Women’s lives on whaling ships explored

PETTICOAT WHALERS, Whaling Wives at Sea, 1820-1920, by Joan Druett, Collins, New Zealand, a division of HarperCollins, 213 pages, $29.95.

“SHE WAS A SISTER SAILOR”: Mary Brewster’s Whaling Journals, 1845-1851, Joan Druett, editor, Mystic Seaport Museum, 449 pages, $39.95.

With “Petticoat Whalers” and “She Was a Sister Sailor,” Joan Druett adds surprising and valuable information about the women who went a-whaling with their husbands. The latter is footnoted in exhaustive, almost numbing detail, but taken half a dozen pages at a time, readers will discover a wealth of fascinating details about the lives of women on ships in pursuit of whales. Druett identifies, in Appendix 2 of “She Was a Sister Sailor,” 443 women who made a total of 644 voyages with their husbands. Many sailed out of New Bedford, Mass. The list, Druett writes, is not complete, nor does it include women from Searsport and Stockton Springs, for example, who voyaged in the deep water trade to South America, Africa, China, Japan, India and other Asian ports.

Whale oil lubricated the Industrial Revolution, Druett said, in a recent lecture at Searsport Marine Museum. As the whaling industry grew, the slaughter of whales became enormous, their numbers sharply diminished, each voyage taking longer, the average time at sea nearly five years. Azubah Cash, in 11 years of marriage, had lived with her husband only 26 weeks. The lack of time with a husband was a common problem for wives who chose not to go to sea. She sailed with her husband William on the Columbia in 1850.

Lack of time together was only one of the reasons women endured the hardships of life aboard a stinking (literally) whale ship fraught with the dangers of battering storms, keeping house in 8-by-10 (or smaller) living quarters, giving birth at sea with no experienced attendants, poor food of the salt meat and no vegetables variety, and the ever-present companion of seasickness which so plagued Mary Brewster. Other reasons for going to sea centered on the very practical desire to save husbands from demon rum and the sexual enticements of Pacific Island women. Some, true to the role of women as “civilizers,” common at the time, wished to spread Christian word and morals to the frequently godless ships’ crews.

In “Petticoat Whalers,” short biographies accompanied by photographs of the wives are placed throughout the text, making browsing a part of the reading experience. We discover, for example, that Capt. John DeBlois’ ship, the Ann Alexander, was smashed to splinters by the blow of a gigantic sperm whale’s tail in August 1851. Captain and crew were picked up two days later by the Nantucket. The novel “Moby Dick” was in print then. When author Melville read of the account in the press, he is reported to have exclaimed, “Ye gods, I wonder if my evil art raised the monster.” The knowledge of such potential danger did not deter DeBlois’ wife, Henrietta, from sailing with him a few years later.

Mary Brewster’s journals provide an intimate view of a working whale ship, the Tiger. Whaling was a dirty, stinking business. The ship was, for all intents and purposes, a floating whale oil factory complete with a tryworks for rendering the solid blubber into the oil. Brewster recorded in detail the dreadful business of the killing whales. She saw baby whales killed to make the loyal mothers easier targets for the harpoons, which never killed outright and meant a slow death for the great mammals. She wrote of the appalling sight of the sea turning red with so much blood. She describes the process of drawing the dead whale alongside the ship and the “cutting in” — the removal of the blubber and the retrieval of bone sold for use in manufacturing ladies’ corsets and parasol handles. Druett, to her credit, in her section introductions and footnotes, and in the text of “Petticoat Whalers,” does not gloss over or romanticize the cruel, systematic slaughter of whales.

Brewster, like most whaling wives, found herself, every few months, in port at Lahaina, Hawaii, where the ship was repaired, took on provisions, and new crew members were signed on; and the whale oil and bone transferred to cargo vessels for shipment back to the United States. At Lahaina, whaling wives enjoyed sightseeing in the company of New Bedford friends, made new acquaintances, gave birth, and went to church, the one activity they missed above all else. Brewster also writes of the weeks spent in the whale grounds off the Bering Straits in the company of scores of other whaling vessels, virtually a floating community, many with wives aboard, and the constant social visits from ship to ship. Despite her chronic and debilitating seasickness, Brewster thought nothing of climbing down the Tiger’s side to the boat bobbing below, being rowed to a sister ship, climbing up its side, and spending a pleasant day with friends from home.

Whaling wives were truly citizens of the globe. Frequently, they were the first white women to visit the remote homelands of native peoples, the Inuit of the Arctic, and the Polynesian tribes of Tutuila in the Navigator Islands and Aitutaki in the Cook Islands. Brewster writes of going ashore at Tutuila and encountering 200 warriors marching with their war implements, singing, and acting out the parts of their battles. Brewster noted that “they kept excellent time and made a manly appearance.”

Of the two, “Petticoat Whalers” is the more accessible book. It invites browsing, photographs and illustrations make it appealing to the eye, and the text, while well-footnoted, is not buried by it as “Sister Sailor” tends to be. However, both books are valuable and important additions to the fields of marine, whaling, and women’s history and ought to be staples in public and academic libraries everywhere.

Ardeana Hamlin is a Maine writer who lives in Nebraska.