Review by Choice Review
Druett's book is an interesting narrative account of a little-known group--women who accompanied their sea captain husbands on voyages up and down the Atlantic Coast as well as on transatlantic trips for months, if not years, at a time. These women and their children faced multiple hardships, not the least of which was being the only woman aboard. Religious women had to tolerate foul language and rowdy behavior; sociable women had to endure loneliness. Ranging over the 19th century, Druett uses diaries, correspondence, and memoirs to recreate her story. At times, the wives and daughters were taught to navigate and thus became very helpful aides. Sometimes they sewed and repaired sails alongside the sailors. Though the numbers of such wives probably were in the hundreds, their minority experience offers insight into the strength and courage of Victorian women generally. The hen frigates overrode the social rules they had learned at home and met multiple challenges. Because of the source material used, Druett's book offers a very human portrait of an unusual group of women. All levels. J. Sochen; Northeastern Illinois University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Maritime historian Druett offers an intimate glimpse into the unconventional lives of the wives of nineteenth-century sailing captains who chose to accompany their husbands on their arduous and often perilous voyages. Interweaving journal entries and passages of letters penned by the intrepid women who ran households aboard the "hen frigates," Druett paints a vivid portrait of the unique challenges faced by seafaring females. Organizing the first-person material into individual chapters dealing with such diverse and intriguing topics as sex at sea, children at sea, ship kitchens, medical matters, and hazards of the sea, the author steps back and allows the women to eloquently and poignantly communicate how they managed to perform their daily tasks, raise their children, and provide their families with structure and a semblance of normalcy while coping with cramped quarters, lusty sailors, unpredictable weather conditions, and a variety of natural and man-made disasters. The breezy narrative provides the reader with an intriguing entree into an exotic lifestyle choice practiced during the bygone era of sailing ships. --Margaret Flanagan
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Historical sidelights can be as intriguing as major events, as in this study of 19th-century sea captains' wives who sailed with their husbands and recorded their impressions in journals and letters. Druett (Petticoat Whalers) points out that in some instances finances dictated that wives be taken along, for a captain who put all of his capital into a ship might have no funds for a home on land. But there were other motivations, too, such as enjoying a honeymoon or sharing experiences. The Victorian female was as "submissive, timid and impregnably virtuous," but the work on shipboard put no premium on submission or timidity. Children were born and raised on ships, with the captain often delivering his own offspring; the captain's wife frequently served as cook and repaired torn sails, and the couple joined forces to fight wind and weather as well as illness. The book provides solid entertainment along with interesting information. Illustrations. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Maritime historian Druett (The Sailing Circle, Whale Museum Society, 1995) writes knowledgeably about the wives of merchant sea captains under sail during the 19th century. From the horrifying to the amusing and the mundane, Druett has mined these stories from personal journals and letters kept by seafaring wives. Young women facing their first trip at sea were often frightened by the weather, tormented by sea sickness, and bored by a lack of activity and company. Because the captain's wife was often the only woman on board, she had little companionship, as socializing with the crew would not have been acceptable and her husband would have been too busy to spend much time with her. Children were conceived, born, and sometimes raised at sea. In her well-written study, Druett ably demonstrates how these women endured isolation to form their own unique life experience at sea. Informative and entertaining reading for maritime history and women's studies collections.Roseanne Castellino, Arthur D. Little, Cambridge, MA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An engaging portrait of shipboard (and portside) life for women sailing with their husbands during the 19th century, from maritime historian and novelist Druett (Abigail, 1988). During the age of sail, American captains, and sometimes their first mates, were permitted to take their wives with them as they plied the coastal trade or struck out on trading voyages. The women were clearly a literate bunch, for they left behind a wealth of diaries and letters and journals, often dryly humorous and witty, that Druett gathered to fashion this evocation. Using extensive quotations from her sources, Druett describes what it was like to be the mistress on everything from schooners to downeasters to the tony packet ships; how the women contended with frights, privation, storms, monotony, and seasickness (or, as one woman termed it, ``paying homage to Neptune''); their experiences with pirates and cholera and mutiny. Many of the women made this their life, extending decades beyond the traditional honeymoon voyage (which was likely obligatory, as the family capital was the ship and there was no house to wait in), and they had to learn everything from medicine to navigation to raising a brood on a rocking boat to learning how to survive in a foreign port. Throughout, Druett keeps readers' attention by moving swiftly from episodes of intense excitementmenacing weather, dastardly crews, extreme heroicsto leisurely, droll observations, many of the best coming in the chapter on high-seas sex: One wife declared with spirit to her husband, ``I shall not be a fellatrix, Captain, oh my Captain, and if that be mutiny, make the most of it.'' Decidedly, these were women ``very aware of owning a certain aura of romance, of being widely traveled and worldly wise, something in which they took perceptible pride,'' and in Druett's hands their stories make for highly enjoyable reading. (photos and illustrations)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
