Silk Sails (18 page)

John Chalker Crosbie, merchant of St. John's, bought the ship
Evelyn
in 1904. In March 1909, his wife Mitchie Ann Crosbie, held a mortgage on the ship for $6,000 at 6% interest, and in March 1910, she transferred the mortgage to Martha E. Bell, hotel proprietor of St. John's. This is yet another case where “Hotel Proprietor” is crossed out and “married woman” is written in by a later hand.

Sarah Vigus, married woman of Burin, held a mortgage of $3,263.74 at 7% interest when her husband James Vigus, merchant, bought the
Frances Mesquita
in 1916. The mortgage was payable on December 31, 1917; it was discharged on November 6, 1917. Sarah had come to Burin as a teacher and stayed on to marry James Vigus who died in 1918. In February 1919 Sarah Vigus became a mortgagee for the amount of $662
without interest
when Robert
Wagg bought the
F. W. Mitchell.
The mortgage was to have been paid by November 1920. The vessel appears to have been seized by the High Sheriff under a writ of
fieri facias
on March 9, 1928, “over the shares of Robert Wagg.” Four months later the vessel was sold to Gordon Hollett, accountant of Burin. Sarah had died on January 16, 1922, at age 63.

In 1931 Annie B. Blackwood, married woman of Wesleyville, held Mortgage B “to secure the amount due on Account current [amount not stated] at 3% per annum payable on demand” when Albert L. Blackwood bought the 108-ton
Flora S. Nickerson
in 1931. Ann Bishop, widow of Wesleyville, was the mortgagee for Mortgage C; in May 1939 she transferred this mortgage to Annie B. Blackwood. Albert Blackwood died in March 1938, and Annie was then a widow. It appears that Annie was still holding both mortgagees when the vessel was “totally lost” at the approach to Wesleyville Harbour on June 11, 1950.

In 1933 when Edmund Vardy, mariner of Hickman's Harbour, bought the 174-ton
Alcala
, Lillian Vardy, married woman of Hickman's Harbour, held Mortgage B for $4,000 with interest at 7% per annum; this mortgage covered 20 shares. The
Alcala
was a Lunenberg-built schooner and once raced the
Bluenose
, keeping up with the famous ship on the way out and losing the race by five minutes on the way back. Edmund Vardy bought the
Gertrude Jean
, a crude oil screw, in 1938 from Fanny Isabel Ryan Fiander, married woman of Trinity, and once again Lillian Vardy was the mortgagee for $4,000 with 3% interest. She discharged this mortgage in October 1941. From information received on Random Island, it is clear that Lillian was the business head of her husband Edward's firm and also extended mortgages to his brother Edmund. Lillian and Edward owned the
Flora Ann
, which had at one time been a rum-runner, and the
Silver City
, a steel-built boat. Lillian and Edward ran a general store, did freighting around the coast, and collected fish on the Labrador. She and Edward had three daughters, and one of their ships was named after two of the daughters, the
Ivy and Muriel
; the third daughter died very young.

The fourth woman who held two separate mortgages was Harriet Inkpen, formerly of Burin. Edward M. Hollett, merchant of Burin, bought the
Lottie M. Dunford
in 1932. In February 1935, Harriet Inkpen, spinster and then living at 46 St. Clair Gardens in Toronto, held a mortgage for $600 with interest at 6% per annum. At a later undetermined date she transferred the mortgage to the new owners, Joseph Green and Robert Gregory of Winterton, Trinity Bay, merchant and mariner. Perhaps Hollett had died. Also in February 1935, Harriet Inkpen provided a mortgage for $1,000 for the same Edward M. Hollett who had bought the
Betty Zane
in 1926. This vessel was lost at the entrance to St. Lawrence on December 6, 1938. What happened to the mortgage cannot be determined from the records.

Almost 50 women took mortgages when they bought their own ships. As early as January 1835 Simon Levi and Ann Toque of Carbonear took a mortgage on their ship
Alpha
with St. John's merchants George Richard Robinson, Thomas H. Brooking, John Bingley Garland and William Jeffrey Harvey. The mortgage was canceled in December of that same year, and Levi and Toque transferred all shares to the mortgagees “for a debt or debts.” However they did not have a mortgage on their ship
Elizabeth
in 1831. Richard and Catherine Brown of Burin owned the ship
Catherine
in 1844, and in October 1847 Richard transferred his 48 shares “as a security for debt or debts” to Archibald Currie, merchant of St. John's, so obviously Currie held a mortgage for Richard. No mention is made of Catherine's 16 shares so she must have held on to them and possibly also a mortgage which she had with Currie. Margaret Blake, spinster of St. John's, had bought the ship
Triton
in February 1845, and when she sold it to John Connors, victualler of St. John's, in November 1847, it was by way of a “Deed of Mortgage,” which means that he must have been her mortgagee. When Mary Foley Morris, spinster of St. John's, bought the ships
John & Mary
,
Nancy
, and
Relief
in 1842, she took mortgages on all three ships with James Niner Wood and James Douglas, merchants of St. John's.

Laura Simmons, married woman of Harry's Harbour, took a mortgage for $693.42 at 6% interest with George Knowling, merchant of St. John's, in 1895, one year after she registered the ship
Bonny Lass
. In June 1898 Knowling transferred this mortgage to James Norris, planter of Three Arms, Notre Dame Bay. In November of the same year, Norris sold the ship, which probably means that it was a repossession for unpaid debts. When Margaret Catherine Fitzgerald, matron of St. John's, bought the ship
Ada
in 1896, Robert J. Rendell, merchant, was her mortgagee for $500.

Martha Benson, married woman of Little Bay Islands, was one of four partners in the ship
St. Elmo
in 1898. Martha, Reuben, Arthur and Jonathan J. Benson took a mortgage in September 1898 “to secure sum due on account current with interest at 5%.” James Strong and Richard Mursell of Little Bay Islands were the joint mortgagees. They took a second mortgage in June 1899 for $541.29 with Charles W. H. Tessier, merchant of St. John's. On June 12, 1914, Strong and Mursell discharged this mortgage; on May 29, 1913, Tessier discharged Mortgage B. They then took Mortgage C on June 5, 1903, though the amount was not given. The Bensons sold the vessel in June 1914.

Mary Murphy of St. John's owned the ship
Kersage
in 1899 and took a mortgage of $100 with interest at 7% from Charles W. J. Emerson, payable by November 1900. When Annie Murphy, married woman of St. John's, acquired full title to the
Bertha May
after Mary Murphy's death in 1909, she took a mortgage on the ship but not until May 1916 with Walter Baine Grieve, merchant, and this mortgage was discharged in January 1919. Other mortgages which women took up to the year 1983 were quite straightforward.

It may be of some interest to note that several women who owned ships without a mortgage sold their ships to men who had to take a mortgage. Mary Ann Hussey, married woman of Port de Grave, sold her 35-ton ship
Brothers
in 1907 to Abraham Richards of St. John's. She did not have a mortgage. Abraham took a
mortgage. Amelia Jane Winsor, married woman of St. John's, bought the
Centenary
in 1924 and sold it in 1926 to Percy and Cecil Winsor, fishermen of Wesleyville. The men took a mortgage with A. E. Hickman Co. Ltd. Amelia Jane probably had connections to Wesleyville and may have been selling her ship to her sons.

When Harriet Chislett of Rose Blanche sold her shares in the ship
H. B. Chislett
, the buyer took a mortgage; Harriet did not have a mortgage. After using their ship
Minnie & Joan
for ten years in the fishery, Henry and Myrtle Hatcher of Rose Blanche sold the ship to their son Roy Gordon Hatcher, fisherman of Rencontre West, in 1956, and he took a mortgage with the Nickerson Outfitting Co. Ltd. of North Sydney.

Lillian Martha Hynes, married woman of Harbour Breton, sold the
Elizabeth & Helen
in 1961 to Walter Norman Penney, mariner of Little Bay Islands, and he took a mortgage with I. A. C. Ltd. for $5,446.54 including interest. When Jessie Bragg of Port Union sold the
Marie Yvonne
in 1964 to Walter Edmund Collins and Benjamin Garfield Collins, they took a mortgage; Jessie did not have a mortgage.

When Zena Leonard of Southern Harbour, Placentia Bay, inherited her husband's ship
Terry Maurice
on his death in 1977, she sold the ship immediately. They did not have a mortgage. John Carl Pelham of Pool's Cove, who bought the ship, took a mortgage. The same year, Florentine Hynes of Fox Island River, managing owner of the ship
Mary Evon
, inherited the ship when her husband died without a will. She sold it the same year to Augustus Joseph Hynes, fisherman, and he took a mortgage for $2,550 with interest at 3.5%, and Florentine held the mortgage.

It is not possible to be very precise about the value of a ship or the value of one of the 64 shares in a ship because there are so many variables involved: the time period, age of the ship, condition of
the ship, size of the ship, and so forth. Curiously, very little information on prices can be found in the ship registers. Some information may be gleaned from the amount of the mortgage the new owner took, but this could be equally imprecise because it may have been only a part of the total value, or other assets could have been included in the total mortgage.

Perhaps a few instances in giving the sale price of ships will help, using examples from Atlantic Canada and Quebec. In 1860 in Quebec a 970-ton ship was offered for sale for not less than 8000 pounds sterling, and a ship of 336 tons for not less than 2000 pounds sterling, and a third ship of 395 tons for not less than $14,000, so there was considerable variation, and the price undoubtedly depended on some of the factors mentioned previously. Capt. Allan MacPherson sold his 52-ton schooner in 1867 in Cape Breton for better than $10 per ton; the ship was 10 years old. Dame Henriette Paquet of Quebec sold her 32 shares in a one-year-old, 106-ton ship for $425 in 1875; that would make the shares worth just over $13 each.

In 1894 Elizabeth Munn of Harbour Grace sold her 114-ton schooner for $15 per ton; it was 19 years old. The 71-ton schooner
Minot Light
was sold by Thomas Hickman of Souris, Prince Edward Island, in 1889 for 560 pounds sterling and it was 10 years old. It had been built of white oak in Essex, Massachusetts, and it was advertised as “good for 30 years to come.” Henry Evans of Northern Arm, in 1899, sold his two-year-old schooner of 38 tons, the
Cabot
, for $1,150, which is better than $30 per ton. The Horwood Lumber Co. built the 372-ton
Attainment
in 1917 for $60,000 and sold it almost immediately to Campbell & McKay for $69,420, collecting a bounty of $5,952. In 1920 they built the 149-ton
Nancy Lee
for $41,392. The cost of building the 347-ton tern schooner
E. P. Theriault
in Belliveau Cove, Nova Scotia, in 1919 was reckoned to be about $62,000; that would be about $179 per ton. These instances provide a rough context in which we can look at the kind of money women were dealing with in owning ships. To help us understand the context a little better, it should be noted that 50 British pounds in 1938 would be equivalent to $3,500 U. S. in 2006,
and 50,000 pounds sterling in 1846 was equal to 2.5 million pounds sterling in 1890; that means, in the latter case, that in a mere 44 years there was an increase of 50 fold.

Margaret Yarn, widow of Mose Ambrose, made a very astute purchase in 1929 when she bought the 17-ton schooner
Bessie M.
from John Robert Petite for “$1.00 and other valuable considerations paid to me by Margaret Yarn, widow and managing owner, mercantile business of James Yarn.” I saw the actual bill of sale in possession of Mary Yarn in 1995. What the “other valuable considerations” were is unknown. Annie Hickey, married woman of Harbour Breton, in 1936 purchased the 12-ton
Eleanor & Barbara
for $383 which was about $32 per ton.

From the amount of the mortgages on ships, some further information may be gleaned. When Sarah Jane Johnson, married woman of Little Catalina, bought the 15-ton
Lego
in 1900 she took a mortgage of $250. Susannah and Minnie Yetman took a mortgage of $600 when they bought the 56-ton
Pandora
in 1910. Kate Osmond, widow of Moreton's Harbour, held a mortgage of $5,000 on 14 shares in the 124-ton
Laberge
in 1922. And Elsie May Blackwood and her husband Job took a mortgage for $8,000 in 1947 when they purchased the
Mary H. Hirtle
. Whether these mortgages covered the total or partial value of the ship cannot be determined.

Apart from the self-designated status of widow, spinster and married woman, there are some interesting occupations given in the ship registers. As a variation on the status of married woman, in only three cases was the term “wife of” used, which is quite different, for example, from the ship registers of New Brunswick where the full names of husbands are given routinely.

Ann Jane Tuck, Anne Farrel and Ellen Roach were designated as traders, which meant that they were involved in coastal trading
along the south coast in the 1880s. Gertrude Newman of Boyd's Cove is designated a spinster but she was almost certainly a trader as well. Abigail Horwood was designated a fisherman, but this was an error and she was, in fact, a merchant; her partner was a fisherman. Nina Osmond of Exploits, Burnt Islands, is called a spinster but she also was a merchant. Mary A. Rose of Harbour Breton was designated a merchant, and this was crossed out by a later hand and “married woman” was written in. Martha E. Bell of St. John's was called hotel proprietor and then this also was crossed out and “married woman” written in. Frances Miles was designated a planter; and lest we think this was exceptional, so was Mary Normor of Bay Roberts in 1814, according to Folio FO3, p.103 of Wills at the Public Archives; Mary Fowlow, widow of Trinity, in 1885, was also listed as a planter. This would also have been the status of Mary Ludevig of Ferryland and many of the independent women in the early Plantation Books.