©THE BRITISH MUSEUM, LONDON
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.
©THE BRITISH MUSEUM, LONDON
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.”
©THE NATIONAL TRUST, ICKWORTH HOUSE
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.
©NATIONAL MUSEUMS AND GALLERIES ON MERSEYSIDE
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.
©NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM
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.
©ROYAL NAVAL MUSEUM, PORTSMOUTH
Nelson met and married the young widow Fanny Nisbet on the island of Nevis when he was a naval captain stationed in the West Indies. She is shown here with a bust of her famous husband.
Commodore John Paul Jones, the son of a Scottish gardener, became one of America’s greatest naval heroes. His most famous action was the Battle of Flamborough Head, in 1779, in which he captured two British warships after a hard-fought battle that lasted more than three hours.
©ROYAL NATIONAL LIFEBOAT INSTITUTION
Portrait of William Darling, keeper of the Longstone Lighthouse on the Farne Islands and father of Grace Darling. After the rescue that made them both famous, William Darling complained that they were so besieged by journalists and artists that he was unable to carry out his lighthouse duties.
©ROYAL NATIONAL LIFEBOAT INSTITUTION
Grace Darling, the twenty-two-year-old heroine who rowed through a storm with her father to rescue the passengers and crew of a ship wrecked in a gale in September 1838. The artist Henry Perlee Parker traveled to Northumberland and made this sketch a few weeks after the rescue had taken place.
©MARINERS’ MUSEUM, NEWPORT NEWS, VIRGINIA
Ida Lewis rescued two soldiers in the Newport, Rhode Island, harbor in March 1869. The two men were returning to Fort Adams when their boat overturned in a gale. They were almost paralyzed with cold by the time Ida got to them, and it took several hours to revive them.
©MARINERS’ MUSEUM, NEWPORT NEWS, VIRGINIA
Ida Lewis acted as assistant to her father, keeper of the Lime Rock Lighthouse, which was situated on an island in the harbor of Newport. She became so famous for her rescues that she was pictured on the cover of Harper’s Weekly.
©NATIONAL MUSEUM OF ART. WASHINGTON, D.C.
Mending the Nets, by Winslow Homer, 1882. Homer spent several months in the Yorkshire fishing village of Cullercoats and painted many pictures of the local women carrying fish baskets, mending nets, knitting socks, and waiting anxiously on the beach for their menfolk to return from the fishing grounds.
©ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM, OXFORD
Home from the Sea, by Arthur Hughes, 1862. A sailor boy lies on the grave of his mother, watched by his sister, who is dressed in mourning black.
©TATE GALLERY, LONDON
A Hopeless Dawn, by Frank Bramley, 1888. A fisherman’s wife is comforted by her mother as she mourns her husband, who has been lost at sea. Bramley lived for ten years in the Cornish fishing village of Newlyn and observed firsthand the working lives of the fishing families.
©NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM, LONDON
Dated 1744, this is an early version of the many popular prints devoted to the subject the sailor’s return. A sailor’s wife is surprised by the sudden return of her husband, while her mother dips into his sea chest, which is filled with his prize money.
Copyright © 2001 by David Cordingly
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York.
RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cordingly, David.
Women sailors and sailors' women: an untold maritime history / David Cordingly.
p. cm.
Includes index.
1. Women and the sea. I. Title.
G540.C685 2001
910.4'5—dc21 00-062762
Random House website address: www.atrandom.com
eISBN: 978-0-375-50697-0
v3.0
Women Sailors & Sailors' Women Page 35
