Free Women Sailors & Sailors' Women by David Cordingly Page B

early twenties who had been at sea since he was a boy was a priceless asset on any ship. The clothes worn by sailors were ideal for disguising a woman’s shape. They consisted of a loose shirt and a waistcoat or jacket, baggy trousers or petticoat-breeches, which were like culottes, and a handkerchief tied around the neck. Hair was often worn long and tied in a pigtail or a ponytail. All that was needed was to bind the breasts sufficiently for them to be hidden beneath the shirt, in the manner described by Mary Lacy and the fictitious Lucy Brewer. In 1849, the
Carlisle Journal
carried a report about a sailor named Ann Johnson, the daughter of George Johnson, a shoemaker who lived at 22 Oak Street in New York. While at sea she had gone aloft in the heaviest weather, and the report concluded, “Her appearance is said to be that of a good-looking boy of 16 or 17 years.” 16
    The trickiest problem facing the female sailor every day was using the toilet facilities, which in most ships were extremely primitive. The seamen usually climbed over the sides onto the leeward channels and urinated into the sea, or they went forward to the heads. This was the name given to the platform at the bows that was built over the beakhead and behind the figurehead. There the seaman crouched over a hole to defecate or sat on a crude box with a hole in the top, called a “seat of easement.” Presumably most women would have gone to the heads rather than attempting to urinate over the sides, although there is evidence to show that some women who cross-dressed made use of a small funnel of horn or metal to assist them. 17
    The subject of menstruation is not mentioned in any of the accounts of female sailors, but women historians have suggested that this might not have been such a problem. One theory is that the young women on board ship lived such ferociously active lives that, like modern athletes in training today, they may have ceased to have periods. In the case of prepubescent girls, the hard life and poor diet could have delayed the onset of puberty for several years. Another theory is that so many seamen suffered from a range of diseases and ailments including piles and gonorrhea that they were not likely to comment on one of their number having bloodstained clothing on occasion.
    Which brings us to the question of why a woman would want to go to sea dressed as a man. The traditional reason, and the one made popular in numerous ballads, was that women went to sea to join their sailor lovers. We have already seen it suggested that the young woman known as William Prothero followed her lover to sea. So did the seventeen-year-old Margaret Thompson, who left her uncle’s home in London in 1781 and joined the navy under the name George Thompson. She revealed that she was a woman when she was blamed for a theft and condemned to be flogged. When asked by the captain why she had taken the extraordinary step of going to sea disguised as a man she said it was “to see her sweetheart, who quitted England three years since, and is now resident at Bombay.” 18 Hannah Snell is said to have married a Dutch sailor and followed him to sea. And according to the
History of the Pirates
by Captain Charles Johnson, the pirate Anne Bonny left her father’s house in the Carolinas and ran away to sea with a feckless sailor. Perhaps these and others were prompted to go to sea because of love affairs, but the evidence suggests that most of the women who went to sea disguised as men did so for hard economic reasons or because they wished to escape from something in their past.
    Anne McLean is a typical example of one who went to sea for economic reasons. She was born of poor parents in Ireland around 1829. When they died she found it difficult to obtain a livelihood, and “being stout and hardy, thought she might pass for a boy.” 19 She had a brother who was a seaman in the service of the East India Company, and this prompted her