Silk Sails (3 page)

Until at least 1880, except for the very earliest period, women on Nantucket Island outnumbered men by at least four to one. Many of these were single women or widows, or married women separated from their husbands for the duration of a whaling voyage, which usually lasted three or four years. These conditions produced a practical, forceful woman who did not shrink from responsibility or intellectual accomplishment. In addition to their accomplishments on land, Nantucket women were among the first to accompany their husbands to sea on the long whaling voyages. In 1817, Mary Russell of Nantucket went to sea with her husband Laban aboard the whaler
Hydra
, and thus became the first woman to establish a home on a whaling ship. Within a few years many would follow her example.

Many of the women who went to sea with their husbands on whaling voyages were, fortunately, tireless diarists, and we therefore have an excellent record of their unique perspectives, the difficulties encountered, the joys of life aboard ship, and a relatively normal life where children were born, raised, educated, and taught many of life's most practical lessons. The presence of women on board ship had a civilizing influence on both captain and crew, as both captains' and crew members' diaries attest. Linda Grant DePauw observes: “For the Victorians, homemaking did not mean doing domestic chores so much as maintaining an emotional environment of peace and moral uplift. Men, it was believed, required the presence of a ‘mother' to keep them well behaved and civilized.”

But there was another factor at work in the man-centered world of the Victorian era (ironic as that statement may seem). It is reflected in Julia C. Bonham's comment in a 1977 article in the magazine
American Neptune
: “But the men who treated women as their intellectual and physical underlings were quite willing to regard the ladies as their moral and spiritual superiors.” Not only did women bring a civilizing influence to life on the ship, they contributed to a balanced social life aboard that generally made difficult situations more bearable.

Mary Chipman Lawrence's journal of 1856 to 1860 has been published under the title
The Captain's Best Mate,
which is, apparently, the title that her husband attributed to her. A picture emerges in her journal of a quite normal life on board ship, a life that is filled with writing, painting, music and song, teaching, “gamming” (visiting with occupants of other ships), dispensing medicines, letters from home, danger and even death. The voyage covers seven cruises from New Bedford to the Pacific Ocean, to the Arctic Ocean, to New Zealand, and home to New Bedford. This journal is typical of many others, not as reflecting an imposition made upon women, but as a task undertaken voluntarily and willingly, and without blaming either persons or circumstances.

Eliza Azelia Williams accompanied her husband Thomas William Williams aboard the whaler
Florida
from 1858 to 1861. During the voyage, Eliza had two children and kept a detailed diary of the trips to the Indian and Arctic oceans. One of the children born on this first voyage, William Fish Williams, paid a tribute in later years to his mother in the words: “A woman can be depended on to show true nerve and grit at the crucial moment better than a man” (DePauw).

Some of the most amazing stories about women and the sea have to do with women on trading ships. The story of Rosina Annie Slade, 1865 to 1964, is a fine example. Annie was the daughter of Richard Harding of Appledore, England. Her father was master of the trading smack
Dahlia
. His two older sons had gone off to sea on the square-riggers and he had only a very young son
remaining, so Annie, having just finished school, decided to go on the ship with her father. She soon mastered the compass and how to steer by it, learned to trim the sails, and became knowledgeable about tides and weather conditions. She took her turn at the wheel and at the pump, and her father eventually made her the mate. Annie later married William Kingdon Slade, also of Appledore, when he was mate of the
Hawk
. William was a hard worker, ambitious, and a fine sailor, but he had never been to school, so Annie decided to educate him. At least in the early stages of their correspondence, she always returned his letters to him with corrections added. He never mastered the business letter, however, so Annie became their business manager, went to sea with William, raised their children on board, and continued to take her turn at the wheel and often served as mate or navigator or third hand. William progressed from being master of the ketch
Francis Beddoe
to the
Minnie Flossie
, a larger vessel, to owning a quarter share in the schooner
Alpha
, of which he was also master, to the schooner
Ulelia,
which was jointly owned with his brother-in-law, George Quance, who became master while William held the position of managing owner. Annie still kept the books and handled the correspondence, particularly to obtain cargoes, until she passed this responsibility over to her eldest son. In the meantime a house was purchased with the savings that Annie continued to accumulate, and the family had by now moved up to a comfortable middle-class position, due in large part to Annie's initiative and hard work. The relationship between Annie and William Slade was an ideal partnership, and William was unstinting in his praise of Annie for the unusual contribution she had made to the partnership. While Annie's story may be quite unusual, her son W. J. Slade concluded his tribute to his mother with the words: “There were many fine women who were ideal sailor's wives in Appledore” (Greenhill and Giffard).

It was not uncommon for women to go to sea as crew members in order to help the family business survive. Often there was no alternative until children were old enough to replace a working mother, or when there were no boys in the family. Such stories have largely gone unrecorded because neither the woman nor
the family thought they were doing anything remarkable. The multiplicity of roles which women of many countries have played in connection with the sea are now fortunately recorded in a book edited by Jane Nadel-Klein and Dona Lee Davis and entitled
To Work and To Weep: Women in Fishing Economies
.

Many women who went to sea as captains' wives on whaling ships and trading ships seemed to have a natural fascination with navigation. It had the dual advantages of relieving boredom and giving the woman a more immediate involvement in the world of the ship. Captains often took advantage of their wives' natural curiosity about navigation by teaching them the intricacies of this science. Honor Matthews Earle, a former school teacher, became the official navigator on the whaler
Charles W. Morgan
between 1890 and 1906, when she sailed with her husband, Captain James A. M. Earle. She may already have studied navigation in school, but in any event she learned the practical aspects of it very quickly. When Captain William Mayhew and others of his crew became ill with smallpox aboard the whaler
Powhaten
in 1846, his wife Caroline became navigator and captain with the full support of the crew, who showered her with gifts, after the event, for a job well done. Lucy P. Vincent Smith, wife of Captain George A. Smith, in addition to using her sewing machine to make and repair sails for the ship, also learned navigation from her husband, and within a few lessons her calculations were identical to those of her husband. Thomazene (Tamzin) Williams, from an upper-middle-class shipping family of Appledore and wife of Captain Edward Williams, in a journal written in 1850 on her husband's ship from Newport to Quebec, shows an unusual knowledge of navigational methods and technical terms, undoubtedly learned in the cabin as she worked with her husband on the voyage. In 1897, Lloyd's of London awarded its prestigious Silver Medal to Mrs. Reed, wife of the captain of the
T. F. Oakes
, in recognition of the fact that she took command when her husband was ill, the first mate had died and several of the crew were dying of scurvy, and saved the ship. Captain Thomas Crapo pays high tribute to his wife, who was alone in the cabin when the brig
Kaluna
was smashed by a heavy sea. She quickly grabbed a lamp and,
while standing waist-deep in water, held the lamp high so that the helmsman had a good view of the compass and could see to steer the ship. Her husband credited Caroline's presence of mind in saving the ship.

There are at least two outstanding instances in which women took charge of fully rigged clipper ships and brought them safely to port under the most trying circumstances. One story concerns Hannah Rebecca Crowell Burgess of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. In 1852 Hannah married William H. Burgess and went to sea with him in the clipper
Whirlwind
, taking lessons from her husband and studying books on navigation. William was so impressed with Hannah's competence that within one month he appointed her the official navigator. By 1856 William was given command of a larger ship, the
Challenger
. The ship was loaded at London for a trip to Callao, Peru. During the voyage William became seriously ill and was put to bed. Hannah consulted with Chief Mate Henry Winsor and agreed to take command of the ship and navigate it to the nearest large port, Valparaiso, Chile. Hannah had earlier recorded in her diary: “I like the
Challenger
very much. She is a much better sailor than the
Whirlwind
and 400 tons larger.” All her skills were needed in the venture now unfolding as, with Henry Winsor's assistance, she daily recorded and charted the ship's route to its destination and attended to the needs of her dying husband. William died on the nineteenth day of his illness and Hannah refused to bury the body at sea. After twenty-three days in charge of the
Challenger
, Hannah arrived in Valparaiso on December 15, 1856. William's body was buried there and Hannah took passage home in the steamer
Bogota
, arranging the next year to have the body brought home for interment in West Sandwich Cemetery. Hannah was 21 years of age when she assumed command of the
Challenger
, and William was 27 at the time of his death. It is said that Hannah had fifty-six offers of marriage in subsequent years, but she had taken a vow never to marry again and died in 1917 at the age of 82.

An even more amazing story involved Mary Patten. She made two voyages with her husband, Captain Joshua A. Patten, on the clipper ship
Neptune's Car
between 1853 and 1856. On the first
voyage she proved to be “uncommon handy about the ship,” as Joshua noted in his log. She became so adept at navigation that it was felt she could easily qualify for a master's certificate. The second voyage was a race from New York to San Francisco around Cape Horn with two other clippers. Joshua was soon forced to place his first mate in irons because of his insubordination and abusive and careless behaviour; as a result of being on deck continuously for several days and nights, battling gale conditions, Joshua became seriously ill and was confined to bed. With the support of the second mate, Mary rallied the crew in a speech that sought their full support and assured them that she could get them safely to San Francisco. They were now approaching treacherous Cape Horn in storm conditions. Dressed in oilskins and wielding a speaker's trumpet, she commanded the crew and fought the elements for fifty days, during which time she slept in her clothes. As they hoisted one sail after another, each was stripped away by gale force winds for the first several days. Gradually the wind eased, allowing sails to be raised little by little.

As the captain recovered but before he got out of bed, he curiously released the first mate who immediately attacked Mary Patten. Hearing cries from the vicinity of the cabin, crew members rushed to Mary's assistance only to find the first mate prone on the floor and sporting a lump on his head. Having conquered Cape Horn, Mary Patten was not about to let a mere man overwhelm her! The first mate was again placed in irons. Sails were now crowded on for the race to San Francisco, but then the winds failed for ten full days before they reached their destination. The voyage took 136 days and was good for second place in the race. They arrived in San Francisco on November 15, 1856 (incidentally, just one month before Hannah Burgess!). The insurance company awarded Mary Patten $1,000 and showered her with accolades.

The amazing thing about this feat is that when Mary Patten took over command of the ship she was 19 years of age and four months pregnant! Her baby was born on March 10, 1857, and her husband, who never fully recovered from his illness, died three months afterward. Perhaps the ordeal had been too much for Mary Patten
also; a combination of typhoid fever and tuberculosis ended her life at age 23.

These are just a few of the stories having to do with women and the sea. They can be multiplied over and over again by scores upon scores. Altogether they form a fitting context for a closer look at women and their ships. Many of these women were sponsored or mentored by fathers who saw their true worth or by husbands and brothers who regarded them as equals. There was in all of them a fierce inner strength and an independence of spirit that enabled them to make their mark and achieve a measure of true greatness.

While doing research in the late 1980s for my book
For Love of a Woman: The Evans Family and a Perspective on Shipbuilding in Newfoundland
, I discovered the names of four women who were listed as shipowners in the microfiche edition of the
Maritime History Shipping Records
. It was, I thought, a curiosity but obviously an error. I made note of the four and determined to check them out at a later date to find out how such an error could creep into the records. Further checking turned up 97 names in the Newfoundland records, but I did not yet have access to the original records and that would require travel and additional work.

I was, at the time, a librarian at McGill University, and when I was awarded a sabbatical leave in 1993 I determined to make women shipowners a chapter in an intended book to be entitled
Sails of Newfoundland
, after the model of John P. Parker's book
Sails of the Maritimes
.