Women at sea: Introduction Women at sea: Reading list Email me
 

1 General literature

These books are good places to start if you want a general overview of women in relation to the sea. Many – by Cordingly, Druett, Pigneguy, Stanley and Zhao – cover women across a wide spectrum, often in a variety of roles from captain to skivvy, pirate to waterfront worker.

Some writers talk about a very specific capacity in which women sailed. For example, Dugaw writes about historic women who put on men’s clothes in order to be seafarers; Zhao describes women today, often sailing as ships' officers.

A. General books and articles

Carroll, O. J. (1993) Deep Sea ‘Sparks’: A Canadian girl in the Norwegian merchant navy. Vancouver: Cordillera. ISBN 1895590051.

Cordingly, D. (2001) Women Sailors and Sailors’ Women. New York: Random House. ISBN 037550041.

De Pauw, L.G. (1982) Seafaring Women. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0395324343.

Druett, J. (1999) She Captains: Heroines and hellions of the sea. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Dugaw, D. (1989) Warrior Women and Popular Balladry, 1650-1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Dugaw, D. (1992) Rambling female sailors: the rise and fall of the seafaring heroine. International Journal of Maritime History: IV: no 1 (June), 179-194.

Jacobsen, B. (1934) A Girl Before the Mast. New York: Charles Scribner and Sons.

Line, L. (1982) Waterwomen. Queenstown, Md: Queen Anne Press.

No author (1995) A woman’s place. Maritime Workers Journal (Australia); Vol. 3: no 6 (November), 34-36.

Paravisini-Gebert, L., Romero-Cesaero, I. (2001) Women at Sea: Travel writing and the margins of Caribbean discourse. New York: Palgrave. ISBN 0312219962.
 
 
 

Pigneguy, D. (2001) Saltwater in Her Hair: Stories of women in the New Zealand maritime industry. Auckland: VIP publications.

Skogan, J. (1992) Voyages: qt sea with strangers. Toronto: Harper Collins.

Snow, E. R. (1962) Women of the Sea. New York: Dodd, Mead.

Stanley, J. (1999) With cutlass and compress: women’s relations with the sea. Gender and History; Vol. 12: no 1.

Stanley, J. (2000) Black women on white ships. Black and Asian Studies Association Newsletter (April).

Stanley, J. (2000) Putting gender into seafaring: representing women in public maritime history. In: Kean, Hilda, Martin, Paul, Martin, Sally (eds) Seeing History: Public history now. London: Francis Boutle.

Stanley, J. (2002) And after the cross-dressed cabin boys and whaling wives? Possible futures for british maritime historiography. Journal of Transport History; Vol 23: no 1 (March), 9-22.

Wheelwright, J. (1993) Amazons and Military Maids: Women who dressed as men in the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. London: Pandora. ISBN 0044403569.

Zhao, M. (1999) Women Seafarers in the EC: A preliminary report based on German and UK case studies. Cardiff: SIRC (www.sirc.cf.ac.uk).
B. Gender

Ayers, P. (1999) The Making of Men: Masculinities in Inter-War Liverpool, pp.66- 83. In: Walsh, M. (ed) Working Out Gender: Perspectives from labour history. Aldershot: Ashgate. ISBN 0754600580.

Burton, V. (1991) The myth of bachelor jack: masculinity, patriachy and seafaring labour. In: Howell, C., H., Twomey, R. (eds) Seafaring Worlds: Essays in Maritime Life and Labour. Halifax: Acadiensis Press, pp193-195.
 

Burton, V. (1999) Whoring, Drinking Sailor: Reflections on masculinity from the labour history of nineteenth-century British shipping, pp. 84-101. In: Walsh, M. (ed.) Working Out Gender. Aldershot: Ashgate. ISBN 0754600580.

Creighton, M.S., Norling, L. (1996) Iron Men, Wooden Women: Gender and seafaring in the Atlantic world 1700-1920. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins Press. ISBN 0801851602.