British women served at the same guns with their husbands, and during a contest of many hours, never shrank from danger, but animated all around them.
—Admiral Edward Pellew, Viscount Exmouth, reporting on the Battle of Algiers
"Not all women living in naval vessels disembarked when the crowds of prostitutes were sent ashore shortly before the ships sailed. From the late seventeenth century until the middle of the nineteenth, it was customary for wives of warrant officers to go to sea. A warrant officer was assigned to a particular ship “in constant employ,” unlike both commissioned officers and seamen, who were signed onto a vessel only for a single commission, and who were often transferred to another ship before the commission was completed. A warrant officer and his wife might continue to live in a ship even when she was taken out of commission.
The wives of the ancient triumvirate of warrant officers—the boatswain, the gunner, and the carpenter—went to sea as a matter of course. So did wives of the purser and the master, who associated with the commissioned officers on the quarterdeck, as well as those of lower rank: the cooper, the sailmaker, and the cook. Petty officers—men who were selected from among the able seamen to direct the less skilled—and a few seamen, usually experienced men who made the navy their career, also sometimes brought their wives to sea.
Most of the women who joined their husbands or sweethearts at sea knew before they went that life on board would be both tedious and perilous, and they realized that they might be away from home for years. Looking back at these women from a modern viewpoint, it is tempting to decide that they went to sea because they wished to find adventure. This was seldom their motivation. The evidence is that wives went to sea because they did not want to be separated from their spouses. Women who joined naval crews disguised as men were often seeking a broader experience than society allowed them on shore. Seagoing wives, on the other hand, did not set out to break social taboos. They were, in fact, behaving as a good wife was supposed to behave: cleaving to her husband and serving as his helpmate, no matter where that took her.
Officially, the women living on the lower deck did not exist. Even when a woman died at sea, the fact was seldom recorded. Their names were not listed in ships’ muster books, and since only those people who were mustered had any official existence, women were not paid and not victualed. Wives had to share their husbands’ food ration, and so did any children with them. In contrast, soldiers’ wives who traveled with their husbands were victualed at two-thirds the men’s ration, and their children got half a ration. This meant that in a ship carrying both seamen’s and soldiers’ wives, the soldiers’ wives, who were merely passengers, were given food while the seamen’s wives, who were an integral part of the ship’s company, got nothing."
Female Tars: Women Aboard Ship in the Age of Sail, Suzanne J. Stark
