Women Sailors & Sailors' Women

by David Cordingly

  Within a few months of the family’s moving into the house on Lime Rock, Captain Lewis had a stroke that left him so paralyzed he was no longer able to carry out his duties. His wife took over as the official keeper, but in addition to her disabled husband, she had four children to look after. She increasingly relied on Ida, the eldest child, to maintain the light. Ida was fifteen at this time, and during the next few years she also took responsibility for rowing her younger sister and two brothers to school. Although the island was only half a mile from the shore, a strong or gale-force wind would rapidly turn the peaceful waters of the harbor into a mass of short, steep waves. Captain Lewis would keep a lookout from his window when his children were due to return in the boat and frequently feared for their lives when they rowed back in heavy weather. He told a newspaper reporter:

  I have watched them till I could not bear to look any longer, expecting any moment to see them swamped, and the crew at the mercy of the waves, and then I have turned away and said to my wife, let me know if they get safe in, for I could not endure to see them perish and realize that we were powerless to save them. 15

  Ida’s early experience with the lighthouse boat stood her in good stead over the years. Her first recorded rescue took place in September 1859, when she was eighteen. Four college students were sailing a catboat across the harbor after dark. They were larking about and one of them climbed up the mast and began rocking the boat so violently that it capsized. None of them could swim, but they managed to cling to the upturned hull. Ida heard their shouts, and she immediately launched the boat and set off toward them. She later said that by the time she reached them they were “two-thirds dead—awfully weak and white-faced, and almost inanimate.” She managed to haul them into her boat over the stern and took them back to the lighthouse, where the family helped to revive them.

  The next rescue took place on a freezing day in February 1866. Three soldiers rashly decided to return to Fort Adams in a decrepit old skiff. They managed to get some way out into the harbor when one of them put his foot through a rotten plank in the bottom of the boat, which rapidly filled and sank to the gunwales. Ida Lewis spotted the men in trouble and rowed to their assistance. Two of the men abandoned their grip on the old skiff and attempted to swim toward her, but the cold overcame them and before they could reach her they sank and drowned. When Ida reached the skiff, she found the third man was so numb with cold he could scarcely move, and she had to heave his body unaided into her boat to save his life.

  The following year she rescued three shepherds who got into trouble, and in November of the same year, she saved two sailors. But the rescue that captured the headlines took place on March 29, 1869. The wind had risen to gale force during the night, and when Ida’s mother woke in the morning, she was horrified to see a capsized boat drifting among the foaming waves. There were two men clinging to the upturned hull. According to one report, Ida did not even stop to put on shoes or an overcoat but hurried outside in a thin brown poplin dress and stockings with a white shawl around her shoulders. The weather was atrocious, with a fierce wind, snow, and sleet sweeping across the gray waters of the harbor. With an angry surf breaking on the island, it took Ida fifteen minutes to launch the boat and get clear of the shore. As she approached the stricken boat, the story goes, one of the men cried in despair, “It’s only a girl,” and letting go of his hold, he sank beneath the waves. He reappeared moments later, and Ida grabbed his hair, managed to drag him to the stern of her boat, and hauled him aboard over the transom. The second man was almost paralyzed with cold, and he too had to be heaved aboard. With both men lying almost unconscious on the floorboards, Ida headed back through the breaking waves toward Lime Rock. Back in the lighthouse, she and her mother spent hours reviving the two men, who proved to be soldiers from Fort Adams, as well. They had apparently been in a hurry to get back to the fort before their leave expired and had engaged a local boy to row them across to the promontory. The boy was drowned when the boat capsized.

  What is curious about the whole episode is that most of the accounts indicate that Ida Lewis carried out the rescue single-handedly, but a painting that was later commissioned by the U.S. Coast Guard shows her younger brother, Rudolf, with her in the boat. The artist received instructions about the clothes Ida wore and how she handled the boat and must presumably have been told whether Ida was assisted in the rescue. While the presence of her brother in no way diminishes the courage and determination she showed on that winter morning, it does help to explain how a young woman was able to haul into her boat two men who were helpless with cold and weighed down by soaking-wet clothes.

  The news of this rescue provoked a public reaction similar to the adulation experienced by Grace Darling thirty-two years earlier. The local people honored Ida Lewis with a special parade on Independence Day, 1869, and presented her with a new boat built of mahogany with red velvet cushions and gold-plated rowlocks. The Life Saving Benevolent Association of New York awarded her their silver medal, as well as a check for $100. Articles devoted to the rescue appeared in the New York Tribune and other major newspapers, and her picture was featured on the cover of Harper’s Weekly with the caption “The heroine of Newport.”

  The Lime Rock lighthouse suffered the same fate as the Longstone lighthouse, becoming a place of pilgrimage. Captain Lewis sat in his wheelchair counting visitors and reckoned that in one summer alone 9,000 people came out to the island hoping to catch a glimpse of Ida Lewis. The most famous of the visitors in 1869 was the President of the United States, General Ulysses S. Grant. He arrived with Vice President Colefax and was rowed out to the lighthouse. According to the local legend, the President got his feet wet as he stepped ashore. “I have come to see Ida Lewis,” he said, “and to see her I’d get wet up to my armpits if necessary.”

  Among the numerous letters and gifts that followed the news of the rescue were many offers of marriage. Ida Lewis was persuaded to accept one of these, and in 1870, she married Captain William Wilson of Black Rock, Connecticut. Whether Captain Wilson was unable to accommodate himself to Ida’s fame and way of life, or whether Ida was reluctant to change her island routine—or whether they were simply incompatible—is not altogether clear, but in less than two years, they separated. She kept the name Mrs. Lewis-Wilson but reverted to her single status and never remarried. In any case, she had more than enough to keep her busy. In 1872, her father died and her mother was officially appointed keeper in his place, but she fell ill and was soon a helpless invalid. Ida found herself not only having to carry out the daily lighthouse duties but also having to look after her mother. Eventually, Ida’s years of service as unofficial keeper were recognized, and in 1879 she was herself appointed keeper and received the annual salary of $750.

  In 1881, she carried out another rescue that was almost as hazardous as that in the storm of March 1869. Once again, it took place in freezing winter weather, and again it was men from the garrison at Fort Adams who were involved. Much of the harbor had frozen over, and in the late afternoon of February 4, two soldiers who were walking across the ice when it gave way beneath them found themselves up to their necks in icy water. Ida heard their frantic cries and ran across the ice toward them, bringing a rope with her. She flung the rope to them, and by the time she had helped one of the men out of the water, her brother had come to her aid and together they got the second man to safety. The U.S. Life Saving Service was so impressed by her bravery on this occasion that it presented her with its highest award for her “unquestionable nerve, presence of mind, and dashing courage.” It pointed out that the ice was in a very dangerous condition and noted that shortly afterward two other men fell through the ice and were drowned in the immediate neighborhood of the rescue.

  Ida Lewis’s position as a national heroine was consolidated. She was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal “for rescuing from drowning at various times at least thirteen persons,” and received a silver medal from the Massachusetts Humane Society. From the great mansions of
Newport came a stream of society ladies to shake her hand, including Mrs. Astor, Mrs. Belmont, and Mrs. Vanderbilt. She was also visited by General Sherman. According to Ida, the general “sat out on the rock for nearly an hour, asking me questions about my life, and saying he was glad to get to such a peaceful place.” 16

  She seems to have taken the adulation and fame in stride. She made no changes in her way of life but continued to live a monastic existence, keeping watch during the day and waking through the night to mind the light. Her brother continued to help her, particularly with the upkeep of the lighthouse, but as she entered her sixties, the stream of visitors diminished and there was even a rumor that Lime Rock light was to be replaced with a small beacon on the neighboring Goat Island. Before this happened, Ida Lewis was dead. Her brother arrived one morning in 1911 and found her unconscious on the floor of the lantern room. She died later that day. The news was passed along the waterfront, and that evening, all the vessels in Newport Harbor rang their bells in her honor. She was buried in a local cemetery. The lighthouse she had made famous eventually became a yacht club, but the name of her small island was changed from Lime Rock to Ida Lewis Rock.

  14

  The Sailors’ Return

  A LARGE WARSHIP entering harbor under the command of a confident captain with a well-trained crew was a magnificent sight. She would surge toward the anchorage under full sail, with a hissing bow wave, and flags and pennants billowing in the breeze. When she drew level with the fort guarding the entrance of the harbor, her guns fired a salute to the port admiral. As the clouds of gunsmoke drifted across the harbor, she rounded up into the wind and let go the anchor, and the men high up on her yardarms heaved up her sails. Within minutes she was lying quietly to her anchor, and her boats were being lowered into the water.

  This disciplined and orderly procedure was followed by the most disorderly scene imaginable. A small armada of rowboats and barges pushed off from various points along the waterfront and headed for the anchored ship. Most of these were bumboats, the name given to small boats used to sell provisions to ships lying at a distance from the shore. The bumboats were often owned by local women and were loaded like floating market stalls with piles of fruit and vegetables, baskets of bread and meat, dairy produce, tobacco, liquor, and anything else the sailors might buy. The other vessels were rowboats filled to the gunwales with cargoes of women. A few of the women were sailors’ wives, who had probably traveled many miles in order to meet the incoming ship. Most of them were prostitutes who hoped to earn a few shillings by selling their favors to the men on board. The boatmen who rowed these women out to the ship treated the exercise as a speculative venture. No money changed hands until the boats jostled alongside the massive wooden hull of the ship; then, depending on the attitude of the ship’s officers, the men could either climb into the boats or lean over the ship’s side to choose a woman. The sailor then paid her fare, and she was allowed to clamber up the ship’s side. The noise and confusion resulting from the various transactions may be imagined with the bumboat women bartering their produce, prostitutes clamoring to attract the sailors’ attention, and the sailors themselves shouting and swearing ribald comments.

  Within an hour or so, the ship was heaving with humanity. It was not uncommon for as many women to come aboard as there were men on the ship, so a 74-gun ship with a crew of 500 or 600 would find her 170-foot length crammed with more than a thousand men, women, and children. Most of these went belowdecks to the sailors’ quarters. The officers had makeshift cabins constructed of canvas screens that allowed them some privacy, but the ordinary seamen hoisted their hammocks in a low-ceilinged, cavernous space with no privacy whatsoever. Here, among the guns and the seamen’s chests, wives were reunited with their husbands, and prostitutes went about their business with the men who had paid for their services. Soon the confined space was teeming with people chattering, laughing, crying, shrieking, and swearing. As the liquor smuggled on board by some of the women took effect, the noise increased and scuffles broke out. Here and there a sailor struck up a tune on a fiddle or flute, and couples began dancing. Others gambled away their pay. Pervading all was the reek of unwashed humanity, mingling with the stench of bilge water and the more wholesome smells of tar, hemp, damp wood, and any livestock that had survived the voyage home without being eaten.

  Old seamen writing their memoirs recalled with shame some of the scenes that took place. Samuel Leech, who had been on HMS Macedonian as a boy, seen action in the War of 1812, and later joined the crew of the U.S. brig Swan, thought there were few worse places for the moral development of young boys than a man-of-war, where there was: “Profanity in its most revolting aspect; licentiousness in its most shameful and beastly garb; vice in the worst Proteus-like shapes.” 1 He recalled the boatloads of women who came on board at Portsmouth and Plymouth: “Many of these lost unfortunate creatures are in the springtime of life, some of them not without pretensions of beauty.” Samuel Stokes, who had been an able seaman on the Dreadnought in 1809, thought: “The sins of this ship was equal to the sins of Sodom, especially on the day we was paid, for we had on board thirteen women more than the number of our ship’s company, and not fifty of them married women.” 2

  Admiral Hawkins was so concerned about the effects of allowing women on board ships at anchor that he published a pamphlet in 1822 entitled Statement of Certain Immoral Practices in HM Ships—his descriptions of what went on were so graphic that it was widely circulated and went into a second edition. He thought the women were treated like cattle and was appalled at “the disgusting conversation; the indecent, beastly conduct and horrible scenes; the blasphemy and swearing.” 3 He described how men and women squeezed into hammocks a few inches away from each other so that they were witnesses of each other’s actions. According to his account, they indulged in “every excess of debauchery that the grossest passions of human nature can lead them to.” Captain Griffiths, who had been in the Royal Navy for thirty-two years, could not recall any such scenes, though he agreed they might take place on hulks where the seamen were not on the same deck as the midshipmen. He did concede that admitting profligate women on board was an evil practice that offended the respectable married women on the ship and had a demoralizing effect on the younger members of the crew. 4

  It was perhaps inevitable that admirals and captains whose first priority was the well-being of their ships and crew should show little sympathy for the women, who had to suffer the public humiliation and degrading treatment. Most of them blamed the women for what went on. Admiral Hawkins described them as “the vilest of women,” and Leech referred to them as “defiled and defiling women.” The women were certainly blamed for the increase in venereal disease that invariably occurred after a ship had spent time in port.

  Alexander Whyte, the surgeon of HMS Bellerophon, wrote in his journal on November 19, 1804, at Spithead, “Heavy Rain—Ship very wet and extremely filthy from so many women being on board.” 5 The visit of these women resulted in four crew members’ contracting the worst cases of venereal disease ever sent to the navy’s hospital at Haslar. While the surgeon’s sick list was usually dominated by men with fevers and fluxes, ulcers and catarrhal complaints, Whyte recorded that after the time at Spithead, 67 men out of a total of 287 sick were suffering from venereal disease, far more than were suffering from fevers, ulcers, wounds, and other illnesses. The effect of the loose women on the younger members of the crew is starkly illustrated by an entry in the journal of James Farquehar, surgeon of HMS Captain. On October 1, 1798, he treated William Farley, who was officially described as a third-class boy aged fifteen, but the surgeon noted that “Though he says he is fifteen years of age I have reason to believe he is not near so old as he has not the least appearance of having arrived at the age of puberty.” 6 The boy had slept with one of the seamen’s girls the night before they sailed from Cawsand Bay and had contracted virulent gonorrhea; the swellings around his groin were so bad that he could
hardly walk.

  The sailor’s return from the sea was usually portrayed in popular prints as a joyful occasion: the sailor returning to the arms of his sweetheart, or carousing in a waterfront tavern with the local women.

  We’ll spend our money merrily,

  When we come home from sea;

  With every man

  A glass in his hand

  And a pretty girl on his knee.

  The more mischievous cartoons showed the innocent Jack-Tar being fleeced of his wages by a pretty girl and an aged crone, or returning to find that his girl had taken up with another man in his absence. And there were numerous accounts of sailors coming ashore after a long voyage, cheerfully and noisily squandering their money in the whorehouses, dance halls, and drinking dens to be found in every busy port. But the sailor’s homecoming was not always an occasion for drunken revelry. There is a memorable picture in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, entitled Home from the Sea. It is a meticulously rendered oil painting of a country churchyard. It is summer, and a young girl dressed in black kneels on the grass beside her brother, who lies grief-stricken on the spot where their mother has recently been buried. The boy is dressed in a sailor suit, and next to him can be seen his straw sailor hat and a bundle containing his belongings wrapped in a large handkerchief. Beyond the two figures in the foreground are a few ancient gravestones, and beyond them the decaying walls of a small country church surrounded by yew trees. A sheep and a lamb have wandered into the churchyard from the distant fields, and so vivid is the painting that one can almost hear the leaves rustling in the trees overhead and the calls of distant jackdaws.