Women Sailors & Sailors' Women

by David Cordingly

  New Year’s Day 1860 was spent anchored off the beautiful South Sea island of Aitutaki. Mary described it as being like a perfect garden, rich in vegetation, with pineapples, oranges, limes, bananas, plantains, breadfruit, yams, and custard apples in abundance. They met an English missionary, Mr. Royle, and his wife. They had lived on the island for twenty-one years and had six daughters, the youngest of whom made a pleasant playmate for Minnie. They proved to be a delightful family, and Mary was much impressed by their schoolhouse and chapel, which were both neat and commodious. But such meetings were all too brief, and after no more than a day ashore they were back at sea. However, they were fortunate to meet another whaler with children on board. On January 8, they sighted the Rambler, commanded by Captain Willis. They went aboard and passed a happy day together. Mary wrote, “This meeting with families at sea is very pleasant for all concerned, particularly so for the children.”

  They sailed on around the South Island of New Zealand and headed east for Cape Horn. By mid-April they were clear of the Horn’s cold and stormy waters and heading northward. As they approached home, Mary engaged in an energetic round of cleaning, washing, and sewing. She scoured the dishes in the pantry, polished the spoons, cleaned all the drawers and lockers, and then began packing. On one day she packed five trunks, a barrel, and two boxes. Their final approach to New Bedford was severely delayed by a northwesterly gale that they had to beat into. The gale was accompanied by an extraordinary display of lightning: “I never saw such lightning before. The flashes would extend almost entirely around the horizon.” They tacked slowly northward under shortened sail. “This is really discouraging. It makes us feel very badly to be so near home and making no headway. . . .”

  The gale was followed by a dead calm that was equally frustrating. But at last, on June 13, the wind freshened and they made the final approach. The pilot came on board at nine o’clock in the morning at Montauk. The next day they dropped anchor in the Acushnet River off New Bedford.

  * * *

  MARY LAWRENCE’S JOURNAL is a fresh and vivid account of one woman’s experiences during an extended whaling voyage. It is more factual than introspective: We see what she sees but rarely what she feels. She hardly ever complains and she never questions her role in the ship, presumably because she intended the journal to be read by her husband and family later. Consequently, we are left wondering exactly what it must have felt like to be a woman alone in a man’s world, a world that was alarmingly different from the one she had left behind.

  The captain’s wives who remained at home had the security of familiar surroundings and a well-worn routine. Their days were filled with a multitude of tasks, some of which might be monotonous and dreary, but at least they had some control over their lives. They might have missed their husbands, but they had the consolation of family and friends around them. They had the support network of parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters. They were able to call on other women for advice or help or simply to have an enjoyable chat.

  The captain’s wife at sea was cut off from all this. She was isolated in a confined space in which she had no defined role. It was extremely rare for a woman to take over command of a ship in an emergency as Mary Patten had. In normal circumstances, the captain’s wife had little or nothing to do with the day-to-day running of the ship. She might mend the cabin boy’s shirt, or act as a nurse to an injured crewman, but there was little else for her to do of a practical nature. The cook and the steward looked after the captain and the other officers, and so she found herself a mere onlooker in a world ruled by her husband. Her presence was often resented by members of the crew who regarded her as a spy who would report their behavior to the captain. “The carpenter has put a long window in the forward part of the house so Mrs. Hamblin can set down and look what’s going on on deck, who goes over the bows or to the urine barrel,” wrote Abram Briggs. 8 And John Perkins, a seaman on the whaling ship Tiger, provides us with a picture of the isolated position of Mary Brewster, who traveled with her husband on a four-year voyage: “The Captain’s lady sits on deck sewing every pleasant day. There is nothing remarkable in her appearance. She never speaks to any of the other officers when on deck but her husband.” 9

  With no useful tasks to perform, many wives found that life at sea could become extremely tedious. As Eliza Brock of Nantucket wrote on Sunday, July 31, 1853, “It is a long lonesome day to pass upon the Stormy deep, all I can do is to read, write and sing a hymn now and then, and in thinking of my far distant home and friends.” 10

  The whaling wife’s isolation was enhanced by the fact that she was mostly confined to the stern of the ship. She shared the captain’s accommodations, but while he was free to roam the ship at will, she was expected to remain within her allotted area. In most whaling ships, this consisted of three rooms: the captain’s stateroom, the captain’s sitting room, and the main cabin. The stateroom was where they both slept, and it had a small alcove adjoining it that contained a water closet, a washbasin, and a locker. The captain’s sitting room was a narrow room across the width of the stern that was lit by the stern windows. This was his dayroom and office and was the coziest room as far as his wife was concerned. It might be furnished with a sofa, an easy chair or two, a carpet on the floor, a barometer and perhaps a picture on the walls, and a space for the books that were her principal source of entertainment. The main cabin was the dining room for the captain, his wife, and the ship’s officers. This was dominated by a dining table with the captain’s chair at one end and chairs or benches for the three or four mates who were the officers. The rest of the ship was effectively out of bounds. Henrietta Deblois was able to give a detailed account of the captain’s accommodations in her journal, but she noted, “For’ard is the Forecastle where the seamen live. I cannot take you there as I have not been there myself but am told it is very nicely fitted up.” 11

  In addition to the confinement of her quarters, the boredom, and the feelings of inadequacy and inferiority due to the lack of a useful role on board, almost all captains’ wives desperately missed female company. We have seen Mary Lawrence comment on this at intervals, but her isolation was somewhat relieved by the presence of her young daughter, Minnie. For many wives the absence of other women was almost more than they could bear. Emma McInnes confessed to crying like a baby when she missed the chance to speak to a woman on another ship, and Eliza Williams described an occasion when she saw a captain’s wife on a passing ship staring at her with a telescope: “She was looking at me, I imagine, anxious with me to see a Woman; she had the glass up to her eyes, I could see.” 12

  The only person a woman could confide in was her husband, but he was often preoccupied with running the ship and was not always sympathetic to things that were troubling her. As Dorothea Balano pointed out, “I can’t turn to anyone for understanding, let alone help, because all the creatures on board are completely and absolutely in his power.” 13

  In fact, most of the wives who made the difficult decision to accompany their husbands to sea appear to have been so devoted to them that they were prepared to put up with all kinds of hardships. “I am with my Husband and by him I will remain. No seas can now Divide us. He can have no trouble, no sorrow but what I can know and share,” wrote Mary Brewster, who concluded, “I have need of nothing more and gladly willingly resign all friends and home and native land.” 14

  Hannah Burgess declared that she loved her husband more than she could express: “It is true that for love the human heart will make almost any sacrifice, and it was this alone that prompted me to leave the scenes of my youth, the kind parents, and loved friends, to wander with my Husband, and with him share the joys and sorrows that fall to the lot of a Mariner.” 15

  The single-minded devotion that seems to have been shared by so many whaling wives helped them to put a brave face on storms and on the seasickness that invariably accompanied rough weather at the beginning of a passage. Mary Brewster was
so sick during the first month of her first voyage that she was confined to her bed almost continuously and was unable to write a word in her journal. When at last she felt well enough to sit up, she wrote a little, then vomited, then rested at intervals until the weather improved. But eventually she gained her sea legs and was able to face a storm without fear. She went up on deck to find the wheel lashed, all sail taken in, and huge waves breaking over the bows: “Never since I had been out had I seen such a time or witnessed such a sublime sight.” Harriet Allan experienced a severe gale in November 1869. The hatches were battened down, and the men had to cut away the foretopgallant mast. She braced herself in the doorway and watched the waves, which seemed mountains high. The noise of the wind and the sea was so tumultuous that it was impossible to hear herself speak, and yet, like Mary Brewster, she did not feel any fear: “I had confidence in the little ship and her captain and the strange wild excitement, even fascination, of the scene, banished fear.” 16

  The whaling wives who stayed at home were not able to share the perils and adventures of the long voyages with their husbands; nor did they have to suffer the seasickness, the confined quarters, and the isolation of being the lone woman among a crew of men. But they did have troubles of their own. Apart from the loneliness and grief that many women experienced when their husbands were away, many suffered financial hardship. In April 1844, Phebe Cottle of Nantucket wrote to the shipowners Charles and Henry Coffin: “I am sorry to be obliged to again call for assistance but my rent has become due and my wood is out and I am in need of many articles for my family that I cannot do without.” 17 She explained that she was forced to give up work because her mother was sick and asked for the sum of $30 or $40. The following year, the pregnant wife of John Codd, who was on a whaling voyage in the Pacific, wrote to the same shipowners for a loan of $50: “I do not feel you have treated me well; My husband did not think you would let his family suffer for the necessaries of life, when he shipp’d in your employ. I am out of food and fuel, and unless you can do something for me must write by every Ship for him to return and take care of his family.” 18 When Sarah Tripp of Tiverton had heard no news of her husband for two years, she despaired of his ever returning and appealed to the town council for help. The general assembly agreed that she and her four small children were “in a poor, low, & deplorable state & condition,” and gave her permission to sell some of her husband’s land in order to support herself and her family. 19

  Faced with having to fend for themselves, many whaling wives found jobs and took on responsibilities that would normally have been considered the husband’s concern, such as managing budgets, settling accounts, and buying and selling land and property. Center Street in Nantucket became known as Petticoat Row because so many of the shopkeepers were women, and in New Bedford the women earned money by taking on various types of piecework. Eliza Stanton earned $27.17 from some outfitters in town for sewing shirts for sailors, and Sarah Cory, who worked as a seamstress for a clothing store, wrote to her husband, who was at sea, “I have so much sewing all the time I don’t hardly know what to do some times but they won’t take no for an answer and I am obliged to do it.” 20

  Many women earned a living by taking in boarders. Sylvia Sowle took in four ship’s carpenters as boarders for a few months, while Julia Fisk, the wife of a whaling ship captain, ran a resort-style boardinghouse that catered to dozens of guests at a time. 21 In the rural areas, women like Caroline Gifford of Dartmouth and Hannah Blackmer of Acushnet kept farms going with the help of their children and neighbors. Abby Grinnell of Tiverton, Rhode Island, was able to report to her husband at sea that her corn was very large, the barley very good, and the oxen had done so well that they were fat enough for beef. But not all whaling wives were able to cope so well, and all too many found it a real struggle to bring up a family on their own. No doubt Myra Weeks spoke for many when she wrote to her husband in 1842: “I think it is rather lonesome to be shut up here day after day with three little children to take care of. I should be glad to know how you would like it.” 22

  The whaling wives were not the only ones who were lonely. Many of the men who went to sea in whalers sorely missed their homes and families. In the privacy of their cabins, the whaling captains wrote in their journals and poured out their feelings in their letters to their loved ones. In 1871, Captain Charles Allen wrote a letter that began, “Dear Daughter Emma, as I have been sitting here in my cabin alone and lonely, the thought rushed into my mind: Is this all of life? My heart answered No.” 23 Another Captain Allen, writing to his sister Hannah in 1859, echoed his thoughts: “But I am so lonely at times for my dear wife I can hardly content myself, and even think that it is so, that I am alone, that she has gone to heaven.” 24

  For the ordinary seamen in the spartan accommodations before the mast, there was no privacy. In whaling ships, as in most merchant ships, the seamen lived in cramped conditions and were expected to be tough and self-reliant. It was a male, macho culture in which feminine values played no part and sensitive feelings were masked or suppressed. Sailors who were homesick were likely to be ridiculed by their shipmates. When a young sailor on board the Sunbeam was found weeping on his sea chest, clutching a bed quilt given him by his grandmother, he became the target of practical jokes. 25 Marshall Keith of the Cape Horn Pigeon cried all afternoon after being reprimanded by his captain for spending too much time thinking about his wife.

  Yet in spite of the culture that prevailed on board ship, we find that sailors of all rates placed great value on the letters, presents, and keepsakes from home. As they sailed across oceans, these keepsakes were a potent link to the women they had left behind. Food and clothing seem to have been the most usual items. Ruth Post asked her husband, “do let me know if your butter and cheese and dried fruit turned out well.” 26 Edmund Jennings took Aunt Dyer’s cake to sea with him. Samuel Brayley went loaded with his wife’s cranberries and his mother-in-law’s quince, and later wrote to his wife to inform her that “Grandmother Douglas’ cotton stockings wear well, but then here is not more than half enough for the voyage; I wish you would send me a dozen pair more.” He went on to tell her, “I cannot wear those that you knit; it seems sacrilege. How much I prize every thing that is the work of thy dear hands.” 27

  While captains and officers could keep such things in drawers and lockers in their cabins, the ordinary seaman kept all his possessions in his wooden sea chest. He used this chest as a seat, he played cards on it, and he took it with him from ship to ship. In addition to the letters and presents from home, it contained his shoregoing clothes, a picture or two, and his ditty box containing buttons, needles, and thread. Many seamen also kept a Bible. Samuel Leech said that he spent many weary hours reading, “and sometimes I perused the Bible and Prayer Book which my mother so wisely placed in my chest on the eve of my departure.” 28

  The letters and reminders of home helped to keep the men going on their voyages, but for many of them, particularly the older men, they were no substitute for the loved ones they had left behind. All they wanted was to get back to their homes and families. “I think some times if I ever get home alive and well I will never leave you again,” wrote William Ashley to his wife, Hannah. 29 He told her that whaling was all very well for single men, but it was not healthy for married men. Soon after writing this he obtained his discharge, left the whaling voyage before it had ended, and returned to Hannah and the farm, where he settled down and never went to sea again.

  9

  Men Without Women

  ON JULY 2, 1761, a court-martial was held on board the Princess Royal, an aging 90-gun warship lying at the Nore, near the mouth of the Thames. On trial were George Newton, a seaman belonging to HMS Ocean, and Thomas Finley, a boy belonging to the same ship. They were charged with committing “the unnatural and detestable sin of sodomy.” 1 The president of the court was Admiral William Boys, commander in chief of the ships and vessels in the Tham
es and Medway. Alongside the admiral in the great cabin of the warship were four naval captains whose task it was to assist him in his deliberations and to determine whether the two prisoners were innocent or guilty of the crime punishable by the 29th Article of War.

  When the prisoners had been brought into the court by the provost marshal, a letter from their commander, Captain Langdon, was read aloud. The court then proceeded to question the witnesses for the prosecution. The first witness was a black seaman named Charles Ferrett. George Newton immediately objected to Ferrett’s giving evidence, because he said that a black man should not swear against a Christian. When Ferrett was asked whether he had been christened, he said that he had been baptized at Portsmouth when he was a member of the crew of the Maidstone. He could not remember who was present at the time but recalled that Commodore Keppel was one of his godfathers. Under further questioning he confessed that he could not read or write, but he said that he was a free man and received his own pay. He was then admitted as a witness and was sworn in. The admiral asked him to tell the court about the crime of sodomy of which the two prisoners were accused. This is what Ferrett had to say:

  The prisoner George Newton, when he came on board the Ocean, he had no bedding; I took compassion on him and let him lay with me, having spread my bed clothes upon the deck to serve us both. One night I was asleep, and hearing somebody blowing and puffing alongside of me, close to my knee and shaking me which waked me; I never stirred him but put my left hand up, and got hold of both his stones fast; the other part was in the body of the boy; I asked him what he had got there, he said, cunt. Then I said you are worse than any beast walking in the field.

  When asked what time of night this happened, he said it was about three or four in the morning.