Women Sailors & Sailors' Women (41 page)

©T
HE
A
TLANTIC
M
UTUAL
I
NSURANCE
C
OMPANY

A painting by Gordon Jackson showing the nineteen-year-old Mary Patten on the deck of the clipper ship
Neptune's Car
in 1856. When her husband, Captain Patten, fell seriously ill during the voyage from New York, Mary took command of the vessel and sailed around Cape Horn to San Francisco.

©F
ERENS
A
RT
G
ALLERY,
K
INGSTON
U
PON
H
ULL,
E
NGLAND

Ulysses and the Sirens,
painted by Herbert Draper in 1909. According to Greek mythology, the beautiful voices of the Sirens always lured sailors to their death, but Homer had Odysseus (in Latin, Ulysses) resist their fatal attraction by getting his crew to block their ears with wax, while he had himself bound to the mast so he could safely hear the Sirens' song, which foretold the future.

©M
USÉE DE LA
M
ARINE,
P
ARIS

A carved and gilded mermaid, the figurehead on the late-eighteenth-century barge of Marie Antoinette of France.

©T
HE
R
OYAL
A
CADEMY OF
A
RTS

A Mermaid,
painted by John William Waterhouse in 1900. In Western art and literature, the mermaid was invariably portrayed as a beautiful creature with long, flowing hair, but, like the Sirens who preceded her, she was a temptress and associated with death.

©T
HE
W
ALLACE
C
OLLECTION,
L
ONDON

Portrait of Mrs. Mary Nesbitt, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. She was the last great love of Captain Hervey's life and became his mistress around 1770. She remained with him until his death in 1779.

©T
HE
N
ATIONAL
T
RUST,
K
ENWOOD
H
OUSE

Portrait of Kitty Fisher as Cleopatra, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1759. Kitty Fisher was one of the many society beauties who had a love affair with Captain Hervey when he was on leave in England during the 1760s.

©T
HE
B
RITISH
M
USEUM,
L
ONDON

Miss Elizabeth Chudleigh, who secretly married Augustus Hervey in 1744, when he was a young naval lieutenant. She was as unfaithful to him as he was to her, and many years later she bigamously married the Duke of Kensington.

©T
HE
B
RITISH
M
USEUM,
L
ONDON

Hervey's wife at a London ball in 1749. Said an observer, “Miss Chudleigh's dress, or rather undress, was remarkable; she was Iphigenia for the sacrifice, but so naked that the high priest might easily inspect the entrails of the victim.”

©T
HE
N
ATIONAL
T
RUST,
I
CKWORTH
H
OUSE

Captain Augustus Hervey in 1768, painted by Thomas Gainsborough. The second son of an English baron, he joined the Royal Navy at the age of eleven and was a captain by the age of twenty-three. During visits to foreign seaports, he slept with a succession of aristocratic beauties, dancers, and servant girls.

©N
ATIONAL
M
USEUMS AND
G
ALLERIES ON
M
ERSEYSIDE

Emma, Lady Hamilton as a bacchante, painted by Louise-Elizabeth Vigée-LeBrun in Naples around 1790. Emma was the young wife of Sir William Hamilton, the British ambassador to Naples. She was famous for her beauty and for her love affair with Lord Nelson.

©N
ATIONAL
M
ARITIME
M
USEUM

Horatio, Viscount Nelson, Vice-Admiral of the White, painted by Lemuel Francis Abbot in 1797. Nelson became infatuated with Emma Hamilton during his prolonged stay in Naples after his victory at the Battle of the Nile.