Seafaring Women: Adventures of Pirate Queens, Female Stowaways, and Sailors' Wives

For centuries, the sea has been regarded as a male domain, but in this illuminating historical narrative, maritime scholar David Cordingly shows that an astonishing number of women went to sea in the great age of sail. Some traveled as the wives or mistresses of captains; others were smuggled aboard by officers or seamen. And Cordingly has unearthed stories of a number of young women who dressed in mens clothes and worked alongside sailors for months, sometimes years, without ever revealing their gender. His tremendous research shows that there was indeed a thriving female populationfrom pirates to the sirens of myth and
legendon and around the high seas. A landmark work of womens history disguised as a spectacularly entertaining yarn, Women Sailors and Sailors Women will surprise and delight.