Oh I haste to wed a sailor, and send him off to sea…

One of my favorite genres of books is historical nonfiction. I particularly love tales of early exploration, sea voyages, and anything that has original journals and text from the voyagers themselves.

The history of our interactions with whales and whaling is fascinating and disturbing to me. I recently finished reading “In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex” by Nathanial Philbrick. It’s an account of one ship and her crew in particular, but also discusses at length what life was like for whalers and their families in the 1800s. It also gives shocking detail about the actual killing and slaughter and use of the whales, the scale of which (both the size of the individual whales and the extent of global whale slaughter) almost defies comprehension. Of particular interest are the “Nantucket Girls” – essentially, the women left behind by the sailors as they left on years-long sea voyages – if they returned at all.

One might assume this would be a disturbing, depressing and lonely life for the women left behind on a small island community. In fact, it was quite the opposite! Here’s an excerpt from Philbrick’s book:

“Perphaps no community before or since has been so divided by its commitment to work. For a whaleman and his family, it was a punishing regimen: two to three years away, three to four months at home. With their men gone for so long, Nantucket's women were obliged not only to raise the children but also to run many of the island's businesses. It was largely the women who maintained the complex web of personal and commercial relationships that kept the community functioning. J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, whose classic Letters from an American Farmer describes his lengthy stay on the island a few years prior to the outbreak of the Revolution, suggested that the Nantucket women's "prudence and good management ... justly entitles them to a rank superior to that of other wives." Quakerism contributed to the women's strength. In its emphasis on the spiritual and intellectual equality of the sexes, the religion fostered an attitude that was in keeping with what all Nantucketers saw plainly demonstrated to them every day: that women, who on Nantucket tended to be better educated than the island's men, were just as intelligent, just as capable as their male counterparts. By necessity and choice, the island's women maintained active social lives, visiting one another with a frequency Crèvecoeur described as incessant. These visits involved more than the exchange of mere gossip. They were the setting in which much of the business of the town was transacted. The ninteenth-century feminist Lucretia Coffin Mott, who was born and raised on Nantucket, remembered how a husband back from a voyage commonly followed in the wake of his wife, accompanying her to get-togethers with other wives. Mott, who eventually moved to Philadelphia, commented on how odd such a practice would have struck anyone from the mainland, where the sexes operated in entirely different social spheres. Some of the Nantucket wives adapted quite well to the three-years-away, three-months-at-home rhythm of the whale fishery. The islander Eliza Brock recorded in her journal what she called the "Nantucket Girl's Song":

I have made up my mind now to be a Sailor’s wife, To have a purse full of money and a very easy life, For a clever sailor husband is so seldom at his home, That his wife can spend the dollars with a will that’s all her own, Then I’ll haste to wed a sailor, and send him off to sea, For a life of independence is the pleasant life for me, But every now and then I shall like to see his face, For it always seemes to me to beam with manly grace, With his brow so nobly open, and his dark and kindly eye, Oh my heart beats fondly towards him whenever he is nigh, But when he says Goodbye my love, I’m off across the sea First I cry for his departure, then laugh because I’m free, Yet I’ll welcome him most gladly, whenever he returnes And share with him so cheerfully all the money that he earns For he’s a loving Husband, though he leads a roving life And well I know how good it is to be a Sailor’s Wife.

Nantucket Girls have even entered a bit into Pop Culture. I love this song by The Tossers, a musical adaptation of the Nantucket Girl’s Song, with a few extra lines added to the poem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zd9Zi7p2WXo

Additional lines from the man’s point of view: Oh I'm a man that's handsome, I'm strapping and I'm young And when I’ve got a job to do, the job gets fuckin' done I want a love to keep me happy, I want a love that's true And of all my past endeavors if it's smitten then I'm with you So I'll put on my buckle and shoe and I'll comb up my hair And I’ll tighten up my belt and shirt so it's handsome I'll appear And I'll work both day and night to keep the money rolling in So I can come back to my love, so I can see you again.

And from the Woman’s point of view: Oh to walk the street or countryside whatever I may know I know that I will be okay where ever it is I go I'm sorry I don't want children to follow at my feet I'm happy by myself not chasing kids into the street Oh I wasn't born for marrying for the game or for the blame And when my friends do call me I like hearing my own name But when he says goodbye my dear, I'm off across the sea First I cry for his departure, then I laugh because I'm free!

So there you go… a little bit of upbeat history (herstory?) to get you through the week! And a reminder that high-value men and high-value women transcend time. The qualities that we strive to create in ourselves, and the qualities that we look for in a partner, are intrinsic to our humanity. The qualities that make a man attractive in 2020 are the same qualities that made a man attractive in 1820.