Women Sailors & Sailors' Women (21 page)

Hannah Burgess declared that she loved her husband more than she could express: “It is true that for love the human heart will make almost any sacrifice, and it was this alone that prompted me to leave the scenes of my youth, the kind parents, and loved friends, to wander with my Husband, and with him share the joys and sorrows that fall to the lot of a Mariner.”
¹⁵

The single-minded devotion that seems to have been shared by so many whaling wives helped them to put a brave face on storms and on the seasickness that invariably accompanied rough weather at the beginning of a passage. Mary Brewster was so sick during the first month of her first voyage that she was confined to her bed almost continuously and was unable to write a word in her journal. When at last she felt well enough to sit up, she wrote a little, then vomited, then rested at intervals until the weather improved. But eventually she gained her sea legs and was able to face a storm without fear. She went up on deck to find the wheel lashed, all sail taken in, and huge waves breaking over the bows: “Never since I had been out had I seen such a time or witnessed such a sublime sight.” Harriet Allan experienced a severe gale in November 1869. The hatches were battened down, and the men had to cut away the foretopgallant mast. She braced herself in the doorway and watched the waves, which seemed mountains high. The noise of the wind and the sea was so tumultuous that it was impossible to hear herself speak, and yet, like Mary Brewster, she did not feel any fear: “I had confidence in the little ship and her captain and the strange wild excitement, even fascination, of the scene, banished fear.”
¹⁶

The whaling wives who stayed at home were not able to share the perils and adventures of the long voyages with their husbands; nor did they have to suffer the seasickness, the confined quarters, and the isolation of being the lone woman among a crew of men. But they did have troubles of their own. Apart from the loneliness and grief that many women experienced when their husbands were away, many suffered financial hardship. In April 1844, Phebe Cottle of Nantucket wrote to the shipowners Charles and Henry Coffin: “I am sorry to be obliged to again call for assistance but my rent has become due and my wood is out and I am in need of many articles for my family that I cannot do without.”
¹⁷
She explained that she was forced to give up work because her mother was sick and asked for the sum of $30 or $40. The following year, the pregnant wife of John Codd, who was on a whaling voyage in the Pacific, wrote to the same shipowners for a loan of $50: “I do not feel you have treated me well; My husband did not think you would let his family suffer for the necessaries of life, when he shipp'd in your employ. I am out of food and fuel, and unless you can do something for me must write by every Ship for him to return and take care of his family.”
¹⁸
When Sarah Tripp of Tiverton had heard no news of her husband for two years, she despaired of his ever returning and appealed to the town council for help. The general assembly agreed that she and her four small children were “in a poor, low, & deplorable state & condition,” and gave her permission to sell some of her husband's land in order to support herself and her family.
¹⁹

Faced with having to fend for themselves, many whaling wives found jobs and took on responsibilities that would normally have been considered the husband's concern, such as managing budgets, settling accounts, and buying and selling land and property. Center Street in Nantucket became known as Petticoat Row because so many of the shopkeepers were women, and in New Bedford the women earned money by taking on various types of piecework. Eliza Stanton earned $27.17 from some outfitters in town for sewing shirts for sailors, and Sarah Cory, who worked as a seamstress for a clothing store, wrote to her husband, who was at sea, “I have so much sewing all the time I don't hardly know what to do some times but they won't take no for an answer and I am obliged to do it.”
²⁰

Many women earned a living by taking in boarders. Sylvia Sowle took in four ship's carpenters as boarders for a few months, while Julia Fisk, the wife of a whaling ship captain, ran a resort-style boardinghouse that catered to dozens of guests at a time.
²¹
In the rural areas, women like Caroline Gifford of Dartmouth and Hannah Blackmer of Acushnet kept farms going with the help of their children and neighbors. Abby Grinnell of Tiverton, Rhode Island, was able to report to her husband at sea that her corn was very large, the barley very good, and the oxen had done so well that they were fat enough for beef. But not all whaling wives were able to cope so well, and all too many found it a real struggle to bring up a family on their own. No doubt Myra Weeks spoke for many when she wrote to her husband in 1842: “I think it is rather lonesome to be shut up here day after day with three little children to take care of. I should be glad to know how you would like it.”
²²

The whaling wives were not the only ones who were lonely. Many of the men who went to sea in whalers sorely missed their homes and families. In the privacy of their cabins, the whaling captains wrote in their journals and poured out their feelings in their letters to their loved ones. In 1871, Captain Charles Allen wrote a letter that began, “Dear Daughter Emma, as I have been sitting here in my cabin alone and lonely, the thought rushed into my mind: Is this all of life? My heart answered No.”
²³
Another Captain Allen, writing to his sister Hannah in 1859, echoed his thoughts: “But I am so lonely at times for my dear wife I can hardly content myself, and even think that it is so, that I am alone, that she has gone to heaven.”
²⁴

For the ordinary seamen in the spartan accommodations before the mast, there was no privacy. In whaling ships, as in most merchant ships, the seamen lived in cramped conditions and were expected to be tough and self-reliant. It was a male, macho culture in which feminine values played no part and sensitive feelings were masked or suppressed. Sailors who were homesick were likely to be ridiculed by their shipmates. When a young sailor on board the
Sunbeam
was found weeping on his sea chest, clutching a bed quilt given him by his grandmother, he became the target of practical jokes.
²⁵
Marshall Keith of the
Cape Horn Pigeon
cried all afternoon after being reprimanded by his captain for spending too much time thinking about his wife.

Yet in spite of the culture that prevailed on board ship, we find that sailors of all rates placed great value on the letters, presents, and keepsakes from home. As they sailed across oceans, these keepsakes were a potent link to the women they had left behind. Food and clothing seem to have been the most usual items. Ruth Post asked her husband, “do let me know if your butter and cheese and dried fruit turned out well.”
²⁶
Edmund Jennings took Aunt Dyer's cake to sea with him. Samuel Brayley went loaded with his wife's cranberries and his mother-in-law's quince, and later wrote to his wife to inform her that “Grandmother Douglas' cotton stockings wear well, but then here is not more than half enough for the voyage; I wish you would send me a dozen pair more.” He went on to tell her, “I cannot wear those that you knit; it seems sacrilege. How much I prize every thing that is the work of thy dear hands.”
²⁷

While captains and officers could keep such things in drawers and lockers in their cabins, the ordinary seaman kept all his possessions in his wooden sea chest. He used this chest as a seat, he played cards on it, and he took it with him from ship to ship. In addition to the letters and presents from home, it contained his shoregoing clothes, a picture or two, and his ditty box containing buttons, needles, and thread. Many seamen also kept a Bible. Samuel Leech said that he spent many weary hours reading, “and sometimes I perused the Bible and Prayer Book which my mother so wisely placed in my chest on the eve of my departure.”
²⁸

The letters and reminders of home helped to keep the men going on their voyages, but for many of them, particularly the older men, they were no substitute for the loved ones they had left behind. All they wanted was to get back to their homes and families. “I think some times if I ever get home alive and well I will never leave you again,” wrote William Ashley to his wife, Hannah.
²⁹
He told her that whaling was all very well for single men, but it was not healthy for married men. Soon after writing this he obtained his discharge, left the whaling voyage before it had ended, and returned to Hannah and the farm, where he settled down and never went to sea again.

9

Men Without Women

O
N JULY
2, 1761, a court-martial was held on board the
Princess Royal,
an aging 90-gun warship lying at the Nore, near the mouth of the Thames. On trial were George Newton, a seaman belonging to HMS
Ocean,
and Thomas Finley, a boy belonging to the same ship. They were charged with committing “the unnatural and detestable sin of sodomy.”
¹
The president of the court was Admiral William Boys, commander in chief of the ships and vessels in the Thames and Medway. Alongside the admiral in the great cabin of the warship were four naval captains whose task it was to assist him in his deliberations and to determine whether the two prisoners were innocent or guilty of the crime punishable by the 29th Article of War.

When the prisoners had been brought into the court by the provost marshal, a letter from their commander, Captain Langdon, was read aloud. The court then proceeded to question the witnesses for the prosecution. The first witness was a black seaman named Charles Ferrett. George Newton immediately objected to Ferrett's giving evidence, because he said that a black man should not swear against a Christian. When Ferrett was asked whether he had been christened, he said that he had been baptized at Portsmouth when he was a member of the crew of the
Maidstone.
He could not remember who was present at the time but recalled that Commodore Keppel was one of his godfathers. Under further questioning he confessed that he could not read or write, but he said that he was a free man and received his own pay. He was then admitted as a witness and was sworn in. The admiral asked him to tell the court about the crime of sodomy of which the two prisoners were accused. This is what Ferrett had to say:

The prisoner George Newton, when he came on board the
Ocean,
he had no bedding; I took compassion on him and let him lay with me, having spread my bed clothes upon the deck to serve us both. One night I was asleep, and hearing somebody blowing and puffing alongside of me, close to my knee and shaking me which waked me; I never stirred him but put my left hand up, and got hold of both his stones fast; the other part was in the body of the boy; I asked him what he had got there, he said, cunt. Then I said you are worse than any beast walking in the field.

When asked what time of night this happened, he said it was about three or four in the morning.

 

Was there any light?

There was not any. It was dark.

If it was dark, how can you know it was that boy?

I kept the boy in my berth until it was fair daylight, and then I found it to be the boy, the prisoner Finley.

 

He was asked how he could be sure that it was the prisoner George Newton committing the sin of sodomy if it was dark. He replied, “There was no other persons lay by me, only one man, that lay in a hammock over my bed, in the same berth.”

He was asked whether he was sure of what took place.

 

I felt the prick of George Newton, in the boy Finley's arse.

What did you do then?

I made a great noise. The ship's cook was coming at that time, but his wife stopped him, as he told me afterwards.

 

When Ferrett was asked whether there had been any falling-out between him and the prisoners, he said there had been none. At this point George Newton was allowed to question the witness. He asked Ferrett whether he had ever heard him use any indecent expression which might suggest that he wanted to commit the sin of sodomy. Ferrett said that he had sailed with him three years on the
Harwich
and never knew him to be guilty of a crime of this nature.

The black seaman withdrew, and George Dawson, the ship's cook, was sworn in. He was asked to relate what he knew of the prisoners' actions on board the
Ocean.
He said that he had heard the black man call out that the prisoner had his yard in the boy's fundament and that he was worse than the brute beasts in the field. He said that it was about two o'clock in the morning, and he confirmed that it was dark.

 

Did you see the boy at that time?

When I got up I saw the boy, he had been secured in the berth all night by the black man, Ferrett.

Do you know, or think that the black man was drunk?

I cannot say whether he was drunk. I saw the black man about six in the morning. He was not drunk at that time.

 

The cook withdrew, and George Gubbs, the seaman who had been lying in the hammock above Ferrett and Newton, was called as the next witness. He repeated the same story as the cook, as did the fourth witness, Isaac Wright.

Captain Langdon, the commander of the
Ocean,
was then called and was sworn in. He told the court that he had gone on board his ship and been informed by the first lieutenant that he had put a man in irons on a charge of buggery. The captain said that he had ordered Newton to be brought before him and his officers on the quarterdeck. He had asked him how he came to be guilty of so heinous and unnatural an offense. Newton had denied the charge, so he sent for the boy, who confessed that the man was guilty and had buggered him several times. The captain said that he had ordered them both to be confined in irons and had written to his commanding officer requesting a court-martial. When asked whether the boy's confession was voluntary or whether it had been extracted from him by threats or punishment, the captain said that the confession was voluntary.

The next witness was Lieutenant William Orfeur, who said that he had received a complaint from the ship's cook, from Ferrett, and from Gubbs and Wright that the prisoner George Newton had committed sodomy with the other prisoner. He had questioned Newton, who said that he was very drunk and that he did not know he had done any such crime, and that he had never been accused of such a thing before.

The admiral asked the lieutenant, “Do you remember to have heard the boy declare he had ever been guilty of this sin before; or had been accustomed to suffer men to commit sodomy with him?”

“He said that he had run away from his friends, and had been accustomed to run about the Bird-Cage Walk in St. James's Park; but on what account he did not say.”

George Newton now called various witnesses in his defense. They included the master, the mate, and several other seamen. They all testified that he had never been guilty of sodomy before and that on the
Harwich
he was esteemed a regular man like any other. The final witness was the boy's father, John Finley of the parish of St. James's, London. When he had been sworn in, the admiral put the following question to him:

 

Your son has called upon you to give the Court a character of him. What course of life had he followed?

He has always behaved dutifully to his mother and myself. He used to attend upon butchers. He had an inclination to go to sea, and was entered by one Mr. Barratt.

 

At this point Thomas Finley fell upon his knees and begged for mercy and said he would never do the like again. George Newton professed his innocence, and the court was then cleared. Upon considering the charges against the two prisoners, the president and the four naval captains had no doubt that the charges were proved against them and that they were both guilty under the 29th Article. The president then announced the punishment that would be inflicted on them:

George Newton, seaman, and Thomas Finley, boy, shall suffer death, each being hanged by the neck until they are dead, at such time, and at the yard arm of such of His Majesty's ships as the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty shall direct.

In the volume of court-martial documents at the Public Record Office in London in which the above details are recorded, there is a scrawled note by a clerk noting that on July 17 it was ordered that they both be executed on board the
Princess Royal
at the Nore on Monday, July 27.

In the modern Western world, the hanging of two people for sodomy would be regarded by most people as barbaric. What is particularly shocking in this case is that the boy was executed, as well as the man, because he was over the age of fourteen. Moreover, it seems likely that George Newton was normally heterosexual. When asked by Ferrett what he had there, he replied “cunt,” which suggests that he was driven by sexual needs to use the boy in the place of a woman. His protestation to the lieutenant that he was very drunk may explain why he risked committing a crime that was likely to have fatal consequences. But as far as the Royal Navy was concerned, homosexuality was not to be tolerated under any circumstances, and all sailors were aware of this. Every Sunday on every ship at sea the captain read out the Articles of War to the assembled crew. Article 29 clearly stated, “Unnatural offences to be punished by death,” and sodomy was on a level with other offenses carrying the death penalty, such as mutiny, desertion to the enemy, and running away with the ship.

Naval officers were more likely to get away with homosexual acts than the ordinary seamen. Unlike the seamen, who lived and slept alongside each other with no privacy whatsoever, the officers had the benefit of small cabins, and in some instances where an officer was accused of homosexuality the case never came to trial. But where the evidence was sufficiently damning they could expect no mercy. The case of twenty-two-year-old Lieutenant William Berry is a good example of this, and has the added interest that a key witness was a female member of the crew who was dressed as a boy.

William Berry was a lieutenant on the sloop
Hazard,
and during the course of August 1807, he allegedly committed several homosexual acts with Thomas Gibbs, who was rated as a boy of the second class on the same ship. On August 23, Lieutenant Berry called the boy to his cabin and ordered him to hang a tablecloth alongside his bed as a screen, to lock the door, and to put his handkerchief over the keyhole. He then dragged the boy onto his bed and buggered him. When the boy protested that he was hurting him, Berry thumped him on the shoulder and told him to be quiet. Afterward, Berry told him to button up his trousers and to go away and say nothing to anybody. The boy went out crying and told John Hoskin, the gunroom steward, what had happened. Hoskin was aware that the boy had been abused by the lieutenant on at least a dozen prior occasions, but this time he decided that something must be done about it. He told the purser and at half past eleven that night Captain Charles Dilkes, the commander of the
Hazard,
called Gibbs to his cabin and asked him to explain what had happened between him and Lieutenant Berry. Gibbs recounted his story, and in due course the captain reported the matter to his commanding officer and Berry found himself facing a court-martial.

The court-martial took place on board HMS
Salvador del Mundo
at Plymouth on October 2, 1807.
²
The president of the court was Admiral Sir John Duckworth, and the principal witness for the prosecution was Thomas Gibbs. The boy told the assembled company what had taken place in the lieutenant's cabin in graphic detail. He was followed by Captain Dilkes, who said that Gibbs had been guilty of theft on a couple of occasions, but he did not believe him to be a liar. The next witness was a female sailor. She was described in the court-martial proceedings as “Elizabeth alias John Bowden (a girl) borne on the
Hazard
's books as a Boy of the 3
^rd
class,” and according to the
Naval Chronicle,
she appeared in court in a long jacket and blue trousers. Elizabeth Bowden came from Truro in Cornwall; following the death of her parents, she had gone to look up her elder sister, who lived in Plymouth. Failing to find her sister, she had decided to disguise herself and volunteer for the navy. She had joined the crew of the
Hazard
in February 1807 and had served for six weeks before it was discovered that she was a fourteen-year-old girl. Instead of sending her ashore, the captain gave her a separate apartment to sleep in and allowed her to remain on board as an attendant to the officers.

Standing in the great cabin of the
Salvador del Mundo,
Elizabeth Bowden was asked whether she had ever looked through the keyhole of Lieutenant Berry's cabin door and seen the boy Thomas Gibbs behaving in an indecent manner with the prisoner. She replied that she had, once, shortly before the ship came into Plymouth:

 

I looked through the keyhole and I saw Thomas Gibbs playing with the prisoner's privates—I went up and called the gunroom steward and told him to come down and look through the keyhole and see what they were about—he did come down but did not look in and called me abaft told me to sit down.

Have you frequently observed Thomas Gibbs go into the prisoner's cabin and the door shut, and the prisoner at the same time in the cabin.

Yes.

Did Thomas Gibbs ever relate to you or in your hearing what passed between him and the prisoner—and what induced you to look through the keyhole.

Gibbs has never told me anything that had happened—he was called in several times and I thought I would see what he was about.

 

The next witness was Charles Gregson, the ship's surgeon, who repeated the boy's graphic account of the indecent act that had taken place on August 23, adding that the boy had been forced to have oral sex with the prisoner on two occasions and “that he had cut up his fishing lines and flogged him upon his bum—and after that Mr. Berry had played with his cock and he had done the same with Mr. Berry.” When asked whether he had conducted a physical examination of the boy, the surgeon said that he could not find any mark of any injury on the boy, although the boy had complained of feeling sore.

The final witness for the prosecution was John Hoskin, the gunroom steward, who told the court of the various sex acts that the boy had reported to him. He was asked whether he believed the boy to be a liar. He replied:

 

I know the boy to be a liar—but I believe him to have spoke the truth in this instance.