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"I have crossed the Atlantic four times, and have been once to the East Indies and back again, and only once; besides being in different places about home: Cork, and Lisbon and Gibralter.... and I can safely say that the happiest part of my life has been spent on board a ship. While we were together, you know, there was nothing to be feared." --Mrs. Croft in Jane Austen's
Persuasion Much has been made of man's romance with the sea, and to read the literature--from Homer's Odyssey to Melville's Moby Dick--you'd never guess that women so much as got their feet wet in the surf, let alone went down to the sea in ships. But Jane Austen's fictional Mrs. Croft, the wife of an admiral, was by no means a rarity in her time as Joan Druett's fascinating exploration of women and the sea, Hen Frigates, makes clear. During the 19th century, women often accompanied their sea-captain husbands or fathers on oceangoing merchant ships, enduring the same hardships as the male sailors--sickness, poor weather, shipwreck, piracy--and a few of their own, as well, such as pregnancy and childbirth. Yet the history of women at sea has remained largely unwritten and unacknowledged. Then in 1984, Druett discovered the gravestone of a whaling captain's wife while bicycling on one of the Cook Islands in Polynesia. "A woman on a whaleship! It seemed incredible. Instantly fascinated, I thought I would look up a book to learn more about this young woman who had made such a strange and fatal decision to go to sea." What Druett discovered, however, was that there was no book. So she wrote one herself. In Hen Frigates, Druett has used the letters and journals of seafaring women to limn a portrait of 19th-century ship-going life, including matters such as sex, child-rearing and medical practices. From shipwreck and pirate attacks to the intricacies of navigation and the pleasures of visiting foreign lands, Druett's heroines shed new perspective on the 19th-century shipping news.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Historical sidelights can be as intriguing as major events, as in this study of 19th-century sea captains' wives who sailed with their husbands and recorded their impressions in journals and letters. Druett (Petticoat Whalers) points out that in some instances finances dictated that wives be taken along, for a captain who put all of his capital into a ship might have no funds for a home on land. But there were other motivations, too, such as enjoying a honeymoon or sharing experiences. The Victorian female was as "submissive, timid and impregnably virtuous," but the work on shipboard put no premium on submission or timidity. Children were born and raised on ships, with the captain often delivering his own offspring; the captain's wife frequently served as cook and repaired torn sails, and the couple joined forces to fight wind and weather as well as illness. The book provides solid entertainment along with interesting information. Illustrations.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
