Women Sailors & Sailors' Women

by David Cordingly

  Four hundred years after Leonardo da Vinci painted The Annunciation, we find Sigmund Freud pointing out the association between women and water in the lectures he delivered at the University of Vienna during the winter terms of 1915 and 1916. He was nearly sixty, and the lectures summed up much of his life’s work on the interpretation of dreams. In his tenth lecture, on the symbolism in dreams, he observed that birth was represented in dreams by water. He reminded his audience that not only are all mammals, including man’s ancestors, descended from creatures that lived in water, “but every individual mammal, every human being, spent the first phase of its existence in water—namely as an embryo in the amniotic fluid in its mother’s uterus, and came out of that water when it was born.” 6

  Freud also maintained that the female genitalia were symbolically represented in dreams by objects which enclosed a hollow space such as cavities, hollows, bottles, boxes, chests, cupboards, and rooms. Ships also fell into this category, and he made the interesting point that the link between ships and women was confirmed by etymologists “who tell us that ‘Schiff’ [the German word for ship] was originally the name of an earthenware vessel, and is the same word as ‘Schaff’ [a dialect word meaning ‘tub’].” This is not such an obscure argument as it might appear when it is recalled that for centuries ships have been regarded as feminine and referred to as “she” or “her” by sailors. Most of the early written references in English to a ship being a “she” appear in sixteenth-century documents, but there are one or two earlier references. By the eighteenth century, the majority of English-speaking seafarers referred to ships as female, although the terms “man-of-war,” “merchantman,” “Indiaman,” “Guineaman,” and similar masculine terms continued to be used for certain types of ships. There have been numerous explanations put forward as to why a ship should be regarded as feminine, some more convincing than others. Some will say it is because the ship is beautiful, or capricious, or full of curves; some will point out the anatomical similarities—that a ship has a head, cheeks, ribs, a waist, a belly, a bottom, and knees; some will say that a ship is like a mother and offers womblike protection to those on board; it has also been suggested that sailors think of ships as feminine because there is often a female figurehead on the bow.

  At first sight there would appear to be an obvious link between the concept of a ship being feminine and the female figurehead. If a woman had special powers over the sea, it made sense for the figurehead to depict a woman, and ideally a naked or seminaked woman, since an unclothed woman could allegedly calm storms. In fact, female figureheads did not become popular until the nineteenth century, and it is only because the majority of the figureheads that have been preserved date from the 1780s onward that it is commonly assumed that most figureheads depicted voluptuous women. The reality is that in earlier centuries, most figureheads depicted male subjects, animals, birds, or monsters. Egyptian vessels displayed the sacred symbols of the gods, such as the falcon, the ibis, and the lotus flower. The ships of classical Greece usually had the head of a ram or a wild boar at the prow, and a large eye, the oculus, painted on each side of the bow. Viking ships had serpents or dragons. The warships of the maritime countries of medieval Europe were decorated with heraldic designs, and the figureheads were often of animals. English ships of the Elizabethan period had lions, tigers, unicorns, eagles, and St. George and the Dragon.

  It was during the course of the seventeenth century that carved decorations on the bows and sterns of warships proliferated. The carvings were loaded with symbolic imagery that was intended to express the power of each nation and to glorify the head of state. The French ship Le Grand Louis, commissioned by Cardinal Richelieu in 1600, featured a figurehead of Jupiter riding on an eagle. The Wasa, built for King Gustav Adolf of Sweden and launched from the royal dockyard at Stockholm in 1628, had a lion figurehead and nearly 500 carved figures. Like the Mary Rose of the previous century, the Wasa sank during her maiden sail in full view of the watching crowds. Preserved in the mud for three centuries, she was raised in 1961, and she has since undergone extensive restoration and has been the subject of meticulous research. No fewer than 453 of the sculptured figures have been recovered, and analysis of these has revealed a great deal about the ideas that lay behind the ship carvings of this period. The central theme of the decoration is the glorifying of the king, whose portrait is the focus of the stern carving. The rudder is decorated with a large lion trampling on a grotesque head, one of several images intended to symbolize Sweden defeating her enemies. The majority of the Wasa’s carvings are male figures, mostly armed warriors, Roman emperors, mythological figures like Hercules, and wild men with clubs symbolizing strength and aggression. The only female figures are a few caryatids representing nereids and a dozen relatively small mermaids. 7

  A similar decorative scheme was adopted on the magnificent British warship the Sovereign of the Seas (also called the Royal Sovereign). This 100-gun ship was designed by the famous shipbuilder Peter Pett and built at the royal dockyard at Woolwich. She was launched in 1637, and we are fortunate to have a detailed explanation of her decoration from Thomas Heywood, a designer of masques who planned the overall scheme. He leaves us in no doubt about the message he wished to convey in the symbolism of the various figures:

  Upon the beak head sitteth Royal King Edgar on horseback trampling upon seven kings. Upon the stem head there is a Cupid, or a child resembling him, bestriding a lion, which importeth that sufference may curb insolence, and innocence restrain violence; which alludeth to the great mercy of the King, whose mercy is above all his workes. On the bulkhead right forward stand six severall statues in sundry postures; their figures represent Consilium, that is Counsell; Cura, that is Care; Conamen, that is Industry; Counsell holds in her hand a closed or folded scroll; Care a sea compass; Conamen, or Industry, a lint stock fired. Upon the other side, to correspond with the former, Vis, which implyeth Force or Strength, holding a sword; Virtus, or Virtue, a spherical globe; and Victoria, or Victory, a wreath of Lawrell. The moral is that in all high enterprises there ought to be first, Counsell to undertake, then Care to manage and Industry to performe; and in the next place, where there is an Ability and Strength to oppose and Virtue to direct, Victory consequently is always at hand to crown the undertaking. 8

  By the end of the seventeenth century, the carved work on British ships had become so elaborate and so expensive that the Navy Board issued an order in June 1703 that restricted the amount of carving and required all but the largest warships to have a figurehead in the form of a lion. Elaborate figureheads continued to be installed on the large three-deckers, and these usually consisted of a male rider on horseback surrounded and supported by various allegorical figures.

  Although most eighteenth-century figureheads on British, French, Dutch, and Scandinavian warships were either heraldic beasts, decorative coats of arms, or male horsemen, there were exceptions. F. H. Chapman’s great book of ship designs of 1768, Architectura Navalis, shows a number of female figureheads, notably that of the French frigate La Sirenne, 34 guns, which had a winged female figure representing a siren; and various merchant ships are shown with female figures, one with a sword and scales representing Justice, and others that appear to be goddesses. British royal yachts often had a female figurehead, usually a sculpted portrait of the queen or princess after whom the yacht was named. The yacht Royal Caroline of 1749, for instance, had an elaborate gilded figure of Queen Caroline, the wife of King George II. The importance attached to the decoration on such a vessel is revealed by the costs. The decorative carving on the Royal Caroline cost no less than £1,100, while the figurehead required 120,000 sheets of gold leaf at a cost of £950. The combined cost of the carving and gilding in today’s terms would be in the region of £140,000. 9

  Female figureheads began to come into their own in the 1780s, and during the course of the nineteenth century they became as popular as male figures, particularly on merchant ships. Warships continued to
have kings, warriors, naval heroes, and Greek gods, but these were now joined by a range of goddesses, such as Diana, Thetis, and Minerva, as well as by sirens, sea nymphs, and mermaids, and by allegorical figures representing positive attributes such as Fame, Fortune, and Victory. French female figureheads were particularly impressive and reflected the quality of French monumental sculpture. There are some fine examples in the Musée de la Marine in Paris, notably the vigorously sculpted figure of a female warrior from the Poursuivant, the imperious and statuesque carving of the sea nymph wife of Neptune for the Amphitrite, and the exquisitely beautiful mermaid on the bows of the small state barge built for Marie Antoinette and designed for use on the Grand Canal at Versailles.

  Similar subjects appear among the work of the Swedish craftsman Johan Tornstrom, who was one of the most gifted of all carvers of figureheads. His first major work was the figurehead for the frigate Camilla of 1784, depicting a seminaked woman with one raised hand pointing an arrow at her breast. During the course of the next thirty years, he carried out a range of commissions, many of them for ships built to the designs of the master naval architect Frederick Chapman. One of his most impressive carvings is an armed and helmeted female warrior, presumably representing Athena or Minerva, for the ship Aran. In stark contrast is the sorrowing figure of the tragic wife of Orpheus that came from the Swedish frigate Eurydice, and in a very different mood, the shameless whore from the bows of La Coquette who cups her hands under her exposed breasts. 10

  The owners of nineteenth-century merchant ships were also fond of figureheads of goddesses and allegorical images. The following notice in The Boston Gazette of October 10, 1811, is worth quoting in full, because it indicates that the symbolism of the carvings, even on relatively small vessels, continued to be significant and was certainly appreciated by the newspaper’s reporter:

  Last Tuesday was launched from Mr. William Merrill’s yard in Newbury, a brig named Pickering. She has for a figurehead the Goddess of Liberty. On her stern are represented Truth and Justice, holding a Wreath over the head of a Bust of the illustrious Patriot, whose name she bears. At the side of them is Peace and Plenty. The vessel is about 250 tons, and one of the most beautiful we have ever seen; we understand she is owned in Gloucester, by Messrs. Sargent & Co. Very often have we seen vessels with the names of great men, but we have seldom met with one, combining so much beautiful hieroglyphical allusion. Its design and execution confer equal honor on the owners and workmen, while it conveys a delicate and deserved compliment to Mr. Pickering.

  Not all shipowners were as concerned about the hieroglyphical allusions of their figureheads. In 1798, the Scottish firm of Scotts of Greenock wrote to the London ship carver Henry Hopkins and simply ordered “a fashionable lady head in the present taste.” 11 Hopkins was told it must be five feet long, and when it was complete, he was ordered to send it by the first Berwick smack to the port of Leith near Edinburgh. The same shipyard wanted a figurehead for an East Indiaman in 1849. The ship was to be called Seringapatam, and the ship carver Archibald Robertson was told to fashion a seven-foot-high male figure in eastern costume. However, if he thought an eastern female figure would be more showy and look better, he was told to carve it in that style instead.

  In addition to goddesses, Indian maidens, and females representing abstract concepts like Faith, Hope, and Charity, many of the figureheads on merchant ships were portrait sculptures of women known to the shipowner. In 1840, for instance, the Devonshire shipowner Joshua Quinton ordered for his schooner Mary Ann a carving that depicted the nanny who had saved his children from drowning. The figureheads of many merchant ships depicted the wife or daughter of the shipowner. Among the many fine figureheads in the Mariners’ Museum at Newport News, Virginia, is that of the schooner Irma Bentley, which was built by George Bentley at Port Greville, Nova Scotia, in 1908. One of the fifteen children of George Bentley identified the figurehead and informed the museum that it was a portrait of the shipowner’s daughter, Irma, when she was four or five years old. Irma Bentley subsequently visited the museum and was able to provide a complete history of the carving. She said that she had accompanied her father on many of his voyages to the Caribbean and beyond and was chosen for the figurehead because she was a good sailor and was never seasick.

  A survey of the carved figures on the bows and sterns of ships from the seventeenth century to the end of the nineteenth century shows that there were four female images that were consistently favored by the men who commissioned decorative carvings. The first was the figure of an armed and helmeted female goddess or warrior, usually representing Athena or Minerva. The second was a sea nymph or nereid: These frequently appeared among the mass of carvings on the sterns of ships or as supporters to figureheads, and tended to be used as the subject of a figurehead only when the ship was named after a particular nereid such as Arethusa or Galatea. The third female figure was the siren, originally a bird woman in Greek mythology but usually shown on ships as a mermaidlike figure with the addition of wings and a double fish’s tail. And the fourth figure that appeared almost as often as a figurehead as she did among the stern decorations was the mermaid herself.

  Armed goddesses were popular subjects for figureheads on warships, because they combined an impressive warlike appearance with the sterling qualities of the goddess Athena and the mystical powers that women were believed to have over the element of water. The appeal of this image is underlined by the fact that it was adopted by Great Britain as the personification of her role as a maritime power. With the addition of a trident in one hand and the flags of England and Scotland painted on her shield, the Greek goddess Athena became Britannia. The original figure of Britannia can be traced back to the images of a captive female warrior that appeared on coins struck by various Roman emperors to represent the conquered island of Britain, but during the course of the seventeenth century, a version of the helmeted Athena figure was increasingly used as a patriotic symbol. 12 The visual image was given an additional boost by the stirring tune that Thomas Arne composed for the poem which was to take on the guise of a national anthem for the Royal Navy. “Rule, Britannia!” was written by James Thomson as the finale for a masque that was commissioned by the Prince of Wales and performed at his summer residence in 1740. The words reflect the aspirations of a pugnacious island race that had suffered conquest by Romans, Vikings, and Normans in the distant past, had fought off the Spanish Armada, and was determined not to be conquered again:

  When Britain first, at Heaven’s command

  Arose from out the azure main,

  This was the charter of the land

  And guardian angels sang this strain

  “Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves,

  Britons never, never, never will be slaves.”

  English caricaturists such as James Gillray and George Cruikshank frequently used Britannia as the personification of Britain. In their savage cartoons that were drawn during the course of the wars against Napoleonic France, Britannia looks more like a large washerwoman in fancy dress than a Greek goddess, but she later assumed a more serious aspect. Whenever she has appeared on British coins and banknotes (she is currently found on the reverse of the 50-pence piece), she is closer to the original image of Athena.

  The sea nymphs on the bows and sterns of European ships were mostly derived from Greek mythology. In Greek legend there were two families of sea nymphs. There were the oceanides, who lived in the oceans, and the nereids, who were the fifty daughters of the sea god Nereus and Doris and who lived in the Mediterranean. According to Apollodorus of Athens, there were no fewer than 3,000 oceanides. The best known of them was Calypso, who ruled over the island of Ortygia in the Ionian Sea. In Homer’s Odyssey, she kept Odysseus a prisoner in a cavern on the island for seven years before she was ordered by Zeus to release him.

  The nereids were fair virgins with golden hair who could sometimes be seen frolicking among the waves in the company of tritons, who were half-men and half-
fish. On ship decorations, the nereids are often shown riding dolphins, with usually a few tritons in attendance. Many warships were named after particular nereids, the most popular being Arethusa, Galatea, and Thetis. In the Greek myths, Arethusa was pursued by an amorous hunter and escaped by changing into a spring on the island of Ortygia. Galatea was courted by Polyphemus, the one-eyed cyclops, but fell in love with Acis, a young herdsman, and was changed into a river. Thetis was so beautiful that she was courted by Zeus and Poseidon before she settled down and married Peleus, king of Thessaly. Five British warships were named Calypso. Five British warships, and several French ships, were named after Arethusa. There were five warships called Galatea, and no fewer than nine British warships operating between 1717 and 1855 were named after the sea nymph Thetis.

  Like the nereids, the sirens originated in the Greek myths. 13 They were among the hybrid creatures such as centaurs and sphinxes, half-animal and half-human, who lived on the boundaries of the known world and were likely to be encountered by the more intrepid travelers and explorers. It was said by some that the sirens were demons of death: And like the soul birds of ancient Egypt, they were souls who were sent to catch souls. The song of the sirens was impossible to resist, and lured seafarers to shipwreck and death. According to some accounts, it was the beauty of the song that attracted men. It was described as being like the music of the spheres. Other accounts maintained that it was the contents of the song that was its attraction. It was a source of knowledge: It told men what they most wanted to hear, and in particular, it foretold the future.

  The earliest written description of the sirens appears in the Odyssey. Circe warned Odysseus about the sirens while he was staying on her enchanted island: