Women Sailors & Sailors' Women (15 page)

Gillespie's journal reveals that in January 1789, a member of the crew had his wife on board while they were at sea. Gillespie noted that on January 11, when the
Racehorse
was en route from North Shields to Sheerness, McKenzie's child, who was twelve months old, was suffering from a cough, a fever, and respiratory difficulties following a bout of measles. Three days later the child was vomiting and seriously ill. At six o'clock on the morning of January 16, the child died. Three weeks later, as they were sailing off Whitby, he recorded that “McKenzie's wife menstruated but has not been well since from affliction for the loss of the child. . . .”
¹⁵
The next day she was still ill but was taking some nourishment and getting some sleep. By the time they reached Sheerness, Mrs. McKenzie was up and looking healthy. From the muster book of the
Racehorse,
we learn that her husband was a twenty-four-year-old Scotsman from Sutherland named Charles McKenzie.
¹⁶
He was listed as an able seaman, which makes his case unusual. As we have seen, it was common practice to allow warrant officers to take their wives to sea, but although McKenzie was rated an able seaman (which meant that he had some two years' experience at sea), he would not normally have been allowed any special privileges. Mrs. McKenzie does not, of course, appear anywhere in the muster book.

Dr. Gillespie did not enjoy his time on board the
Racehorse,
and in November 1790, he left the ship and headed for Paris, where he spent some time furthering his medical studies. There is a gap in his journals, and they resume when he took up the appointment of senior surgeon at the naval hospital in Martinique. The British had taken the West Indian island from the French, and it was used as a naval base before being given back to the French under the terms of the Peace of Amiens. Gillespie spent seven years at the naval hospital, which was located by the harbor at Fort Royal, the island's capital. Much of his time there was taken up with the thankless and usually hopeless task of looking after victims of the deadly tropical fevers that decimated the crews of ships in West Indian ports. One of these victims was the wife of William Richardson, the gunner on HMS
Tromp,
who later published a book entitled
A Mariner of England: An Account of the Career of William Richardson from Cabin Boy in the Merchant Service to Warrant Officer in the Royal Navy As Told By Himself.
Like Gillespie's private journals, Richardson's memoirs provide a graphic picture of daily life in the navy, and most of his text is concerned with his fellow seamen, his disapproving comments on the press-gang system, and his observations on the foreign ports he visited during his extensive travels. But he also provides some useful information about sailors' women.

Richardson was born in the port of South Shields, County Durham, in 1768, and was the son of a merchant sea captain. He went to sea as a boy and spent several years on colliers and merchant ships in the North Sea and the Baltic. He then joined a slave ship and sailed to the Guinea coast and across to the West Indies. On his return, he was press-ganged into the navy while his ship was anchored in the Thames. He served in several large warships and became a warrant officer. In 1797, his ship was ordered into Portsmouth Dockyard for repairs, and while he was on leave that summer he married Sarah Thompson, a local girl from Portsea. Her father was a master stonemason, and Richardson tells us that he had met her before his last sailing to the West Indies “and she had promised to wait for my return, which she did. I have every reason to be satisfied with my choice, and her kind care and affection for my welfare.”
¹⁷
In March 1800, Richardson was appointed gunner on HMS
Tromp,
an elderly 54-gun ship lying at Chatham. This meant moving all his chests, bedding, cabin furniture, and cooking utensils from his former ship, loading them on to a passage boat, and sailing with his wife around the coast to the Medway. When they arrived, they found the cabins in the
Tromp
were being painted, so they took up residence ashore at the Red Lion pub.

On July 10, 1800, the ship sailed from Chatham to Portsmouth, where she was to join two other warships so she could escort a convoy of nineteen merchant ships across to Martinique. Richardson was ashore at Portsmouth when he saw the signal for sailing flying from the masthead of the
Tromp.
He hurried to Portsea to say good-bye to his wife and found that she had decided to sail with him. Knowing from firsthand experience of the dangers of tropical diseases in the West Indies, he was reluctant for her to go, but eventually he agreed. He then found that nearly a dozen other women were also intending to sail on the
Tromp,
including the wives of the captain, the master, the purser, the boatswain, and the sergeant of marines. Richardson's comment was that “a person would have thought they were all insane wishing to go to such a sickly country!”
¹⁸
There were emotional scenes as Mrs. Richardson bade farewell to her parents, and so quick had been her decision that they had to retrieve their clothing all wet from the washerwoman.

On August 1, the convoy sighted Madeira. At half past one in the early hours of the next morning, the captain's wife gave birth to a fine boy, and at ten o'clock they came to anchor in Funchal Roads, Madeira. Richardson and his wife went ashore, drank some of the worst Madeira wine they had ever come across, and did some sightseeing. Having stocked up with water and fresh beef, fruit, and vegetables, the convoy weighed anchor and set sail across the Atlantic. After an easy passage, they arrived at Barbados on September 2, where they left the merchant ships and then headed north-northwest to Martinique. Two days later, they dropped anchor in nineteen fathoms in Fort Royal Bay.

Within days of their arrival, Richardson's worst fears were realized as the
Tromp
's crew began to go down with fever (almost certainly malignant yellow fever, the prime killer of new arrivals in the Caribbean). The death toll was appalling. The first lieutenant and the clerk were the first to die; then the master and his wife, the marine officer, the boatswain, the surgeon's mate, and most of the midshipmen; “then the master-at-arms, the armourer, gunner's mate (a fine stout fellow), the captain's steward, cook and tailor, then the captain's lady maid, and many brave men.”
¹⁹
When Richardson's wife showed signs that she too had the fever, he took her ashore and put her under the care of Madame Janet, a French black woman who was reputed to be an excellent nurse, and a French doctor named Dash. They put her to bed in an airy room, gave her herbal tea to drink, and would not allow her to eat anything. The starvation diet produced results, and after a few days she began to recover.

Around this time Richardson recorded that Dr. Gillespie came on board the
Tromp
to see what could be done about the fever-stricken ship, but as the men had already sprinkled the decks with vinegar, smoked out the ship below deck, and pumped clean water in and out of the hold, the only additional advice that he could give them was to wear flannel next to the skin. Gillespie received another mention in Richardson's memoirs when the gunner asked his permission to bury the mangled body of a marine in the graveyard of the hospital. The man had fallen overboard while drunk, and a shark had bitten off his head, one arm, and one leg. At first Dr. Gillespie refused Richardson's request on the grounds that only people who died in the hospital could be buried there, but on viewing the body, he changed his mind and allowed him to be buried in the hospital grounds.

Richardson and his wife had hoped the ship would soon be ordered home again, but Admiral Duckworth decided that the
Tromp
should be turned into a prison ship, and they had to spend two years in Martinique before they could return home. It was not until September 1802 that they sailed back to Portsmouth.

Other mentions of women on warships appear in the transcripts of courts-martial. In 1755, for instance, Mr. Mackenzie, the purser of HMS
Guarland,
made a number of complaints against his commander, Captain Arbuthnot, resulting in the captain's having to face a court-martial on board HMS
Syren
in Hampton Roads, Virginia.
²⁰
During the course of the proceedings, it was revealed that the captain had allowed the boatswain's wife and the master's wife and child to go to sea on his ship. Most of the purser's complaints were about the ship's stores, the stowing of ballast, and the use of water, and the court's conclusion was that these charges were malicious, frivolous, and groundless. However, Captain Arbuthnot was blamed for carrying women to sea and giving them passage from England to Virginia, “contrary to the 38th Article of his General Instructions,” and for this he was sentenced to be reprimanded.

Complaints of ill-treatment made by John Piper, another purser, led to the court-martial of Captain Vaughan and Lieutenant Pike of HM sloop
Baltimore
at Chatham in October 1750.
²¹
Among the purser's many complaints was the fact that Lieutenant Pike had a woman on board. Captain Vaughan told the court that the woman, who was named Nancy, was in the sloop when he took command of her and as the ship was only going from port to port and not going abroad he did not at first take any notice of it. However, when the purser complained that Miss Nancy was causing “some uneasiness,” he ordered the lieutenant to put her ashore when they got to Cork. George Banbury, the captain's clerk, was given the task of taking Nancy ashore, but she managed to persuade him to take her back on board without the knowledge of the captain or the lieutenant. George agreed to do so, and she hid below until the ship was well on her way to Plymouth. When they anchored in Plymouth Sound, Nancy was again rowed ashore. She was obviously a determined woman, because the captain had to admit to the court that when the
Baltimore
arrived at the Nore, he found that Miss Nancy had managed to get on board again. In the summation of the case, no mention was made of the woman, and the court acquitted Captain Vaughan and dismissed the purser's complaints as vexatious and groundless.

One of the most bizarre cases of a woman being present on a warship at sea was revealed in a court-martial that took place on July 10, 1763.
²²
A dead woman's body had been found sewn up in a hammock in the bread room of HMS
Defiance.
When the ship's commander, Captain Mackenzie, was questioned about the body, he said:

I inquired how that woman could have got in the Bread Room, and who kept the keys of that room, on which it was found that Rumbold habitually kept those keys. He then acknowledged that he had concealed her and that when she came on board she was in good health. The reason for their not making any report of the death they said was, the fear of my punishing them.

Further questioning of Adam Rumbold, the purser's steward, and Christopher Gutteno, the surgeon's mate, revealed that the woman had been smuggled on board the
Defiance
from another ship. She had complained of a stomach ailment, and the surgeon's mate had bled her and given her a vomit and a grain of opium. She also complained of a violent headache. They had sat up two nights with her, but she had died at five o'clock in the morning. She had apparently stowed away in the
Defiance
while the ship was stationed in the West Indies, and the seaman who had smuggled her aboard had since been discharged. The verdict of the court was that the woman had died a natural death, and the seamen who attended her were acquitted.

The presence of a woman on board a naval ship was revealed in another court-martial, which took place on March 15, 1799.
²³
On trial were five members of the crew of HMS
Hermione.
They were charged with murder, mutiny, and delivering up the ship to the enemy. The mutiny was as notorious in its day as the mutiny on the
Bounty,
which took place ten years before. There was no equivalent to the epic confrontation between Captain Bligh and Fletcher Christian, but the mutiny itself was much more savage. Its cause was the excessive cruelty of Captain Hugh Pigot. The son of an admiral, he had joined the navy in 1782 at the age of twelve, gained his first command at twenty-four, and was appointed post captain in 1794. While in command of HMS
Success,
he had ordered eighty-five floggings in the span of nine months, and so severe were some of these punishments that two men had died from the number of lashes inflicted on them.
²⁴

In February 1797, Pigot was appointed to the command of the 32-gun frigate
Hermione,
on the Jamaica station, which was lying at Cape Nicholas Mole at the western end of Haiti. After a disastrous cruise in which a second ship under his command was wrecked, Captain Pigot returned to Haiti. In June, William Martin joined the
Hermione
as her boatswain, and he was accompanied by his wife, Frances. Some later reports suggested that there were several other women on the ship, but it is clear from the evidence of the court-martial that Mrs. Martin was the only woman on board.

On August 16, Captain Pigot sailed from Haiti in command of a squadron of three ships. He continued to flog his men mercilessly; on September 20 he provoked some of them beyond endurance. At six o'clock in the evening, as the ship was heading northward through the Mona Passage, she was hit by a squall and the men were ordered aloft to reef the topsails. Pigot swore at them for not working fast enough, and as they battled to tie the reef points, with the wind whipping at the flogging sails, he bellowed through his speaking trumpet, “I'll flog the last man down.” In their desperate scramble to complete the job, three of the young sailors lost their hold and fell to the deck. They were killed instantly. Pigot brutally barked, “Throw the lubbers overboard,” and ordered the boatswain's mates to go aloft and lash the remaining topmen into completing the job. Midshipman Casey, who had been publicly humiliated and flogged by Pigot the week before, observed that the deaths of the sailors “greatly increased the previous dislike of the Captain and no doubt hastened, if not entirely decided, the mutiny.”