In spite of what the law in all the colonies said about married women and restrictions on property ownership, there is clear evidence that married women owned ships and shares in ships well before the Married Women's Property Acts were proclaimed into law. We will look at the details later, and a summary of these data will suffice for now. In Newfoundland married women owned shares in
ships in 1844, 1853, 1854 and 1866, as these ships were registered. That first date, 1844, was 32 years before the Married Women's Property Act became law in Newfoundland!
The Conception Bay Plantation Book
of 1805, with antecedents dating well back into the 1640s, demonstrates that married women owned property, boats, fishing premises, and possibly ships, well before 1800.
Nova Scotian married women owned ships in 1877 and 1884; the first date was seven years before the Act was proclaimed into law. In New Brunswick married women owned shares in ships that were registered in 1860, 1870 and 1872; and in 1873 the floodgates opened and many married women began to purchase shares despite the fact that the Married Women's Property Act did not come into effect until 1895. In Prince Edward Island a married woman held shares in a ship as early as 1827, and there was not another until 1895. The relevant dates for Quebec married women were from 1827 to 1903; there were so many, in fact, that either they all held civil marriage contracts or they simply ignored the existing law. The number of women holding shares in ships constitutes clear evidence that married women were following a pattern established in the pre-industrial period and did not wait for the law to affirm their right to own property.
It is almost certainly true that occupation was self-designated and that the registrar from earliest times recorded what he was told by the person registering the ship. The registrar was male and most of those who came to register their ships were male. Women were also conditioned by the norms of early society to designate themselves as widows, spinsters or married women. Were it not for a scrapbook kept by Quebec registrars from 1850 to 1958, and which I found by happenstance in Ottawa, we might never have had a public pronouncement on the issue. It is clearly stated in a letter from the Department of Marine and Fisheries, dated December 30, 1949: “Where a woman's name appears
as owner or mortgagee, she should be described as Spinster, Married Woman, or Widow, as the case may be.” This directive was, of course, a complete reversal of a practice which had evolved over many years, and I expect that the bureaucrat who penned these words was unaware of what registrars in the provinces had been doing. Did his words, on the other hand, represent an attempt to reverse the fortunes of women in that society, or were they purely personal?
There is a section in the Quebec scrapbook entitled “Description of ownership title of a woman” and a note to the effect that regarding mortgages, the “marriage contract may be used instead of Last Will & Testament in case of death.” There is a further note on “Married Women, Legal restrictions as to their right to hold or transfer ship property not the business of the Registrar.” There is a letter from the Deputy Minister of Marine in Ottawa dated September 15, 1880, indicating that if Madame Beaupre wishes to be the mortgagee for her husband's, Maxime Beaupre's ship, that is really of no concern to the registrar's office; if she wishes to risk her money that is her prerogative. A further section of the scrapbook is indexed as “Registered owner may sell to his wife,” suggesting only that the wife would first have to file a Declaration of Ownership and a Declaration of Assets. These documents were to be sworn before a notary public. A further index entry for 1949 is entitled “Title of Married Woman” and refers to a section where a woman had been registered as a “Mariner” but this should now be changed to “Spinster”; another woman had been designated as a “Manager” but this should now be changed to “Ship's Husband.” I wonder if the registrar saw the irony in the latter dictate. There is an added communication signed by Elizabeth Descheneaux's attorney indicating that she had originally been called a married woman and this has now been changed to spinster.
There is some evidence that existing records were “corrected” by a registrar who served after the time of the original registration. There is an instance where “Stenographer” was marked over and “Spinster” was written in by a later hand. There is a case where “Hotel Proprietor” was crossed out and “Married Woman” was written in.
And yet another case where “Housewife” was crossed out and “Married Woman” was written in. But only about half a dozen such instances were found in the ship registers of all five provinces.
So what are the facts related to designated occupation? The earliest women shipowners, dating from the early 1800s, were widows, but it was not long before single women made an appearance, and then married women. In Newfoundland the first widow to register a ship was Ann McCarthy of Crocker's Cove, Conception Bay. She registered the ship
Susan
at St. John's in 1822 as sole owner. The ship had been built at Moreton's Harbour by Richard Horwood. Modifications must have been made to the ship subsequently since it was re-registered in 1825 when it was noted that the ship was engaged in the Labrador fishery, and Joseph Taylor was the master or captain. Twenty years later, in 1842, Mary Foley Morris, a single woman of St. John's, registered three ships: the
John and Mary
, the
Nancy
, and the
Relief
. She must have been a courageous woman since she took mortgages on all three ships. The first married woman shipowner in Newfoundland was Caroline Winsor of Aquaforte; she held 13 shares in the
Pelter
when it was registered in 1844, i.e., 32 years before the Married Women's Property Act became law in the colony.
Use of the titles “Widow,” “Spinster” and “Married Woman” persist throughout the period under study, though there are some interesting variations on the themes. Stated occupations are: Single Woman, Single Lady, Unmarried Woman, Married Lady, and in the later periods, Housewife and Homemaker. Also used are related terms such as Lady, Dame, Madame, Matron and Gentlewoman; the latter are generally indicative of high status.
Some of the other occupations listed for women in the ship registers are: Merchant, Trader, Dealer, Shopkeeper, Planter, Fisherman, Brewer, Accountant, Business Manager, Businessperson, Company Director, Clerk/Manager, Teacher, School Teacher, Religious Order, Secretary, Stenographer, Nurse, Seamstress, Milliner and Auto-motorcycle Dealer. The designation of women as “Mariner,” but not “Master Mariner,” is not uncommon; however, I suspect the
former term in some areas was taken to be roughly equivalent to “Fisherman” (a term that is used occasionally for women) in other areas, but it may also have been used to designate women who actually went to sea. It is curious that the Quebec woman who had been designated “Manager” but whom the registrar decided should be designated as “Ship's Husband” was not instead called a “Managing Owner” since that term had long been in vogue. A woman in New Brunswick, Annie Seely, was listed as a “Tradesman â Non-marine”; her husband was a shopkeeper. Though the title “Agent” is not used, that appears to be the effect of designating Louisa Charlotte Boucherville (
neuve
Collar) in 1788 in Quebec as “subscribing” for the heirs of Joseph Collar, who are “non-subscribing.” She was probably representing a non-resident family or possibly minors who were the inheritors.
The fact that women were, indeed, fishermen is demonstrated by a delightful vignette which Cyril Harris describes in his book
Northern Exposure: A Nova Scotia Boyhood.
He writes of the visit to Nova Scotia in 1904 of an American cricket team which was challenged to a game by the locals from Sandy Cove. The smartly dressed American team appeared on the field and looked with disdain on the local fishermen dressed in their overalls and denim shirts. The bowler for the locals turned out to be a young woman, though she bowled so well and carried herself so smartly that the visitors thought for a while that she was a young man. They discovered later that she was a lobster fisherman and that she worked in the boat with her father and sister every day. The “lobster girl” was responsible that day for the defeat of the fine Weymouth cricket team!
Exceptional, no doubt, is the story of Mildred Jewett of Nantucket, known locally as Madaket Millie, who was as strong at 11 years of age as any two Coast Guardsmen. Edward Rowe Snow, in his book
Women of the Sea
, writes that, as a mature woman, Millie “could roll over a dory, launch it, fish with the best of them, and could handle any sort of craft in almost any type of blow.” Besting even this story is that of Capt. Linda Greenlaw of Topsham, Maine, who was the only woman swordfish captain in the Grand Banks fleet, and by 1997, had been fishing for 17 of her 36 years. Fishing out
of Gloucester, Massachusetts, on the lunar cycle, she would return to port every 30 days with full loads of fish. In his book
The Perfect Storm
, Sebastian Junger characterized Greenlaw as “one of the best captains, period, on the entire East Coast,” as he described the Halloween Gale of 1991. Greenlaw was a graduate of Colby College and was skipper of the swordfish boat
Hannah Boden
.
There are other interesting occupations of women designated in the early records. For example, when Eleanor Quinn of Rider's Harbour, Random Island, Newfoundland, married James Sullivan of Youghall, Ireland, in 1804, her occupation was given as “Boatkeeper”; that would be similar to ship's husband and probably meant that she was left in charge of fishing boats when the British owners returned home for the winter. Marjorie Clark of Bay Bulls was a boatkeeper sometime in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Hannah Langher in 1805 and Lydia Fifield in 1808, both of Trinity, gave the same occupation, boatkeeper, at the time of marriage. In 1815 Mary Gillet of Trinity, widow, married Charles Randell and her occupation is given as “Blacksmith.” Perhaps she had inherited her late husband's business of blacksmithing and had carried on that business from the time of his death to the time of her remarriage. Madge (“Meg”) Curlew was a blacksmith in Coley's Point, Newfoundland, through the 1920s; she was a big, raw-boned woman with large hands and wore a long leather apron at her work. She became a blacksmith by accident; the big wagon was broken, there was no one to fix it, and she did it, and that became her occupation.
As I have discussed these issues with people over the past several years, many have suggested snippets of information about women's unusual occupations in connection with the sea. Hannah Eliza Evans, whose husband was Edward, ran a supply store at Northern Arm for the George J. Carter fishing business of Herring Neck from about 1900 to 1914. Carter had bought the Edwin J. Duder business after it went bankrupt in the Bank Crash of 1894. Mary Olivia Noseworthy, whose husband had been Lorenzo, operated the family business at Spaniard's Bay, with sub-operations in Labrador, for three years from 1931 to 1933, and then phased out the business and moved to
St. John's. Thomas Collett, a merchant at Harbour Buffett in the 1870s may have left his estate, including ships, to Frances Bendle. A letter exists naming her children as beneficiaries and referring to her son Henry “carrying on the business, his mother not objecting.” Other interesting variations on occupations exist. Cindy Parmiter of Point Leamington, whose father is Capt. Wes Parmiter, was a working crew member on her father's sealing ship in the 1970s. Sarah May Dempster, daughter of Jim Coombs of Plum Point, carried on her father's job of wharfinger (owner/manager of a wharf) until the late 1970s when CN Marine phased out its operations at Plum Point. Vera Abbott of Bonavista was a fisherperson and co-owner of boats and property with her husband Cecil for almost 20 years in the 1980s and 1990s, until her husband was tragically killed in a traffic accident.
Many women had a natural affinity for navigation and practiced the science of navigation aboard ship for many years. What is not as well known is that navigation was taught in schools in many parts of New England and in other places along the Atlantic coast. Navigation was offered as a subject in the “female department” of Dukes County Academy on Martha's Vineyard in the 1830s. The curriculum for girls included drawing, painting, projection and colouring maps. One of these New England women established a school of navigation in London, England. Miss Eliza Frame, a school teacher in Maitland, Nova Scotia, ran a quite remarkable school of navigation in that town. Donal Baird in his book
Women at Sea in the Age of Sail
tells the remarkable stories of Janey Congden Crowe, Helen (Smith) Grant and Bessie Hall, all Nova Scotia women who became successful navigators. There was said to be a female teacher in Bonavista, Newfoundland, who taught navigation in the late eighteenth century. Mrs. Makison, who had a dame school at Brigus, Newfoundland, may also have taught navigation. Miss Crib at King's Cove is also alleged to have taught navigation in school. It is known also that navigation was taught in the Roman Catholic school at Bay Bulls in the early 1840s. Memorizing the points of the compass was routinely practiced in many Newfoundland schools up until at least the late 1930s. I actually experienced that exhilarating pasttime in my early years in
school. From at least 1917, F. J. Doyle operated a Nautical School in St. John's, and Capt. English, who was the Harbour Master, was one of his instructors. Before that time, it seems, examinations for Mates and Masters were conducted by the Board of Trade. There was a St. John's technical school and a local examining board which conducted examinations and issued Mate's and Master's Tickets (certificates of competency) as well as engineer's certificates of competency. The Nautical School appears to have taken over from the Board of Trade and also issued St. John's ambulance certificates. In October 1920 fifteen men (no women) were sitting for examinations at the Nautical School, and Drs. Carnell and Murphy were supervising the first-aid examinations.