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An apocryphal etymology, but nautical so here we are

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Natalie and Crew Plying the Tyrrhenian Sea

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Women at Sea

Women at sea or women in general in connection with the navy are unfortunately still a rather neglected topic, and so Margarette Lincoln, herself an author on this topic, once looked at the literature on this subject.  Here is the list she compiled and which I would like to pass on to you, as there are a few that deal with this topic.

- Bold in her Breeches: Women Pirates Across the Ages by Jo Stanley (1995) - The basic work that covers all women pirates through the centuries and geographically from Ireland to China.

- Female Tars: Women aboard Ship in the Age of Sail by Suzanne J. Stark ( 1996) - She deals in her book with three types of women on board, the whores, the officers’ wives and women in male disguise.

- Heroines and Harlots: Women at sea in the great age of sail, by David Cordingly (2001) - he looked at the archive material and was able to confirm that there were a very large number of women in England and America who went to sea. He also tries to include the role of men.

-British Sea Power: Representing the Navy, 1750-1815 by Margarette Lincoln (2002) - here she included a whole chapter devoted to how women saw the Navy. She continued this with her next book - Naval Wives and Mistresses (2007) and now tried to include letters and the social role.

- Naval Families : War and Duty in Britain. 1740- 1820 by Ellen Gills (2016) - Here individual families and their fates are highlighted.

- Enterprising Women and Shipping in the 19th century, by Helen Doe (2009) - She stays ashore in her book and highlights the maritime business in women’s hands.

- Sailors and Traders: a Maritime History of the Pacific Peoples, by Alastair Couper ( 2009) - Explores the sexual relationships of European sailors and indigenous South Sea island women in the 18th and 19th centuries. It also makes a connection to the whalers and the recruitment of almost exclusively female crews in the 20th century.

- From Cabin Boys to Captains- 250 years of women at sea, by Jo Stanley (2016) - Here she now reports on the life and work of female sailors.

- Pirate Women: The Princesses, Prostitutes and Privateers who ruled the seven seas, by Laura Sook Duncombe (2017) attempts to shed light on the lives of female pirates.

- Women and english piracy, 1540- 1720 : Partners and Victims of Crime, by John Appleby (2013) - moves away from the romanticised lives of female pirates and shows how women supported pirates and even started their own businesses. He also tried to dispel some of the myths.

This small list shows how little work has been done on this topic, although there are some small articles on individuals that have gradually appeared in naval history magazines. There is still a lot to be done in this area and more research is needed.

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The Wavertree, one of the museum ships at NYC’s South Street Seaport.

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Bark Europa at sea

Source @edo_somenzi

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(via ab1aef20172c9ea540ec97d09416ceb7.jpg (736×1226))

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jury-rigged. even keel. by the board. three sheets to the wind. loose cannon. son of a gun. pipe down. taken aback.

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“Ocean Waves” ~ Stained Glass Art

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Polynesians did also rely on a form of a physical map called a stick chart, illustrating the specific wave and swell patterns surrounding different island chains. These were particularly helpful during cloudy conditions when the sun and stars were less useful. To navigate the Marshall Islands, the Marshallese represented ocean swell patterns using parts of coconut fronds and shells as islands. Like a subway map, they don’t so much represent distances as they do relationships. The complex and decorative stick charts were often only understood by the person who made them. They were memorised before a voyage by the pilot who would lie on the floor of a canoe to get a sense of swell movement and often lead a squadron of 15 or more boats.

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Seaman on the ‘Pommern’ enticing the ship’s cat up on of the shrouds, 1903

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scurvy has got to have one of the biggest disease/treatment coolness gaps of all time. like yeah too much time at sea will afflict you with a curse where your body starts unraveling and old wounds come back to haunt you like vengeful ghosts. unless☝️you eat a lemon

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These practices are very disruptive and destructive for a wide variety of aquatic creatures.

via: National Park Service

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Mary Anne Talbot - a female Soldier and Sailor

Mary Anne Talbot is one of the women who have the adventure of serving at sea disguised as a male sailor. She was born in London on 2 February 1778, the illegitimate daughter of William Talbot, 1st Earl Talbot. Her mother died at birth, her presumed father when she was four years old. She was brought up by a wet nurse at Worthen in Shropshire until she was five, after which she attended a private boarding school in Chester, run by a Mrs Tapperly, until she was 14. The only relative she knew was an elder sister, an Hon. Miss Dyer, who also died quite young in the birth of her child in 1791. She enlightened Mary Anne about her presumed parentage before her death and left her a handsome fortune of £30,000 sterling. From this fortune Mary Anne could have had an annual income of 1500 pounds, but her sister’s chosen guardian, a Mr. Sucker, did not provide for her further education, but gave her to Essex Bowen, a captain in the 82nd Regiment of Foot.

Mary Anne Talbot, by G. Scott, after James Green, published 1804 (x)

The latter took her to London, where he made her his not-so-voluntary mistress in 1792. But already in the autumn of 1792 he was to go to Flanders and simply took her with him. To this end, he passed her off as an errand boy, who took her to St. Domingo as John Taylor. From there she went to Flanders, where she was now listed as Drummer Boy. As such she took part in the capture of Valenciennes on 28 July 1793, where Captain Essex was killed. She now deserted the regiment and made her way through Luxembourg to the Rhine, until in September 1793, out of necessity, she signed on as a cabin boy to the captain of a French lugger called Le Sage. The lugger, according to her account, had been captured by Lord Howe in the Queen Charlotte, and “Taylor” (as she still called herself) was assigned to HMS Brunswick 74 guns under Captain John Harvey (1740-1794) as a powder monkey, in which capacity she took part in the great victory of 1 June 1794, but was severely wounded by a grape shot that shattered her left ankle.

Captain Essex with his footboy John Talbot (x)

She spent four months at Haslar Royal Naval Hospital in Gosport. She then became a midshipman on the Bomb Vessel Vesuvius. However, this was captured off Normandy by two French privateers. As a prisoner, Taylor remained in Dunkirk for 18th months. After her release, she signed on with the American ship Ariel under Captain John Field, sailing to New York in August 1796. In November she returned to London on the Ariel. There she was picked up by a press gang in Wapping. In order not to have to re-enter the Royal Navy, she revealed her true gender, whereupon she was discharged. She then haunted the Navy’s pay office for some time, and various donations were collected for her. But she was intemperate and spent her money frivolously. The Duke and Duchess of York and the Duchess of Devonshire, it is said, interceded for her.

Mary Anne Talbot resisting a Press Gang, by John Chapman (x)

After a series of employments including a gig as a jeweller’s assistant or a performance in a small theatre in Tottenham Court Road in the Babes in the Wood, and a stay in Newgate from which she was rescued by the Society for the Relief of Persons confined for small Debts, her misfortunes forced her to take refuge as a domestic servant in the house of the publisher Robert S. Kirby in St. Paul’s Churchyard, who recorded her adventures in the second volume of his Wonderful Museum, 1804 and continued her story in  The Life and Surprising Adventures of Mary Anne Talbot, 1809. After three years’ service, a general deterioration, caused in part by the wounds and privations she had suffered, rendered her unable to work regularly, and she was removed to the house of an acquaintance in Shropshire at the end of 1807. There she remained for some weeks, and died on 4 February 1808, aged 30.

Mary Anne Talbot, by G. Scott, after James Green, published 1804 (x)

Perhaps some of you have noticed that there are certain similarities to Hannah Snell. And in fact, her story is very much in doubt. Because there are great inconsistencies with the times and the ships that she had given in her biography. Because there is no Talbot on the ships listed and there was no Talbot on the Vesuvius at the time it was captured, and the capture itself is also questionable because the ship was not off Normandy at that time but in the West Indies. Whether she just mixed things up here or whether they were chosen to spice up her story is questionable, and it cannot be ruled out that this story was a product of fantasy.

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more pictures of the Palinuro ⚓️