Women Sailors & Sailors' Women

by David Cordingly

  Letters from other naval officers at sea betray their constant preoccupation with home and family. George Rodney, who achieved fame late in his life as commander of the victorious British fleet at the Battle of the Saints, married Jenny Compton when he was a thirty-three-year-old captain. She was the second daughter of the sixth Earl of Northampton. The marriage took place in London in January 1753, and the following year they acquired a town house on Hill Street near Hyde Park. Their letters reveal the warmth of their love for each other and their unhappiness at the separation caused by naval life. Rodney told her that ambition had lost all its charms and that to have a wife and children meant more to him than anything else, “for whatever I am about or doing, I think of nothing but Hill Street, and the dear pledges I left there with you.” 10 Jenny replied that nothing could make up for her sufferings while he was away: “without you life is not worth my care, nor would millions make me happy.” She concluded, “I hope you will then, as soon as you possibly can, give up that vile ship that causes us so much pain.” 11

  Rodney could not abandon his naval career, but he did apply to Lord Anson for a transfer from HMS Fougueux, which was due to be ordered to sea, to the 90-gun ship Prince George, which he believed would be stationed at Portsmouth for the foreseeable future. Anson approved the transfer, and Rodney took lodgings in Portsmouth so that Jenny could join him. They were together only briefly, for within weeks he received orders that the Prince George was to join the Channel Squadron under Sir Edward Hawke. Jenny was distraught at their parting and later wrote to apologize for not being able to control her emotions. She explained that “when the time approached that you (who are far more dear to me than my own life) was to leave me, I could not support it with the patience I am afraid I ought.” 12 By August 1755, Rodney’s ship was off Cape Finisterre on the northwest tip of Spain. In the great cabin of the Prince George, he sat down at his desk and wrote “to tell my dearest Jenny that thank God I am very well but not in the least satisfied with being at sea.” He told her that their two little boys were ever in his mind, waking and sleeping, and he thanked God for bestowing on him a woman of virtue whose love meant more to him than the whole world. During the next sixteen months they met briefly when his ship put in to Portsmouth, but then in December 1756, Jenny became seriously ill. Rodney took a leave of absence and was by her side when she died on January 29, 1757, at their house on Hill Street. They had been married only four years.

  The correspondence between Rodney and his wife, Jenny, provides a glimpse of the travails that have faced naval families over the centuries. It is vivid, but it is fragmentary. By comparison, the correspondence between Admiral Boscawen and his wife, Fanny, provides a more detailed and illuminating account of their lives for certain periods when he was serving at sea. Her letters were published in 1940 in a biography entitled Admiral’s Wife, and they will be examined in chapter 14, which looks at the fate of the women left behind. Boscawen’s letters to his wife from the years 1755 and 1756 were published in 1952.

  Boscawen never achieved the fame of Rodney, Hawke, Nelson, and other British admirals who commanded ships in celebrated naval victories. Much of his early naval career was spent in the West Indies. He later headed an expedition to North America that led to the capture of the fortified town of Louisbourg, situated at the entrance to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, in 1758, and the following year, as commander in chief in the Mediterranean, he inflicted a crushing defeat on the French fleet at Lagos Bay, Portugal. During the course of his naval career he accumulated enough prize money to be able to acquire Hatchlands Park near Guildford. At first he and his wife lived in the old Tudor house on the estate, but later they built an imposing redbrick mansion and commissioned Robert Adam to carry out the internal decoration of the principal rooms. The planning of the spacious grounds was a major preoccupation of Boscawen while he was at sea, and his wife was much consumed with running the estate.

  Fanny Boscawen was perhaps the most intelligent of the many accomplished women who married naval officers in the eighteenth century. She was born at St. Clere in Kent in 1719. Her father was a member of Parliament and high sheriff of Kent, and her mother was a descendant of John Evelyn, the diarist. Fanny first met Boscawen when he was home on leave in 1738 and was staying with his elder sister in Kent. He was then a twenty-seven-year-old captain, and she was eighteen. They continued to meet in Kent and were married in December 1742. She became a well-known figure in London society and was a friend of David Garrick, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Dr. Samuel Johnson. In his Life of Johnson, James Boswell wrote, “her manners are the most agreeable, and her conversation the best of any lady with whom I ever had the happiness to be acquainted.” She became a close friend of Elizabeth Montagu, and together they founded the “Blue-Stocking assemblies,” the object of which was to replace the game of whist with good conversation.

  Fanny had no illusions about her looks, and there is a moving passage in one of her letters to Boscawen in which she writes, “Beauty and I were never acquainted. But may I not hope, dear husband, that you will find charms in my heart, the charms of duty and affection, that will endear me as much to you as if I were in the bloom of youth and beauty.” 13

  Her charms did indeed endear her to Boscawen, who was devoted to her. “Don’t conceive I live one day without thinking of you,” he wrote from on board the HMS Torbay some 300 miles out from England. “Rest assured, my dearest love, that I am well, that I love you, and think of you constantly. . . .” 14 He treasured the letters that she wrote to him when he was at sea; he arranged them in order and read them over and over again. Fanny was a wonderful writer. She kept Boscawen in touch with the activities of their children, described her friends, and detailed her life in London and on their country estate at Hatchlands with a revealing frankness.

  Boscawen in turn kept her in touch with his life at sea. At one point he wrote to her every day, but she complained that his letters contained little else but the trite accounts of wind and weather. He explained that often there was little else to write about and that the workings of the ship were scarcely intelligible to anyone who was not a seaman. Most of his time was spent exercising the squadron under his command, carrying out gunnery exercises, and seeing which ship sailed the fastest. He did his best to match Fanny’s lively descriptions of her social life, but his account of his daily routine was restricted to a few sentences. “We rise before six, breakfast at eight, dine at one, and sup at eight again and all very regularly. My mess at dinner consists of six, and breakfast and supper only Colby and Macpherson.” 15 He said that conversation was limited and mostly amounted to a repetition of old voyages, interspersed now and then with accounts of fox hunts by Captain Colby, who was a sportsman. Boscawen seemed to have lived well on most of his voyages. Sometimes there was venison on the menu, sometimes turtle or fresh fish, and he was fortunate to have a baker who produced hot French bread every morning, on which he spread orange marmalade for his breakfast. Fanny had supplied him with some books, but he seems to have spent little time reading. He told her that he found the History of Gustavus Vasa to be entertaining, but he did not enjoy the French books she had given him.

  A notable feature of Boscawen’s letters is his aforementioned preoccupation with his country estate. “A gentle rain all yesterday evening made me think of Hatchlands Park,” he wrote to Fanny in 1756, and he was constantly giving her detailed instructions to pass on to Mr. Woodrose, the estate manager. “Pray exhort Woodrose to roll and weed. By this I think he must have completed his sowing and pray don’t forget to buy me 12 load or thereabout of clover hay if it is cheap.” 16 He also wanted the three roads in the park to be leveled, the ditch around the grotto to be cleaned, and all the ground at the lower end of the park to be plowed, leaving a broad walk under the grown trees. But always his thoughts came back to his beloved Fanny. “I am heartily tired of this prison kind of life,” he wrote from on board the Invincible in May 1756, “and what I think is extraordinary, t
he older I grow, and the more used I am to it, the more tiresome I find it. I wish myself with you every hour, and dream of you every night.” 17

  We know more about the feelings of admirals and naval captains than we do about the other ranks, because much more of their correspondence has been preserved. It is also a fact that senior naval officers tended to be considerably older than most ordinary seamen and therefore were more likely to have wives and children. The majority of the sailors of the lower deck in the navy were young men in their twenties. Many had gone to sea out of a spirit of adventure or because they wanted to see the world. Often they came from seafaring families, and it was taken for granted that they would go to sea to earn a living. During times of war, surprisingly large numbers of young men joined the navy for patriotic reasons or were prepared to tolerate the hard life, even if they were victims of the press gang. A common sailor, who had been pressed into the navy and was in Vernon’s fleet at the capture of Portobelo, told his wife that it was with an aching heart that he had been taken from her by a gang of ruffians but that he was pleased to be fighting for his country against the impudent Spaniards: “I am and so is every man of us resolved either to lose our lives or conquer our enemies, true British spirit revives and by God we will support our King and country so long as a drop of blood remains.” 18

  But many sailors would have agreed with Boscawen that life aboard a warship was “a prison kind of life.” And unlike the senior officers, they did not have the luxury of a large cabin with fine furniture, French bread for breakfast, and splendid wines with their dinner. The younger seamen missed their mothers and sisters, and those who were married missed their wives. Since a large number of sailors were illiterate, it was difficult for them to keep in touch with their loved ones by letters. Samuel Leech, a sailor on HMS Macedonian during actions against American ships in the War of 1812, acted as a scribe for those of his shipmates who could not read and write, but there must have been many men who lost touch completely with their families while they were away at sea. For them it was a matter of surviving the hard life as best they could. Leech described the informal concerts that would take place on deck during calm weather at sea. Scores of men would gather around a gun, and one of their number would seat himself on the gun and sing a selection of favorite songs. Another man would stand up and tell a few stories, and another would crack jokes. Leech thought that a casual visitor to a man-of-war might assume from the songs, the dances, and the revelry of the crew that they were happy, but it was his belief that these interludes only made life tolerable: “By such means as this sailors contrive to keep up their spirits amidst constant causes of depression and misery.” 19

  William Nevens, the American sailor from Maine, entitled his memoirs Forty Years at Sea . . . Being an Authentic Account of the Vicissitudes, Hardships, Narrow Escapes, Shipwrecks, and Sufferings in Forty Years Experience at Sea. It will be recalled from chapter 2 that he had gone to sea at seventeen, made a number of voyages in a merchant ship to the West Indies, and been taken by the press gang in Barbados and forced to join the crew of a British warship; he had escaped by swimming to another vessel and ended up in Boston, where he married an English girl from Liverpool. She was nineteen and he was still only twenty-three. Like the majority of seamen, he saw very little of his wife over the next few years because he was earning a living at sea. While he was away on one of his voyages, he learned that his wife had died, leaving him with a baby boy of ten months. In his memoirs, which were published in 1850 after he had lived through numerous hazards and risen to become captain of a merchant ship, Nevens looked back on his years of marriage. He realized that many people would say that a sailor should not take on the responsibility of a wife but pointed out that only a sailor could appreciate what it meant to have someone he loved who would be there for him when the voyage was over. Of his own wife he wrote, “Although the most of my time had been spent away from her since our marriage, yet whilst she lived I felt that I had something to bind me to society, a kind and sincere friend, a trusty counsellor, an agreeable companion. With what eagerness did I seek her ardent welcome when returned from a long voyage.” 20

  10

  Women and Water, Sirens and Mermaids

  WHEN CAPTAIN COLLINGWOOD learned that there was a woman aboard one of the ships in his squadron, he ordered her to be sent home at once. “I never knew a woman brought to sea in a ship that some mischief did not befall the vessel,” he wrote to Admiral Purvis. 1 It was a view that had been shared by seamen for centuries and is still prevalent among some sailors and fishermen today. Linda Greenlaw, the captain of the fishing boat Hannah Boden and one of the most consistently successful fishermen operating on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland in recent years, has said that for a long time she had to endure the Jonah-like forebodings of an old fisherman on the quay at Gloucester, who made it clear that every time she set off for the fishing grounds he expected some disaster to befall her boat. 2 For eight years he watched her comings and goings and was always surprised when she returned safely to port.

  As with so many sailors’ superstitions, it is hard to discover the origins of the belief that a woman on a ship brings bad luck, and even harder to find any factual basis for it. Columbus, Magellan, and Drake might not have taken women on their epic voyages, but the ships of the Pilgrim Fathers were loaded with women and survived the Atlantic crossing, as did the hundreds of emigrant ships that followed in their wake. We have already seen that the British navy was prepared to turn a blind eye to the wives of warrant officers living on board; and the wives of captains, diplomats, and colonial governors frequently traveled overseas without bringing any harm to themselves or their fellow passengers. Those naval officers who did object to the presence of women on their ships seem to have regarded them as a nuisance rather than a source of bad luck—an attitude summed up by Nelson’s remark before setting sail in 1801: “On Sunday we shall get rid of all the women, dogs and pigeons, and on Wednesday, with the lark, I hope to be under sail for Torbay.” 3

  What is curious about the sailors’ superstition is that it is flatly contradicted by the long-held belief that water is the female element and that women have powers over the sea that are denied to men. This belief dates back to ancient Greece and beyond. Evidence has been found at Knossos to indicate that the Great Goddess of the Cretans not only symbolized fertility but also regulated the course of the sun and stars and protected seamen on their voyages. When the Egyptian goddess Isis was adopted by the Greeks, she became the goddess of seafarers, and Greek ships were often named after her. Aristotle and the medical writers of his time believed that women were physically wetter than men. Their soft, spongy flesh retained more fluid from their diet, and the purpose of menstruation was to remove the excess fluid from their bodies. Pliny the Elder, in his monumental Natural History, which was published in A.D. 77 and summed up the thinking of the generations of writers and philosophers who had preceded him, said there was no limit to the marvelous powers attributed to females:

  For, in the first place, hailstorms, they say, whirlwinds, and lightning even, will be scared away by a woman uncovering her body while her monthly courses are upon her. The same, too, with all kinds of tempestuous weather; and out at sea, a storm may be lulled by a woman uncovering her body merely, even though not menstruating at the time. 4

  This belief that the naked female body could calm storms may account for the large number of ships’ figureheads that feature a woman with one or both breasts bare.

  The power that women were believed to have over water is most clearly demonstrated in the link between the Virgin Mary and the sea. In Catholic countries she was, and still is, widely regarded as the patron saint of sailors and fishermen. On the hills and cliff tops overlooking innumerable ports and fishing villages around the coasts of France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy can be found churches dedicated to the Virgin. Inside many of these are altars and chapels specially dedicated to seamen, and over the centuries it
has been the custom for seafarers to offer prayers to the Virgin before setting out on a voyage. It was usual on the ships of Catholic countries (and on English ships before the Reformation) to have a shrine to the Virgin on the poop deck. Christopher Columbus was only one of many seafarers to name his ship Santa María in the belief that the Virgin Mary would guide him safely across the ocean. In the Spanish Armada of 1588, there were five ships named Santa María and four called La María.

  The very name of the Virgin Mary was derived from the Latin name for water, the symbol of her purity, and her blue cloak represented the sea, the sky, and eternity. In Italian Renaissance paintings, she was often depicted against a distant lake or a glimpse of sea, usually a calm sea representing tranquillity. In Leonardo da Vinci’s Annunciation, in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, there is a sunny and peaceful harbor in the distance beyond the figure of the young Virgin Mary, symbolizing her role as the Port of Salvation. Mary was also associated with the moon and the stars and became known as Stella Maris, the Star of the Sea. The moon controlled the tides, and the stars were used for navigation; thus, Mary was seen as a crucial mediator between the seafarers and the elements when they ventured out to sea. 5