Women Of The Sea, Walker Lake Bulletin (Article, 1898)
Full Text
Women of the Sea
These Have Followed a Life on the Wave from Choice
The sailors' superstitious fear that a woman's presence on shipboard invites ill-luck has failed to deter women whose hearts yearn for the sea from gratifying this desire. The pages of the maritime history of the world contain the names of many matrons and girls in various periods who, disguised as men, have followed a life on the ocean wave. The majority of them not only proved excellent sailors, but even fought bravely with cutlass, pike and pistol against the foes of their native land.
They did not even shrink from sailing under the black flag; for the English women, Anne Bonny and Mary Read, joined the buccaneers, the typical pirates of the Antilles, in order to gain booty to their hearts' content.
A German writer gives a number of names of women who have gone to sea among which the following are interesting:
Jean de Belleville, to avenge her husband, who was murdered in the year 1343 in Paris, fitted out a squadron of ships and ravaged the coast of Normandy, burned castles and illumined the seat at night with the glare of blazing villages. Jean de Belleville was famed in her age as one of the most beautiful women in Europe.
Sometimes jealousy has sent a young wife to sea in sailor garb. The ballad of bold Hannah Snell is now known by all sailors. This woman was born in London in 1723, and in the course of time married a German sailor named Jacob Summs, who squandered her little property and then deserted her. To seek this faithless fellow, Hannah donned men's attire and went to sea. Her experiences during her quest would fill volumes grave and gay, tragic and comic incidents alternated. She served only on English men-of-war, took part in numerous battles and received several wounds. After many years she had the news that Jacob, in punishment for a serious crime, had been put into a sack and thrown into the sea somewhere in France. From that time she left the royal service, where her disguise had never been discovered, and returned in woman's clothes to London. The government granted her an annual pension of £50 sterling for life. She is said to have gone on the stage afterward and acquitted herself admirably in sailor characters.
There are also high-hearted women who have performed many brave, heroic deeds while sailing the seas with their husbands. Among them Louise Dittmar, the wife of the captain of the Prussian steamer Edgar, deserves the highest praise. On the way home the entire crew, except the captain and helmsman, were attacked with serious illness. The two men undertook to attend to the engine, while the woman stood at the helm and steered the ship and this was done night and day, almost without relief, for weeks! The steamer arrived in port safely, after seven of the crew had died on the passage. In this case the valuable vessel had naturally been saved solve by the captain's wife, for it is difficult to calculate what the two men could have done without her aid. Captains whose ship owners forbid them to take their wives with them might aptly cite as an ongoing argument of the example of Louise Dittmar.--Detroit Free Press.
