Women Sailors & Sailors' Women (14 page)

It was not until after this dreadful sentence had been passed that the women spoke up. The transcript of the trial notes that “the prisoners informed the court that they were both quick with child, and prayed that execution of sentence might be stayed. Whereupon the Court ordered that execution of the said sentence should be respited, and that an inspection should be made.”
³¹
When an examination was carried out, they were both found to be pregnant and therefore escaped the death penalty. Captain Johnson records that Mary Read contracted a violent fever soon after her trial and died in prison, and this is confirmed by the parish registers for the Jamaican district of St. Catharine, which indicate that she was buried on April 28, 1721.
³²
There has been much speculation about the fate of Anne Bonny. There is some evidence to suggest that her father, William Cormac, persuaded the Jamaican authorities to release her from jail and took her back to Charleston, South Carolina, where she married a respectable local man named James Burleigh and had eight children by him. The same source indicates that her father also managed to locate the son she had by Rackam in Cuba. The boy was brought back to Charleston, adopted by Anne, and named John in memory of his pirate father. Anne is believed to have died in 1782 at the age of eighty-four.
³³

What is certain is that the authorities, who were engaged in a vigorous campaign against piracy in the West Indies, were able to report that one more pirate ship and her crew had been eliminated. Sir Nicholas Lawes wrote to London and reported the fate of Rackam and his men. He added that “the women, spinsters of Providence Island, were proved to have taken an active part in piracies, wearing men's clothes, and armed, etc.”
³⁴
On January 31, 1721, a ship arrived in New York with the news of Rackam's capture and trial. A brief report appeared in
The Boston Gazette
a week or so later, which noted that he and ten of his men had been executed for piracy and hung up in chains, and that two women who were with them were likewise condemned but “pleaded their bellies.”
³⁵

It was not until Captain Johnson's
General History of . . . the Pyrates
was published three years later that the full story came out. Evidently aware that female pirates were likely to interest the reading public, the publisher drew particular attention to their remarkable actions and adventures on the title page, and the only illustrations in the first edition were of Blackbeard, Bartholomew Roberts, and a fold-out picture of Anne Bonny and Mary Read. The two women are shown dressed in baggy sailors' clothes, brandishing weapons and standing together on a tropical shore.

6

Wives in Warships

I
N OCTOBER
1811,
The Boston Gazette
reported that a five-month-old girl had been sent anonymously to the Royal Naval Hospital at Greenwich with £50 in banknotes sewed up in her clothes.
¹
Inquiries revealed that the child's father was a seaman in a British man-of-war. He had been allowed to take his wife to sea with him, but sadly he had been killed in action. The day after his death, his wife gave birth to a baby girl between two guns and then died herself. The shipmates of the dead seaman took care of the baby. They fed her with crackers and water and took turns acting as nurses, moving her from hammock to hammock whenever they were called on deck. When the ship eventually returned to England, the sailors collected £50 from the ship's company and arranged for the child and the money to be delivered to Greenwich. The child was reported to be remarkably healthy. She had been baptized Sally Trunnion, in reference to her place of birth—trunnions being the term for the two lugs that support a gun barrel on a gun carriage.

Another birth on a warship was reported by a young seaman with an American squadron in the Mediterranean in 1803.
²
Henry Wadsworth was a seventeen-year-old sailor in the American 38-gun frigate
Chesapeake.
He was so fond of writing that he had persuaded the ship's carpenter to build him a writing desk, and he kept a journal of life on board the ship during her cruise. On February 21, 1803, the ship left Algiers, and from Wadsworth's journal we learn that the following day Mrs. Low, the wife of James Low, captain of the forecastle, bore a son in the boatswain's storeroom. A few days later the baby was baptized in the midshipmen's mess. The christening was organized by a midshipman named Melancthon Taylor Woolsey, who became godfather to the child and provided refreshments of wine and fruit to celebrate the occasion. As Mrs. Low was feeling unwell, Mrs. Hays, the gunner's wife, officiated. The divine service was led by the ship's chaplain, the Reverend Alexander McFarlan. Wadsworth tells us that all was conducted with due decorum and decency and that this must have given great satisfaction to the parents. However, it failed to give any satisfaction to those ladies of the lower deck who were not invited to celebrate the christening of Melancthon Woolsey Low. We learn from Wadsworth that Mrs. Watson, the boatswain's wife, Mrs. Myres, the carpenter's lady, and Mrs. Crosby, the corporal's wife, got drunk in their own quarters out of pure spite.

These were not the only women on board the
Chesapeake.
The commander of the ship, Commodore Morris, had obtained permission from the secretary of the navy to bring his wife along with him, as well as their young son, Gerard, and the boy's nurse. Wadsworth described Mrs. Morris in a letter to his girlfriend at home and said that she had all the virtues of the female sex. Her knowledge of geography and history was extensive, and she had a passion for reading. He noted, however, that “her person is not beautiful, or even handsome, but she looks very well in a veil.” Mrs. Morris did not number diplomacy among her accomplishments, and she became extremely unpopular among the officers in the squadron, who believed she had an undue influence over her husband. She was blamed for the fact that Morris allowed the squadron to spend far too much time in the fashionable ports of the Mediterranean so that she could pursue her social life. In due course, Morris was recalled to Washington, and in November 1803 he had to face a court of inquiry in which he was censured for the inactive and dilatory conduct of his squadron.

Another American warship in the Mediterranean at this time is known to have had women on board. John Cannon, the boatswain of the 36-gun frigate
New York,
had his wife with him, and so did John Staines, a quarter-gunner in the same ship. During the course of the cruise, Staines's nineteen-year-old wife, Nancy, had a miscarriage and developed a serious infection. In spite of all the efforts of the ship's surgeon, who prescribed warm baths, elixir vitriol, and an antiemetic, she succumbed to a high fever and died within twelve days.
³

Ten years later, during the War of 1812, we find Commodore Stephen Decatur, one of America's naval heroes, arranging for two women to be taken onto the
United States
as supernumeraries.
⁴
The women were wives of seamen on the ship, and it was Decatur's intention that they should act as nurses. They were signed on to the ship's books on May 10, 1813, and two weeks later the
United States
sailed from New York, evaded a British squadron that was blockading the coast, and sailed north to New London, Connecticut. On October 28, John Allen, the husband of one of the women, fell overboard and drowned. His wife, Mary, received Decatur's permission to leave the ship and return to New York. It is not known what happened to Mary Marshall, the other woman. She may have stayed on board until her husband was transferred to the
President
in May 1814.

The examples quoted above suggest that the American navy, which only came into existence in the years following the Revolution of 1776, was remarkably relaxed in its attitude toward women on board warships. But the case of little Sally Trunnion, which was by no means an isolated one, indicates that the British also allowed wives of seamen on board their ships. Indeed, it was not unusual in the Royal Navy for warships to have several wives living on board when the ship was at sea. Sometimes the women were the wives of officers or colonial governors who were taking passage on a ship to overseas postings. Sometimes naval captains were given permission by their commanding officers to have their wives living on board, but this was only in peacetime and usually when the ship was stationed for a length of time in harbor. Usually the women who went to sea were the wives of those warrant officers known as standing officers—the gunner, the boatswain, and the carpenter.

The reason that the standing officers were often allowed to take their wives to sea can be explained by the special position they held on a warship. Although they were inferior in rank to the commissioned officers (the captain and the lieutenants), they were key members of the ship's company. They received their warrants from the Navy Board and in theory were attached to the same ship from the moment she was built to the day she was broken up. By contrast, the commissioned officers received their commissions from the Admiralty and were appointed to a particular ship for a particular commission, which could be a matter of only a few months. When the commission was completed, they were unemployed. The more permanent position of the standing officers was reflected in the fact that when a ship was laid up for repairs they stayed with her. They continued to live in the ship, and their wives and children often joined them on board.

The warrant officers fell into two unofficial categories. Those of wardroom rank, who lived and ate with the commissioned officers in the stern of the ship, included the master, the purser, the surgeon, and the chaplain. The other warrant officers, who included the gunner, the boatswain, the carpenter, and the cook, usually had cabins in the forward part of the ship, conveniently near the boatswain's and carpenter's stores and the galley. Their wives were thus able to live with them relatively unnoticed by most of the crew and well out of the way of the officers on the quarterdeck. This may be why many captains were prepared to overlook their presence on board. There was also the fact that the warrant officers were generally regarded as reliable, steady men. They were older than the young men who formed the bulk of a warship's crew, and their wives seem to have been equally steady and responsible. If they had been young and flighty they would have been a disruptive influence and unlikely to have been tolerated on board by the captain. Sometimes the warrant officers' wives came to the fore during battle, but mostly they seem to have melted into the background and to have played a motherly role.

These women of the lower deck were not recorded in the ship's muster book, so they did not officially exist. They had to make their own arrangements with the purser for victualing or share their husband's food ration. (It was common practice for standing officers to provide their own food and drink rather than eat the ship's food.) Since there was no official record of their existence, they rarely appear in captains' letters or logbooks and we only learn of them by chance through other means, such as the journals of naval surgeons or chaplains, the transcripts of courts-martial, or the memoirs of seamen. Occasionally, there are passing references to them in official records. Many captains produced their own sets of orders for the conduct of the officers and men on their ships, and in some of these we catch a glimpse of the women carried on board. In the orders that Edward Riou, captain of HMS
Amazon,
issued in 1799, the following instruction appeared: “Screens are never to be admitted except where women sleep and then only during the night and to be taken down (not rolled up) during the day.”
⁵

The official attitude of the Royal Navy to taking women to sea was set out in a series of instructions that went back to the seventeenth century and even earlier. In 1731, the British Admiralty issued a set of printed instructions entitled
Regulations and Instructions Relating to His Majesty's Service at Sea.
These were based on instructions issued by James, Duke of York, in 1663, which had been amended and reissued several times during the next seventy years. Part Two of the 1731 regulations sets out precise details for the captains and commanders of His Majesty's ships, and Article 38 made the navy's attitude toward women abundantly clear: “He is not to carry any woman to sea, nor to entertain any foreigners to serve in the ship who are officers or gentlemen, without orders from the Admiralty.”
⁶

In 1756, the Admiralty issued
Additional Regulations Relating to His Majesty's Service at Sea.
The position of women on ships was further clarified in Article 11, which dealt with cleanliness on ships. In addition to the captain's making sure that his men constantly kept themselves clean, that the ship be aired between decks, and that precautions were taken to prevent people relieving themselves in the hold “or throwing anything there that may occasion nastiness,” there was the following instruction: “That no women be ever permitted to be on board but such as are really the wives of the men they come to, and the ship not to be too much pestered even with them. But this indulgence is only tolerated while the ship is in port and not under sailing orders.”
⁷

In 1806, a revised and much enlarged set of regulations was issued at the instigation of Lord Barham, the First Lord of the Admiralty. Article 14 of these regulations was much the same as Article 28 of the earlier ones, instructing the captain as follows: “He is not to allow of any woman being carried to sea in the ship, nor of any foreigners who are officers and gentlemen being received on board ship either as passengers or as part of the crew without orders from his superior officer, or the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty.”
⁸

It is interesting to compare these instructions concerning women with those issued by the British army during the same period. Unlike the navy, which frequently took women to sea but acted as if they did not exist, the army was accustomed to having women accompanying regiments. Loose women and prostitutes were discouraged, but the wives of officers often accompanied their husbands overseas, and a limited number of soldiers' wives were allowed to travel with the regiments on campaigns. The soldiers' wives were expected to make themselves useful by washing the soldiers' linen, searching for victuals, cooking, and acting as nurses. When the regiment was on the march, they accompanied the baggage wagons at the rear of the column, but when they arrived in camp or barracks, they were permitted to share a tent with their husbands or join them in a corner of the barracks.

In the early part of the eighteenth century, the number of soldiers' wives allowed to accompany a regiment varied from three to ten for each company, but the situation was regularized in 1800 when the Duke of York issued an order setting out that “His Royal Highness permits women, being the lawful wives of soldiers, to embark in the proportion of 6 to 100 men (Non-commissioned Officers included).”
⁹
This number is confirmed by orders issued for individual regiments. In 1801, for instance, the Corps of Riflemen published “Rules for the Soldiers' Wives,” which began, “The number of women allowed by Government to embark on service are six for every hundred men, inclusive of all Non-commissioned Officers' wives. This number is ample and indeed more than sufficient for a light corps. . . .”
¹⁰
In 1807, a General Order for troops destined for service on the Continent further specified that the wives should be carefully selected “as being of good character and having the inclination to render themselves useful; it is very desirable that those who have children should be left at home.”
¹¹

There were about 4,500 wives with the army in Spain in December 1813, and memoirs of army officers who served under the Duke of Wellington in the Peninsular campaign suggest that the women had a hard time.
¹²
They were subject to army discipline and punishment, suffered from exposure and hunger, and gained a reputation for plundering on and off the battlefield. Like their husbands, they were exposed to enemy attack. However, as they were in such short supply, the women were never likely to remain widows for long if their husbands were killed. Lieutenant William Gratton noted that “when a married man was shot, and his wife was a capable and desirable person, she would receive half a dozen proposals before her husband was 48 hours in the grave.”
¹³

Much less is known about wives at sea than is known about army wives, and the evidence we have is fragmentary. In the Public Record Office in London are twelve private journals by a young Irish physician named Leonard Gillespie, which provide a vivid insight into life on a small warship. Gillespie was appointed surgeon of the 16-gun sloop
Racehorse
in August 1787, and he spent the next three and a half years on the ship as she patrolled up and down the east coast of Britain, impressing seamen and chasing smugglers. Women mostly feature in his journal when the
Racehorse
is in port. In December 1787, for instance, the sloop was anchored at the Nore, and he recorded the presence of four prostitutes on board. They had infected several members of the crew with venereal disease, “yet these women are seemingly well in health, are in good spirits and having been turned over from their first paramours are entertained by others who seem to remain unaffected by any syphilitic complaints.”
¹⁴