‘Petticoat whalers’ a tribute to women who went to sea

PETTICOAT WHALERS: WHALING WIVES AT SEA, 1820-1920, by Joan Druett, illustrations by Ron Druett, University Press of New England, Hanover, N.H., 2001, paperback.

In New England the word “whaling” triggers images of Nantucket, New Bedford and other regional whaling ports. But most often it is “Moby Dick,” Melville’s magnificent novel of Capt. Ahab and the great white whale, that immediately comes to mind. It is surely not women. If Melville mentions them at all, it is only in passing. Ahab’s ship, the Pequod, is consistently referred to as “she,” as were all sailing ships of that day.

But, as Joan Druett’s thoroughly researched and eminently readable bit of maritime history tells us, women were no strangers to whaling, even in the early days of the 19th century when both custom and religion insisted that home was the only socially acceptable place a woman ought to be.

Yet if a loyal wife’s place was at her husband’s side, what was a wife to do if that husband sailed off to sea for years at a time at the helm of a whaling ship? More than a few went along, in spite of the strong maritime bias, which held that shipboard was not only no place for a women, but that if a woman were taken aboard, the ship was doomed to a troubled voyage or worse.

Mary Hayden Russell, as the author tells us in one of her dozens of anecdotal sketches of her “petticoat whalers,” sailed with her husband because she believed it was her wifely duty when her husband bade her to pack up and go. She obeyed without question, even though her friends warned her of the dangers of the whaling life in those harsh times.

Not only was life aboard shop rough and monotonous, but the South Seas were definitely dangerous. “Seas were scarcely explored, reefs were uncharted, and savages definitely savage.” One captain’s wife, aboard a ship taken over by native islanders, escaped a “fate worse than death” only because her husband had the foresight to dress her as a man.

There are hundreds of such anecdotes in this richly and arduously researched book. Combined with photographs of the time, illustrations by the author’s husband, and a series of portraits in both word and picture of the whaling wives, Druett’s work is everything a social history ought to be, including its exhaustive chapter notes, bibliography and appendices.

It is also, almost in passing, a detailed history of New England’s whaling years, including descriptions of vessels, the men who crewed them (often under duress) and the leviathans that roamed the world’s oceans. Readers of “Moby Dick,” especially those of us who were assigned it in English Lit 101, were always told the novel was also a vivid portrait of the whaling industry. Druett, although whaling wives are her primary subject, does a splendid job, complete with rare photographs, of describing life aboard a whaling ship.

If I were teaching English Lit 101, I would assign this book as required reading before allowing students to look at even a single page of “Moby Dick.” Druett, for example, writes convincingly of at least a dozen ships rammed, splintered and sunk by enraged whales (none of them white, however). She also thoroughly informs her readers about every aspect of the rendering process at sea, the customs of whaling captains, how the money was shared, crews recruited, meals prepared, and, all too often, lives lost or ruined.

Yet it is always the women who preside over every page. Always loyal, always stubbornly courageous, always patiently enduring the very real discomforts, dangers and persistent inconveniences of life at sea, these petticoat whalers deserve a convincing tribute to their loyalties and sacrifices. This, without question, Joan Druett has given them, and her readers.

John Cole is a free-lance writer from Brunswick.