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Book review
Hen Frigates: Passion and Peril, Nineteenth-Century Women at Sea

by Joan Druett

Touchstone NY 1998

Reviewed by Meghan Hayward

‘And I do assure you, ma’am,’ pursued Mrs. Croft, ‘that nothing can exceed the accommodations of a man-of-war; I speak, you know, of the higher rates. When you come to a frigate, of course, you are more confined; though any reasonable woman may be perfectly happy in one of them; and I can safely say, that the happiest part of my life has been spent on board ship … As long as we could be together, nothing ever ailed me, and I never met with the smallest inconvenience.’

Persuasion Chapter VIII

I had long suspected that Mrs Croft was not telling the whole truth; having read Hen Frigates I know that she was fibbing. This delightful little book gives all the details you have always wanted to know. Joan Druett gives us glimpses into the lives of the many women who took up this life, withstanding storms, visiting foreign lands, giving birth at sea and raising families on board ship.

The chapters cover subjects as varied as children at sea, medical matters, visiting foreign ports and that old favourite, sex. The book explores details of their domestic arrangements for cooking, personal hygiene and entertainment.

The book has stories of strong women and timid women, women who were ‘naturals’ at sea and others desperately unsuited to the life. They were ordinary, conservative, middle-class women, not rebels or adventurers. For a 19th-century lady it was an extraordinary life to choose. Everything was against them, even their clothes. They crossed the globe confined inside tight corsets and weighed down with yards and yards of skirts.

Their clothes weren’t the only things binding them. Some of their husbands were as tough on their wives as they were on their men. Druett introduces us to these husbands, some mad and bad, others models of kindness and moderation.

For sheer flamboyance it’s hard to beat the amazingly named Captain Horatio Nelson Gray. He was a devoted and generous husband who showered his wife, Emma, with diamonds in Oriental ports. It would however be difficult to say anything good about young Captain Alonzo Follansbee who considered his bride’s freedom from seasickness to be suspiciously unnatural. A ‘proper’ lady should be sick he felt, so he dosed her with ipecac to make her ‘pay tribute to old Neptune’.

My favourite story is about Captain ‘Wildcat’ Anderson and his formidable wife, known throughout the Pacific as ‘Slippery Kate’. One night they had a loud row. Their vessel had been taking on coal in Newcastle, Australia. Kate went ashore to buy fruit for the voyage to San Francisco. Wildcat saw his chance and sailed away. To his profound disgust Kate was standing on the wharf in San Francisco, having talked the ship’s agent into giving her money – Wildcat’s money – to buy a steamer passage to California.

Hen Frigates concentrates on American women, mostly after 1850. It gives us some wonderful portraits of women every bit as real, intelligent and charming as Mrs Croft. Borrow this book from our library and enjoy their colourful, wild and dangerous world without all the tedium of being wet or seasick yourself!

29 January 2004

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