![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.lindacollison.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/scan0001-300x204.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Women have always been aboard ship. As passengers, girlfriends, and wives. As sailors, surgeons, nurses, helmsmen, and shipmasters.<\/p>\n
Women aboard \u2014 I got caught up in the history back in 1999, while serving as a voyage crewmember aboard the HM Bark Endeavour<\/em>, a replica of James Cook\u2019s 18th<\/sup> century ship, which was circumnavigating that year.\u00a0 On my three-week passage from Vancouver to Kealakekua, Hawaii\u00a0I worked alongside 53 officers and\u00a0men (one of whom I was married to) to sail, steer,\u00a0and maintain the ship.\u00a0 Eight of us were female.\u00a0 On this passage of a lifetime, I became intrigued with the idea of a woman\u00a0dressing like a sailor and doing a man\u2019s job aboard a ship \u2013 because that\u2019s exactly what I was doing!\u00a0 I figured if\u00a0a middle-aged woman\u00a0could do the work, surely a much younger girl would have no problem.<\/p>\n In spite of the persistent, old husbands\u2019 tale that women are bad luck at sea, women have long been going to sea, luck be damned.\u00a0 Some of them had to resort to disguise.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n For some, it ended badly.\u00a0 From the St. James Gazette, supplement to the Manchester Courier on July 5, 1890 we hear this\u00a0snippet of a story:<\/p>\n The case of the poor little sea apprentice \u201cHans Brandt\u201d who the other day fell into the hold of the barque Ida of Pensacola, at West Hartlpool and was killed, adds one more name to the long list of women<\/strong> who, for one reason or another, have put aside the garments of their sex and have donned the habits and imitated the ways of men.\u00a0 Not until \u201cHans Brandt\u2019s\u201d body was being prepared for burial was it discovered that the Ida\u2019s apprentice was a girl\u2026\u00a0 <\/em>(Thanks to historians Lesley and Roy Adkins<\/a> who passed that tidbit my way.)<\/p>\n Yes, Jack Tar was sometimes female. And the Adkins’ nonfiction books, including Jack Tar<\/em>, have been very useful to me in researching my novels. I might write historical fiction — but I don’t make this stuff up! From the Renaissance through the Victorian age there are many accounts of\u00a0women in disguise working aboard ship as sailors, servants, skilled craftsmen, marines \u2013and\u00a0even a few officers, such as Anne Chamberlyne, twenty-three year old daughter of a lawyer, who served aboard the Grifffin Fireship, commanded by her brother Clifford, during the Battle of Beachy Head in 1690 (See Dr. David Davies’ guest post on Hoydens & Firebrands<\/a>)\u00a0 Most of these femmes<\/em> fared better than poor Hans Brandt who fell into the hold.\u00a0 Some went on to write their memoirs.\u00a0 Some became immortalized in\u00a0folk songs.\u00a0 And some, like Anne Chamberlyne,\u00a0had memorials erected in their honor.But most were likely forgotten. Living in disguise, you don\u2019t want to bring attention to yourself. I\u2019ll wager a number were successful at their masquerade, hence we\u2019ve never heard of them.<\/p>\n
\n<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.lindacollison.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/JoStanley51gxwqvDPfL-197x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.lindacollison.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Barbados-Bound-eBook-Cover-Proof-200x300.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.lindacollison.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Surgeons-Mate-eBook-Cover-Proof-200x300.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.lindacollison.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Rhode-Island-Rendezvous-eBook-Cover-Large-200x300.png\")
<\/p>\n