, who is believed to have been the country’s first female trawler skipper, as part of an item on the current exhibition “That’s Women’s Work”.

Sheila talked about her life at sea and some of the challenges she had working in a man’s world. She also explained how she went over the side (overboard) three times, once in a really rough weather and it didn’t put her off.

She said: “I never really thought about being a woman at sea. It was just a job and I I always thought of myself as a trawlerman.”