Women Sailors & Sailors' Women

by David Cordingly

  Word of Mary’s heroic conduct spread rapidly around the port, and she was soon besieged by reporters who wanted her firsthand account of the voyage. However, she was far more concerned about her husband’s condition because he was now deaf as well as blind. She arranged for them to travel home via Panama, and in the middle of February 1857, they arrived in New York on board the steamer George Law. Her husband was taken off the steamer on a stretcher, and Mary walked beside him to the Battery Hotel. One newspaper observed that she might have been mistaken for a schoolgirl had it not been for her careworn countenance “and her being near her confinement.” The New York Daily Tribune sent a reporter to interview her at the hotel and found her entirely engaged in attending to her husband, who was lying on a couch, so weak it seemed he might expire at any moment. Sometimes he spoke to her lucidly but more often in a wild and incoherent manner. The reporter wanted to ask Mary about herself, but she politely brushed aside his inquiries: “She said that she had done no more than her duty, and as the recollection of her trials and sufferings evidently gave her pain, we could not do otherwise than respect her feelings.” 3

  The Union Mutual Insurance Company, the underwriters for the Neptune’s Car and her cargo, were so impressed by the part Mary had played in bringing their vessel safely into port that they awarded her the handsome sum of $1,000. In the accompanying letter, they commended the love and devotion that she had shown to her husband during his long and painful illness. They went on to say:

  Nor do we know of an instance on record where a woman has, from force of circumstances, been called upon, or assumed command of, a large and valuable vessel, and exercised a proper control over a large number of seamen, and by her own skill and energy, impressing them with a confidence and reliance making all subordinate and obedient to that command. 4

  It was characteristic of Mary that in writing to thank them she pointed out that she had only done the plain duty of a wife toward a good husband who had been stricken down with a hopeless disease. She felt that they had overestimated the value of her services and that the ship would not have arrived safely at her destined port without the services of Mr. Hare, the second officer, and the full-hearted cooperation of the crew. Her modesty could not disguise her achievement, which was widely reported. The Daily News in London published an article that was extravagant in its praise, comparing her heroism with that of Florence Nightingale among the hospitals and Sarah Pellatt’s reform work among the gold diggers of California. The ladies of Boston raised $1,400 for her benefit, and a blind gentleman in London sent her a check for $100 in recognition of her noble conduct.

  Meanwhile, Mary and her dying husband moved from New York to Boston. There, on March 10, 1857, Mary gave birth to a baby son, who was christened Joshua after his father. Captain Patten died four months later at the Somerville Lunatic Asylum. When the news reached the waterfront, all the ships in Boston harbor flew their flags at half-mast. Mary never recovered from the rigors of the voyage. She contracted tuberculosis, and on March 18, 1861, a notice appeared in the Boston Daily Courier: “Mrs. Mary Ann Patten, widow of Capt. Joshua Patten, died yesterday of consumption. She had nearly completed her 24th year.” She was buried beside her husband in Woodlawn Cemetery in Everett, Massachusetts.

  In August of the same year, the owners of the Neptune’s Car put an advertisement in the papers announcing that the ship was lying at a pier at the foot of Wall Street in New York and was ready to receive cargo. The advertisement reminded readers of her recent exploits:

  This ship is now rendered famous for having performed her last voyage under the most trying circumstances; when during the severe illness of her able commander Capt. Patten, she was successfully commanded and navigated for 51 days by his heroic wife, who, without assistance of any officers, succeeded in taking the ship safely into the port of San Francisco; and yet, under all these circumstances, making a quick passage.

  * * *

  THERE IS A drama and a poignancy about the story of Mary Patten that makes her exploits particularly memorable, but she was by no means the only captain’s wife who accompanied her husband to sea and had to face the dangers and challenges of a deep-sea voyage. Joan Druett has spent many years researching the lives of the women who went to sea in merchant ships and whalers. She has tracked down the diaries and journals of several hundred captain’s wives and daughters who sailed out of North American ports in the nineteenth century. 5 Among their writings, she has found evidence of the extraordinary endurance and heroism of women who lived for months on board ships traversing the Atlantic and Pacific or whaling in the Arctic. Although very few of these women had to cope with a situation as demanding as that faced by Mary Patten off Cape Horn, it is surprising how many times women played a crucial role in a world generally regarded as exclusively male.

  There was, for instance, the remarkable story of Mrs. Clarke, the wife of Captain Robert K. Clarke. 6 There is no record of her first name, but at nineteen she married her husband and sailed with him on all his voyages. In December 1885, they sailed from Manila on the Frank N. Thayer, a fine windjammer of 1,647 tons. They were bound for New York with a cargo of hemp and tar. Also on board was their five-year-old daughter, Carrie. An outbreak of cholera among the crew had compelled Captain Clarke to leave most of his regular hands in a hospital at Manila and replace them with local Malay sailors. As they headed out into the Pacific, one of the Malays fell ill and Captain Clarke treated him with some rough-and-ready remedies from his medicine chest, some of which were evidently unpleasant. Whether this was the cause of what followed or whether the man was simply unhinged is not clear, but the sailor persuaded the other Malays to join him in a bloodthirsty mutiny. During the night they attacked the helmsman, cut his throat, and threw his body overboard. The first and second mates were also slaughtered, and when Captain Clarke hurried up on deck to see what was happening, he was cut across the chest so badly that his left lung was exposed. Mrs. Clarke managed to grab two loaded revolvers. According to one account, she handed a revolver to her husband and he managed to shoot one of the mutineers; according to another, Captain Clarke told her to defend herself with the revolvers and as a last resort to shoot her daughter and herself rather than fall into the hands of the Malays. The rest of the regular crew had retreated to the forecastle and had managed to launch one of the ship’s boats. This was just as well, because the mutineers had set fire to the highly flammable cargo and smoke was billowing from the hatches. With the fire spreading rapidly the captain gave the order to abandon ship. Mrs. Clarke made sure that her daughter was in the lifeboat and ran back to the captain’s cabin to get the sextant, chronometer, and charts. By the time she returned to the boat and the sailors had rowed them clear of the Frank N. Thayer, the fire had spread to the rigging. Mrs. Clarke bandaged her husband’s wound and then stitched two blankets together to make a sail. Six days later, they sighted land and all made it safely to shore. What happened to the mutinous Malays is not known, but their chances of escaping alive from a burning ship in shark-infested waters were not good.

  Another difficult situation was overcome by a girl who was considerably younger than Mary Patten had been during the voyage of the Neptune’s Car. In 1850, the Rainbow sailed from Southampton bound for Aden, on the northeast coast of Africa. The ship was under the command of Captain Arnold, who had his sixteen-year-old daughter on board with him. The captain died when they were several days out of Southampton. The first mate was so drunk that he was incapable of taking any responsibility, so the second mate took command. Unfortunately, he had designs on the captain’s daughter. She managed to evade his advances and ran to the quarterdeck, where she appealed to the crew to protect her honor. We learn that the British tars “with that manly feeling that sailors so often display” took charge of the ship and told the second mate that if he or anyone else attempted to molest Miss Arnold they would pitch him overboard.

  Miss Arnold, who was old enough to realize that the men’s mood might chang
e if they got hold of the ship’s supply of liquor, now persuaded them to throw every drop of spirits over the side. Astonishingly, they agreed to do so, and all the casks except one were emptied over the rail. One cask of spirits was retained in which to preserve the captain’s body. For the remainder of the voyage to Aden, Miss Arnold slept in a screened cot near the wheel, and three members of the crew took turns watching over her to ensure that the lecherous second mate was unable to have his way with her. When they arrived at their destination, she reported the offense to the authorities, and the second mate and two other members of the crew were arrested and sent to jail.

  During the course of her research, Druett has found several other, similar examples. In 1881, Captain George Morse of Bath, Maine, died of a bilious fever off the coast of Madagascar while in command of the ship John W. Marr. His wife, Jennie Parker Morse, put her husband’s body in a cask of spirits, quelled a mutiny among the crew, and finding that she was the only person on board who could navigate, took charge. The ship reached New York safely under her command in December 1881. A similar situation faced Mrs. Howe in 1867 when her husband died at sea. He was captain of the Ellen Southard of Bath, Maine, and he died when the ship was a few days out of Hong Kong. Mrs. Howe took command of the ship but found herself up against a mutinous crew, including a number of Chinese sailors who proved so alarming that she felt it necessary to have a loaded revolver in hand at all times. As they headed across the Pacific toward San Francisco, the supplies of water fell dangerously low, and the crew became increasingly restless. In desperation, Mrs. Howe ordered the distress flag to be flown. This was spotted by the schooner Wyanda when they were some eighty miles west of the Farallon Islands, which lie at the approaches to San Francisco. The schooner immediately went to her assistance. Her captain was much impressed by Mrs. Howe’s seamanship but was appalled by what she had been through. He told one newspaper “that he never listened to a more heartrending tale than that of Mrs. Howe, and he could not restrain his tears when she related her trials.” 7

  An equally desperate situation was faced by the wife of a German sea captain in 1890. On April 1, the Bremen barkentine Johanna set sail from Mauritius under the command of Captain Meinders. The ship carried a cargo of sugar and was well provisioned, but she also carried a crew member who had contracted yellow fever. Within a few days seven men had died and been buried at sea, and several others had contracted the deadly disease. Frau Meinders had brought her young baby with her, and the captain therefore told his wife to stay away from the sick men in order to safeguard her life and the life of their child. When the cook died, Frau Meinders took over his duties in the galley. As more and more sailors died, Captain Meinders took the precaution of showing his wife how to steer the ship while he and the first mate worked the sails. Soon the only people alive on the ship were the captain, his wife and child, and the first mate. Then the captain contracted the fever, and when he became delirious, Frau Meinders had to lash him into his bunk. For the remainder of the passage, the first mate and Frau Meinders had to handle the ship on their own. They arrived in Fremantle, Australia, on July 9 after a nightmare passage of a hundred days. The first mate collapsed with exhaustion, and Frau Meinders took her husband and baby to the hospital in Perth, where she learned that he had a good chance of recovering.

  What is clear from these and similar stories is that many ships were saved because the captain’s wife had learned the rudiments of navigation. Whether it was the captain who initiated the lessons or the wife who asked to be taught is not always clear, but it was evidently a shared skill from which both derived considerable satisfaction. On August 13, 1853, Fidelia Heard embarked on her honeymoon voyage on board the Boston bark Oriental. Five days after their departure, she began learning the mysteries of navigation from her husband, Captain John Jay Heard. “I took my first lesson in navigation this afternoon,” she wrote on August 18, “commenced learning to box the compass.” On August 20 she noted: “looked through the quadrant for the first time & have been studying to find the difference of latitude and longitude. Hope to be able ere long to do it myself alone.” A week or so later she was able to write, “The Capt. paid me a great compliment today by copying my ship’s reckoning into his book.” 8

  Eleanor Cressy, another captain’s wife, was able to put her skills to impressive use. Her husband was commander of the famous clipper ship Flying Cloud, and on more than one occasion her astute navigation contributed to the record-breaking passages of the ship. However, it was her pinpointing of the location of a drowning seaman that made her famous. The Flying Cloud was heading for Madagascar in heavy weather, and Mrs. Cressy was working at the chart table when she glanced through the porthole and saw a man in the sea. She hurried on deck and yelled, “Man overboard!” The captain threw a life buoy to the seaman and ordered his men to launch a boat. They searched the area where they thought he should be but failed to find him, and the captain concluded that he was lost. Mrs. Cressy was not prepared to give up so easily. She knew the position where he had gone overboard, and she worked out the direction of wind and tide and the drift of the ship and encouraged her husband to persevere with the search. Captain Cressy decided to send two boats out, and sure enough, they found the sailor at dusk exactly where she had calculated he would be. He was weak but still alive, and he was taken back to the ship, where he made a full recovery.

  It is easy to underestimate the achievement of these nineteenth-century captains’ wives. In the last twenty or thirty years, women have raced yachts across the Atlantic, made single-handed voyages around the world, and taken part in the most grueling of ocean races. They have shown that they have the skill, the strength, and the courage to sail in some of the most dangerous waters of the world and survive the worst of storms. But they have been sailing relatively small yachts powered by light but strong Dacron sails, and equipped with nylon ropes, powerful winches, and radios that enable them to receive weather reports and to keep in touch with other ships as well as their home ports. A clipper ship like the Neptune’s Car, which Mary Patten took around Cape Horn, was four times the length of a fifty-foot yacht. The tallest of her three masts was 120 feet from deck to mast cap, roughly the height of a ten-story building. We learn from her logbook that when she set off from New York in July 1865, she set her mainsails, topsails, topgallants, royals, and skysails. In addition to the five square sails on each of her masts, she would also have set a flying jib, outer jib, inner jib, and forestaysail on her bowsprit, several staysails from main and mizzenmasts, and a big gaff sail called a spanker from her mizzen. These sails were made of heavy canvas, and the largest sails on the mainmast were enormous, measuring some seventy feet across. In light winds all sail was set, but as the wind increased it became necessary to take in some sail. This meant sending a dozen members of the crew aloft to reef or furl them, a demanding enough job in light weather but extremely hazardous in gale-force conditions and driving rain. In addition to the vast array of canvas, the skipper was faced by a jungle of rigging. Apart from the massive shrouds and stays supporting the masts, there was a complex network of braces, sheets, and halyards to control the sails. When Mary Patten, Jennie Morse, Mrs. Howe, and the young Miss Arnold took charge of their ships, they relied on the experienced crew members to advise them on sail changes and to heave on the halyards and braces when necessary, but it was these lone women who carried the ultimate responsibility for the vast sailing vessels as they surged through the waves at sixteen knots or more. They had no radios with which to call for help, and if things got difficult when they were hundreds of miles from the nearest port, it was up to them—and them alone—to sort things out. It is little wonder that the underwriters of the Neptune’s Car were so lavish in their praise of Mary Patten’s achievement and particularly commended her for exercising control over the crew and bringing their large and valuable vessel safely into harbor.

  8

  Whaling Wives

  “I AM VERY lonesome,” wrote the wife of a
whaling captain from Nantucket in 1808.

  Why should so much of our time be spent apart, why do we refuse the happiness that is within our reach? Is the acquisition of wealth an adequate compensation for the tedious hours of absence? to me it is not . . . In company I am not happy, I feel as if part of myself was gone. Thy absence grows more insupportable than it used to be. I want for nothing but your company. 1

  When a whaling ship set sail, the families left behind had to reconcile themselves to a very long wait before their men returned. Mary Brewster was eighteen when she married her husband in 1841. Within a few months of their wedding, Captain Brewster set off to command the whaler Philetus, and Mary did not see him again for two years. He came home to Stonington for two months and then went away on another voyage for more than a year and a half. When he returned in 1845, she decided she could not bear the separation any longer. Defying the wishes of her mother and all her friends and relations, she sailed with her husband on all his future voyages. Harriet Gifford, a whaling wife who lived in Falmouth, was one of the majority of women who did not join her husband at sea; she wrote in her diary on August 19, 1854, “We have been married five years and lived together ten months. It is too bad, too bad.” 2

  The reasons for the length of the voyages can be explained by the nature of the whaling business. While the captain of a cargo-carrying merchant ship was expected to deliver his cargo to its destination as quickly as possible, a whaling captain could not return home until he had filled the hold of his ship with enough barrels of whale oil to make his voyage worthwhile. The richest whaling grounds in the nineteenth century were in the Pacific Ocean. Most American whalers operated from ports on the East Coast, and in particular from New Bedford and Nantucket, which meant that the voyage began with a long haul south, through the Caribbean, along the coast of Brazil, and around Cape Horn. The whaling captain then headed north and began searching for whales in the vastness of the Pacific. When he found a whale he launched the whaleboats, open boats in which his men rowed after the enormous creature and endeavored to harpoon and kill it. The thrashings of the injured whale often resulted in one or more boats being capsized or smashed to pieces, and it was not unusual for men to drown during this perilous operation. Having captured the whale, the crew brought it alongside the whaling ship, where it was cut up and its carcass reduced to oil by boiling the blubber in a great tripot amidships. Some captains were lucky and tracked down enough whales within a few months to fill their holds with whale oil and set off for home. Others had to search the Pacific from New Zealand up to the Bering Strait before they had captured enough whales, and were consequently away from home for years.