During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the whaling industry in New England sent hundreds of ships and thousands of men to distant seas on voyages lasting up to five years. In Captain Ahab Had a Wife, Lisa Norling taps a rich vein of sources--including women's and men's letters and diaries, shipowners' records, Quaker meeting minutes and other church records, newspapers and magazines, censuses, and city directories--to reconstruct the lives of the "Cape Horn widows" left behind onshore. Norling begins with the emergence of colonial whalefishery on the island of Nantucket and then follows the industry to mainland New Bedford in the nineteenth century, tracking the parallel shift from a patriarchal world to a more ambiguous Victorian culture of domesticity. Through the sea-wives' compelling and often poignant stories, Norling exposes the painful discrepancies between gender ideals and the reality of maritime life and documents the power of gender to shape both economic development and individual experience.
This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.
Her maiden name was Frances Elizabeth Collins. Frances had come to Java on the bark John A. Gaunt with her sister, her brother-in-law being the captain. Over the five weeks that the ship had lain in Anjer, Frances "met Mr. Rairden, ...
Will Hannah become as independent as Ahab? Will she take her future into her own hands? Who will fill the emptiness in her heart? Click Here to Meet the Author Download the Readers' Guide.
Now in Mystic Seaport's G.W. Blunt White Library, Mary Brewster's journals are here published for the first time. As the most complete account of the female experience at sea, this...
Eric Jay Dolin begins his vivid narrative with Captain John Smith's botched whaling expedition to the New World in 1614.
“ That was close enough , wouldn't you say ? " Irwin looked chagrined . “ I'm sorry , sir . We didn't see it coming . ” “ Don't fret about it , Mr. Irwin . All's well that ends well . ” Irwin relaxed . “ Thank you , sir . ” He smiled .
The popular novel Moby-Dick first spurred young and old alike to romanticize the whaling industry.
A novel inspired by Herman Melville's Moby Dick chronicles the life of Una Spenser, wife of the immortal Captain Ahab, from her Kentucky childhood, through her adventures disguised as a whaling ship cabin boy, to her various marriages.
Will we survive a battle with the great whale? Find out in this stunning graphic novel adaptation of Herman Melville's classic by Rod Espinosa.
See also Richard F. Selcer, Civil War America, 1850 to 1875 (New York: Facts on File, 2006), 271. Margaret S. Creighton, Rites and Passages: The Experience of American Whaling, 1830–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), ...