Silk Sails (21 page)

One fascinating diary does exist, and provided the basis for a recently published book by Bill Haigh,
Foote Prints Among the Kauri
. When the Foote and Gibbons families left Exploits, Burnt Islands, and St. John's in December 1864 to sail to New Zealand in the 132-ton brigantine
Clara,
which had been built at Prince Edward Island, there was on board a crew of 11 and 37 passengers, including 15 children. Mrs. M. S. Peace, a passenger, kept a diary of the six-month voyage, and Bill Haigh bases much of the early part of his book on Mrs. Peace's diary and quotes her poem “Farewell to Newfoundland” and her ode to the new baby born on board, “Little Clara's Song.” Mrs. Peace described in detail every vessel sighting, a near disaster with a large steamer, rolling seas, shortage of drinking water at times, food spoiling in the hot weather, entertainments organized to dispel the boredom, singsongs, religious services, and the brief stopover in Capetown, where overindulging in liquid spirits inspired Mrs. Peace to write the following pledge: “We, the officers, passengers and seamen of the brigantine
Clara
, promise to abstain from all intoxicating drinks as a beverage until the present voyage is concluded,” which she noted had only a limited effect. Running short of supplies, they stopped at Melbourne, Australia, where they were detained by officials for two whole months until they paid fines for six breaches of passenger regulations: “First, for not having sweet and wholesome provisions; second, for insufficient privy accommodation; third, for not having a supply of medical comforts; fourth, for insufficient hospital accommodation; fifth, for not producing a Master's list; sixth, for not having fitted lifebuoys.” Then officials condemned the vessel's mast and said that it must be replaced and issued two more summonses: “First, for being two berths short; second, for not having the flour correctly stowed.” Finally it was discovered that Captain Roper had not arranged for a Certificate of Clearance from an emigration agent in Newfoundland. It was agreed through a solicitor in Melbourne that all these
additional expenses would be paid when the vessel was sold in Auckland. Several of the paying passengers left the ship at this point, intending to find an alternate way to New Zealand, and the
Clara
left on the last leg of her journey, arriving on June 30, 1865.

The Foote and Gibbons families had been sawmill operators at St. John's and at Peter's River, near the mouth of the Exploits River, since the early 1840s, and they were moving to New Zealand to continue that industry, which they did successfully for many years.

Newfoundland women also handled ships. Arthur Sidney Butt, in his book
Telling It As It Was
, affirms that the women of Flat Islands, Bonavista Bay, “handled boats almost as capably as men,” and that “certain women acted as ‘skippers' or ‘skipperettes' when they went on berry-picking expeditions or when they shared off-the-island grass-cutting exchanges.” Sarah Gosse Collins described her experiences in the late 1880s, as quoted in Eric Martin Gosse's book
The Settling of Spaniard's Bay
: “I sailed with father in the
Victoria
and with brother Bob (Gosse) in the
New Era
. We had some rough passages (to and from Labrador) but I was a good sailor. When they reefed I took my turn at the wheel and I could keep her into the wind with any of the boys. When I married John I never sailed again but every June I watched when the flags went to the mainpeak and they sailed away.”

Surely one of the most incredible stories of women and the sea is that of young Anne Harvey of Isle aux Morts (“Island of the Dead”) on the south-west coast of Newfoundland. On a stormy morning in July 1832 she was the first to hear the distress call of a ship breaking up on the treacherous rocky shoals. Anne, her father George, her younger brother, and Anne's Newfoundland dog went out in their dory to help. Her father realized that they must somehow get a rope aboard the ship so they could rig a breeches buoy in an attempt to rescue the people. The ship's lifeboats had all been smashed and the sea was full of floating debris as passengers and crew crowded together at the forecastle area. Anne suggested that her dog was such a strong swimmer that
he could swim through the roiling sea and take the rope, tied around the dog's shoulders and middle, to the ship. He did, and the three Harveys were thus able to rescue 163 people and care for them until help arrived from outside the community a week later. Anne's role in the rescue, including her handling of the dory in the rough seas, was truly remarkable, but she had been fitted for the task by growing up on the sea and by the careful mentoring of her father. The Harvey family was awarded a medal for their bravery by the King of England. Many years later one of the Coast Guard vessels working the Newfoundland and Labrador coasts was named the
Anne Harvey
in recognition of the young woman's feat.

In Bay Roberts in the 1920s or 1930s there was a young woman whose surname was Batten who skippered a ship with her father as they brought coal from North Sydney to Newfoundland. Ann Miller of Fogo, whose husband was Paddy Miller, was skipper of a ship plying between her home and Botwood, probably in the 1950s. And more recently, Angela Butt was a 1998 graduate of the Marine Institute and served as captain of the
J & B
out of St. John's that summer. She was described in the
M. U. N. Gazette
as “possibly the first female schooner captain in the province's 500 year history.”

Such was women's involvement in the family fishing venture that when the salt-fish trade began to disappear and fish caught on the fishing grounds could be taken directly to fish plants, it was a natural transition for women to stay in the boats and to be designated legitimately as fishermen, and later as fisherpersons. It is a cynical interpretation of the practice to say that women only did this at a later period so that they could collect unemployment insurance.

I checked the Newfoundland ship registers up to 1990, but I hesitate to give detailed information about some of the later women ship-owners for perceived reasons of personal sensitivities. Both in this chapter and in Appendix A, I have used the 1960s as a cut-off date in providing details of all transactions. It may, however, be of interest to list the names of later owners, with minimum details. These are a mixture of sole owners, joint owners, mortgagees and executrixes. The vessels are a mixture of fishing ships, working ships, yachts and pleasure boats. The abbreviation Mort. in the last column indicates that the woman was a mortgagee for the ship. The abbreviation M.O. is for managing owner.

This book takes us back to a time when women, battling against almost insurmountable odds, carved out a place for themselves in previously unfamiliar territory.

How many women shipowners were there, and how do their numbers compare to those of male owners? In the microfiche edition of the ship registers to which I have referred several times, the listing covers the years from 1820 to 1936, i.e., 116 years. In 1820, 84 vessels were registered, and for the next three years the average number of registrations per year was about 40. Vessel registration reached a high of 243 in 1825 and then averaged about 95 vessels per year over the next five years. The first woman made an appearance in the listings in 1818 (Mary Parsons, widow of Clown's Cove), though Eric Gosse affirmed that Margaret and George McCarthy of Carbonear, who re-registered their ship
George
in 1823, were joint owners of that vessel as early as 1804.

A total of 97 women shipowners were found in the microfiche edition of the ship registers for the period 1820 to 1936. This number compares with a total of 16,629 owners for the period. In this total number we must consider that in many instances the names of five or six men (and even more) appear as joint owners of a particular ship, often the shipbuilder and his sons or a group of brothers. However, when the subsequent transactions to the original registrations were checked, an additional 173 women were
found, making a total of 270 women shipowners. By searching the records from 1937 to 1990, another 138 women shipowners were found, for a total of 408. As is evident from this study, several other women boat owners and shipowners were identified from various written and oral sources. So we are looking at a Newfoundland sample of between 500 and 600 women.