Women have been going to sea for centuries. Three of the fiercest pirates during the golden age of piracy were Anne Bonny, Mary Read and Grace O’Malley. A Google search on any will make for interesting reading!
Of course, as many found out, pirating is a dead-end job. (Literally). As the centuries progressed, many women went to sea with their captain husbands, and when their mate fell ill (or died) some ended up saving the ship due to their knowledge of sailing gleaned from their husbands.
It was a natural progression from wives accompanying husbands and raising families aboard ship to women serving as both stewardesses and nurses. In 1862 during the American Civil War, nine women joined the crew of the Red Rover to tend the wounded. Six of them were Black and three were nuns. The Red Rover thus has the distinction of being the nation’s first hospital ship.
Mary Read
A woman named Philomene Daniels was 42 years old when she decided to help her husband run a steamboat that operated on Lake Champlain, running from the Canadian province of Quebec down through New York State and Vermont. The Daniels Steamboat Line, as it was called, ferried both passengers and iron ore; Philomene took the wheel as a fully accredited pilot, and when her husband passed in 1903, she took over running the operation.
Stewardess and later nurse Violet Jessop survived not only the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912, but also escaped with her life when the Titanic’s sister ship RMS Britannic, requisitioned by the British government and serving as His Majesty’s Hospital Ship (HMHS) Britannic, hit a mine in the Aegean Sea and sank in 1916. (Curiously, Jessop also served aboard the first built of the Olympic class sisters, RMS Olympic, being almost certainly the only person to serve aboard all three of the White Star Line super liners).
By the 1930’s women were accepted (if sometimes grudgingly) members of ship crews, serving as stewardess (with a block of up to ten staterooms and passengers to look after), matron, housekeeping, nurse, hair dresser and other roles that we would consider quite sexist today.
Come in and browse.
See what’s for dinner!
© 2025 Scott Finley. All rights reserved.
