Women Sailors & Sailors' Women (19 page)

8

Whaling Wives

“I
AM VERY
lonesome,” wrote the wife of a whaling captain from Nantucket in 1808.

Why should so much of our time be spent apart, why do we refuse the happiness that is within our reach? Is the acquisition of wealth an adequate compensation for the tedious hours of absence? to me it is not . . . In company I am not happy, I feel as if part of myself was gone. Thy absence grows more insupportable than it used to be. I want for nothing but your company.
¹

When a whaling ship set sail, the families left behind had to reconcile themselves to a very long wait before their men returned. Mary Brewster was eighteen when she married her husband in 1841. Within a few months of their wedding, Captain Brewster set off to command the whaler
Philetus,
and Mary did not see him again for two years. He came home to Stonington for two months and then went away on another voyage for more than a year and a half. When he returned in 1845, she decided she could not bear the separation any longer. Defying the wishes of her mother and all her friends and relations, she sailed with her husband on all his future voyages. Harriet Gifford, a whaling wife who lived in Falmouth, was one of the majority of women who did not join her husband at sea; she wrote in her diary on August 19, 1854, “We have been married five years and lived together ten months. It is
too bad, too bad.
”
²

The reasons for the length of the voyages can be explained by the nature of the whaling business. While the captain of a cargo-carrying merchant ship was expected to deliver his cargo to its destination as quickly as possible, a whaling captain could not return home until he had filled the hold of his ship with enough barrels of whale oil to make his voyage worthwhile. The richest whaling grounds in the nineteenth century were in the Pacific Ocean. Most American whalers operated from ports on the East Coast, and in particular from New Bedford and Nantucket, which meant that the voyage began with a long haul south, through the Caribbean, along the coast of Brazil, and around Cape Horn. The whaling captain then headed north and began searching for whales in the vastness of the Pacific. When he found a whale he launched the whaleboats, open boats in which his men rowed after the enormous creature and endeavored to harpoon and kill it. The thrashings of the injured whale often resulted in one or more boats being capsized or smashed to pieces, and it was not unusual for men to drown during this perilous operation. Having captured the whale, the crew brought it alongside the whaling ship, where it was cut up and its carcass reduced to oil by boiling the blubber in a great tripot amidships. Some captains were lucky and tracked down enough whales within a few months to fill their holds with whale oil and set off for home. Others had to search the Pacific from New Zealand up to the Bering Strait before they had captured enough whales, and were consequently away from home for years.

Many wives were not prepared for the prolonged separation from their husbands, and as the whaling business expanded during the 1840s and 1850s, more and more captain's wives accompanied their husbands to sea. The Reverend Samuel C. Damon was a missionary in Honolulu, much used by whalers as a base for operations in the Pacific. In 1858, he noted that just a few years earlier it was exceedingly rare for a whaling captain to be accompanied by his wife and children, but it was now very common.
³
A Honolulu newspaper observed that one in six of all whaling captains was accompanied by his wife in 1853.
⁴
These women were rarely called on to demonstrate the sort of heroism shown by Mary Patten, Mrs. Clarke, and the other wives of clipper-ship captains, but they nevertheless had to demonstrate considerable strength of character. The qualities required of whaling wives were physical and mental endurance over a long period, the ability to occupy themselves for days on end while the men worked, and an unswerving devotion to their husbands, whose word was law when at sea. These qualities are vividly demonstrated in the lives of two whaling wives whose journals have been the subject of special study in recent years. Mary Lawrence kept a journal that recorded her experiences during the course of a voyage on the whaler
Addison
between 1857 and 1860, and Mary Brewster kept a journal of her voyages on the
Tiger
from 1845 to 1851. Unlike the equivalent men's journals, which tend to concentrate on the weather, working the ship, and the battles with the whales, the women's journals are more thoughtful and more reflective. They frequently recall family and friends left behind at home. They comment on small things often overlooked by the men: the chickens and pigs that were let loose to wander the deck after days of being penned up during a storm, or the curious selection of hats worn by Hawaiian islanders to church on Sundays.

The voyage of Mary Lawrence in the
Addison
makes an illuminating case study, because it was typical of so many whaling voyages and because her experiences en route reflect those of dozens of other whaling wives. The voyage began and ended in New Bedford, lasted three years and eight months, and consisted of seven separate cruises in search of whales. In the Hawaiian ports of Honolulu and Lahaina the
Addison,
in common with hundreds of other whaling ships, stocked up on provisions and carried out repairs before setting out on the extensive cruises to the Arctic Ocean in the north or the whaling grounds off New Zealand in the south.

Mary Lawrence was twenty-nine when she sailed from New Bedford with her husband and their five-year-old daughter, Minnie. She was a small, bright woman with a ready wit and an indomitable personality. Like so many of the New England women who married sea captains, she was a devout Christian and trusted in God to see them through the dangers of the deep. In her journal she noted the storms that lasted for days on end; she recorded that the weather turned damp and foggy as they headed through the Bering Strait into the Arctic; but she rarely complained.

She was born in 1827 in Sandwich, Massachusetts, and was one of the many children of Jonathan and Celia Chipman. In 1847, at the age of twenty, she married Samuel Lawrence, who was then mate of the
Magnolia.
Soon after their marriage, he was appointed captain of the whaler
Lafayette
of New Bedford and set off on a voyage to the Pacific that ended disastrously when his ship was wrecked off the Galápagos Islands. The ship struck a rock when they were close inshore at night and became a total loss. The captain and crew took to the boats and were picked up by other ships. Most of the cargo of whale oil was recovered, but it was a considerable setback for Lawrence's career: He had to spend several years as a mate before being offered the command of the
Addison.
His brother had previously commanded the ship and still had a part share in her ownership.

Having seen very little of her husband during the first nine years of their marriage, Mary Lawrence decided that she would accompany him on his next voyage and that she would take Minnie with them to sea. At no point in her journal does she ever question her decision or express regrets at exchanging the security of home and family for the unknown perils of a deep-sea voyage. They set sail from New Bedford on the morning of November 25, 1856. There was a fresh easterly wind, and they had a fine sail down the bay and out into the ocean. Before dark, Mary went on deck to take a last look at her native land before it vanished over the horizon. Her heart was sad at the thought that she might never again see the faces of her friends. The next day she embarked on her journal, and at the outset she explained her reasons for doing so:

As this is my first experience in seafaring life, I have thought it advisable to attempt keeping a journal, not for the purpose of interesting anyone out of my own private family, but thinking it might be useful to myself or my child for future reference.
⁵

On the second day the wind veered from the east to the west and blew a gale that lasted for ten days. For the first day of heavy weather Mary was seasick, and Minnie was sick for two days, but then they both recovered. They were fortunate; most whaling wives suffered horribly from seasickness for days on end. This was not because they were less adapted to seafaring than the men but because they were expected to remain below in their cabins, where they were disoriented by the rolling of the ship. Many wives also found the rancid stench of whale oil in the bilges contributed to their nausea. By contrast, the men were up on deck actively working the ship, which enabled most of them to recover from seasickness much more rapidly.

Although Mary had not recovered her appetite sufficiently to eat any of Grandma's turkey, which was served up to celebrate Thanksgiving on the third day out, she derived considerable pleasure from sitting on deck and watching the ocean, marveling at how their gallant ship rode the waves: “It is grand beyond anything I ever witnessed, sublimity itself.” By December 8, the gale had moderated and soon they were sailing on a calm sea under a pleasant, warm breeze. Mary watched several dolphins following the ship, and when a flying fish flew up and landed on the deck, she was delighted that the steward cooked it and served it up for her breakfast. She thought it tasted like fresh herring. During the calm weather, she passed the time reading, writing letters to her friends, and listening to the singing of the sailors. On Sabbath days she usually dressed up a little more than on other days and spent most of her time on deck reading the Bible. Her daughter, Minnie, seems to have taken remarkably well to shipboard life. Occasionally, she was sad when she thought of the friends she had left behind, and once when Mary broke a wishbone with her, she wished she could see her aunt Susan, but most of the time she ran about the deck making friends with the crew. She treated the hens as pets and played with the two pigs, Juba and Wiggie, who were remarkably tame.

At intervals they would see other ships, and when another whaling ship hove in sight it was customary to come alongside and exchange news and pass on letters. On January 5, 1857, for instance, they encountered the Atlantic whaler
Dr. Franklin
of Westport. Her commander, Captain Russell, came on board the
Addison
and spent the evening with them. Before he sailed away, he presented Mary with two dozen oranges, which were much appreciated.

On January 13, Mary saw her first whale. She heard the sound of the whale nearby and went up on deck in time to see the creature blow and heave the monstrous flukes of his tail in the air. Captain Lawrence immediately ordered the whaleboats to be launched, and the men rowed in pursuit but after a few hours returned empty-handed. They were just sitting down to dinner when the cry of “There she blows!” caused all the men to abandon their meal. Mary decided to finish her dinner with Minnie, but her husband and most of the crew took to the boats and headed for where the whale had been spotted. Mary waited anxiously and thought her worst fears had been realized when one boat returned with its planks stove in. She heard someone shout, “Another boat stove!” and she looked and saw an empty boat. “I had not the heart to ask whose boat it was but went down into the cabin. I could stand it no longer.” And then she thankfully heard Samuel's voice as he came alongside. She learned that his boat had been stove in by the whale and all on board thrown into the water, but they had been picked up by the other two whaleboats. They lost the whale but were lucky to lose no men.

The weather turned cold and stormy as they approached Cape Horn, but by February 2, they had sailed through Drake Passage and were heading north into the Pacific. By March 9, they were level with the Galápagos Islands on the equator, and as they headed northwest, a favorable breeze swept them along at a rate of 200 miles a day. On March 31, Mary noted in her journal that apart from her daughter, Minnie, it was over four months since she had spoken to one of her own sex, and she wondered whether she would remember how to speak to a lady when she next met one. By April 12, they were within three days' sailing of the Hawaiian Islands, or the Sandwich Islands as they were then called, the name given them by Captain Cook.

Mary was excited at the thought of setting foot on foreign soil for the first time in her life and watched the approaching landfall with keen interest. They sailed past Hawaii, the largest of the island group, and headed for the island of Maui and the town of Lahaina. Mary thought the high, barren mountains, with their summits in the clouds, and the trees and houses on the lower slopes were all so different from anything she had ever seen before. The
Addison
dropped anchor on April 17, 1857. There were only two other ships lying at anchor in the sheltered bay of Lahaina.

The customs officer came on board, and Captain Lawrence accompanied him ashore to find a place for them to stay. He arranged for them to lodge in a straw-roofed house that had been built for the American consul. It was beautifully situated on the shore among trees, with shady walks laid out with flowers. A long sitting room extended the length of the house, and from its windows there was a spectacular view of the waves breaking on the beach. There were paintings and engravings hanging on the walls, straw matting on the floor, and furnishings including Chinese-style chairs, a sofa, and various tables. Their first visitor was a little girl named Lizzie Bigelow, who called to see Minnie. She was followed by her mother and a Mrs. Brayton. Mary later noted in her journal, “We were delighted to enjoy female society once more.”

The next morning they went to church and heard Mr. Bishop, the seamen's chaplain, preach on the appropriate text, “And they left their nets and followed him.” Mary was surprised by how few people were in the congregation but was thankful that they were able to worship the God of their fathers in a strange land. In the afternoon they went along to the native church, where the singing was excellent. Mary was amused by the Sunday fashions of the Hawaiian women and bore their curious stares with good grace. She was not so amused by the everyday appearance of the local people: