Women sailors and sailors' women : an untold maritime history / David Cordingly.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cordingly, David.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women and the sea.

Physical Description:

xv, 286 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, portraits ; 25 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Random House, [2001]

Summary:

The fall of 1856 was one of the worst seasons that sailors off the coast of Cape Horn had ever seen. The clipper ship Neptune's Car, a trading vessel from New York, had battled huge waves and gale-force winds for weeks. Desperate to save his men and cargo from the violent storm, Captain Joshua Patten spent eight sleepless days and nights on deck. On the ninth day at the helm, he collapsed with a raging fever, and his crew panicked. As freezing rain and wind howled through the rigging and death seemed imminent, just one person on board stepped forward to take control of the ship: Captain Patten's nineteen-year-old wife, Mary, then five months' pregnant with their first child. When the ship safely reached its destination of San Francisco that November, Mary Patten was hailed as a national heroine.

What was a young woman doing on board a clipper ship in 1856? And how could she have been skilled enough to navigate a 216-foot vessel through a storm? Maritime history is rich with tales of male adventurers, sailors, captains, and pirates. In fact, we think of the high seas as an all-male world. But what about women? Were wives and daughters left ashore, relegated to a landlubber's existence?

To answer these questions, celebrated maritime scholar David Cordingly has written an inspired, illuminating, and highly readable book that reveals the vibrant history of women and the sea. Drawing on years of research into the journals, ship's logs, and diaries of extraordinary women like Mary Patten, Cordingly has resurrected the incredible stories of a forgotten population. He re-creates a time when captain's wives shared Christmas dinners in Tahitian harbors, and when one Hannah Snell served aboard a British naval ship for four years without revealing her identity as a woman.

The book's structure takes the form of a voyage. Beginning with the ships at anchor, Cordingly looks at the lives of sailors' women in port, including the women of ill repute who prowled the docks. He details the terror of the press gangs that rounded up men to fill the ships, taking them from their wives and children, and then follows the ships to sea. On board, Cordingly explores the lives of captain's wives, female sailors, and stowaways. He then turns to the mythical women of the sea, including mermaids, sirens, patron saints, and the female figureheads that graced so many bows. On the journey home, there is a look at the female lighthouse keepers who guarded the coasts, and then once back in port we see how the women left behind fared in the absence of their sailors.

A thrilling voyage of a book through one of the most unknown and fascinating landscapes of adventure lore, Women Sailors and Sailors' Women brings to life a remarkable piece of history.

Contents:

1. Women on the Waterfront 3

2. The Sailors' Farewell 23

3. Ann Parker and the Mutiny at the Nore 36

4. Female Sailors: Fact and Fiction 47

5. Hannah Snell, Mary Anne Talbot, and the Female Pirates 68

6. Wives in Warships 88

7. Seafaring Heroines 109

8. Whaling Wives 122

9. Men Without Women 138

10. Women and Water, Sirens and Mermaids 154

11. A Wife in Every Port 171

12. Two Naval Heroes and Their Women 192

13. The Lighthouse Women 215

14. The Sailors' Return 235.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [269]-272) and index.

ISBN:

0375500413

OCLC:

44934108