Women at Sea – Findings from an 18th Century Newspaper
A new source collection

Earlier this year Erik Hinckley published a fascinating edition of an 18th century primary source.[1] He collected all reports on shipping that appeared in the Connecticut Courant between 1766 and 1799, thus offering a broad overview of maritime trade, travel, and warfare.[2] In his collection readers find not only short notes on arriving ships and their cargo or news about dangerous pirates and privateers but also reports about the many dangers of seafaring like weather, shoals or mutinies.
Although all news items were published in Connecticut and therefore mostly focus on the North Atlantic events, some originate from the Baltic, Caribbean, and the Mediterranean Sea, and occasionally even from the Pacific and Indian Ocean. In total, Hinckley offers information on more than 1,300 ships and over 500 individuals, most of them captains, and their respective maritime endeavors. For those interested in the history of specific ships, an index allows to quickly find and compare any reports about them.
Searching for women abord ships
This article makes use of Hinckle’s collection and explores any mention of women in the Connecticut Courant. Regarding their presence in general, it becomes obvious that their number increased or decreased depending on the political and naval context. To elaborate, Hinckley divided his book into four chronological parts, dealing with the late Colonial Era, the American Revolution, the Post-Revolutionary Era, and finally the French Revolution. Between those periods it becomes obvious that women are mentioned much more often in times of peace. This does of course not prove their absence from the sea during wartime, but merely a shifting focus of the reports. After all, more attention is given to information about naval deployments, the construction of warships and the transport of military regiments. That being said, it still seems highly plausible, that single women or groups of settlers would postpone their voyages until travel would be considered safer.
Standing out – Women with names and stories
Considering the number of entries and ships mentioned, it is striking how few women are explicitly mentioned. (Gentle)women, Ladies, Girls or Ms., Mss., or Mdme appear either as a group or individuals in less than 3% of the entries.
Throughout all the reports less than 20 women are mentioned by name. Those were the wives of high-ranking officials or members of nobility or married to people of local prominence. Examples are Sir William Drapers wife, reported to accompany him on a “Tour of America” as reported from Charles Town January 4th 1770 (p. 44) or a Mrs. Rachel Wilson travelling “with a public friend”, Nov. 9th 1769 (p. 43-44) or Ms. and Mdm. Bouille travelling to St. Kitts on the frigate April (p. 115). These cases are typical, because almost all women were connected to a man travelling with them. “And his lady” is the most common way to identify a travelling woman (examples p. 28, p. 40, p. 95 and p. 115).

Only in three cases the reports do not mention a male companion. One is the Countess of Effingham who died at sea, three days after the frigate Diana had left New York as reported on December 3rd 1791. The warship then turned around to bring her corps to shore. The second women without an escort was also the only women of color mentioned in the Courant by name: Phillis Wheatley. She was described as “the ingenious N___ poet”[3] in a note from Boston dating May the 3rd 1773. This was the very year the former enslaved woman published her highly successful book Poems on various subjects, religious and Moral. Since she was renowned as a poet on both sides of the Atlantic it seems only appropriate to mention her by name.
The final, also rather spectacular case was an anonymous 104 year old women travelling in the ship Peter to London as reported on September 27th 1766 (p. 25). “She has her health and memory perfect and is full of spirits” and was going back to England to visit her three children and twenty grandchildren whom she left when following her husband to America. Allegedly, she was planning to return to New York the next year, but no such voyage is mentioned.
When looking at groups including women we find only one case in which camp-followers and relations of the soldiers are explicitly mentioned although dozens of troop movements are included in the courant each year during wartime. This report is from Boston December 22nd 1768 (p. 39) and reads: “the Schooner Betsy and John arrived from Halifax with the Remains of the 14th. 29th and part of the 59th Regiments, including a number of Women &c. belonging to the Army.”
More often in times of peace than war, the Courant reports on groups of settlers or passengers who travel by the hundreds. But although there are dozens of entries, only one mentions women explicitly. It dates London March 11th 1769 and informs about a group of 300 men, women and children “who have been redeemed at the king’s expenses” from Slavery in Algiers and “are desired to form a settlement in a little island westward”.
Finally, when searching for women mentioned in the newspaper, we must look at shipwrecks. This also includes the only two cases to be found of women who might have belonged to a ship and were part of the shipboard community. On April 8th of 1776 news from Watertown arrived regarding the sinking of the transport Marquis of Rottenham (p. 73). The courant reported: “all crew except four, with all the women and children, and upwards of an (sic!) hundred soldiers were drowned.” In this case the wording and order of the sentence is important, since it emphasizes that the women and children did not belong to the separately mentioned soldiers who were passengers abord the Rottenham, but rather the crew. “Children” in this case might refer to the sailor or cabin boys who are also mentioned explicitly in other reports.
The second case was the capsizing of the Schooner Betsy as reported from New York April 2nd. 1785 (p. 137). The report does mention two female victims: the captain’s wife also a Miss Cornelia Robertson. The status of the later is unclear, but she was not described explicitly as a passenger. There was also a Peter Robertson aboard, but it is unclear if it was a father, brother, or husband and if he was a member of the crew.
Other women are mentioned collectively in two reports on shipwrecks. The first one dating March 28th from New York talks about the Schooner Newport carrying an extraordinary number of passengers (p. 14). The ship ran ashore in bad weather at the coast of Long Island. The Passengers “among whom were several gentlemen and ladies” were for hours “in the water” before they were rescued by a Long Island whaling boat. What precisely is meant by “in the water” is unclear – but swimming seems impossible, especially in March. Probably the survivors were stranded on the cliffs or held on to the wreckage.
The last report mentioning a group of women in distress came from New York on the 21st of January 1797 (p. 201/202). The ship Barrington was on route from Leith to New York and stranded on the Isle of Sable. The captain, crew and eleven passengers escaped to the island. This included two married women with three children and two young ladies, not part of the families. They all took shelter and waited for help for eleven weeks, eating provisions from the wreckage. After that time the mate and some sailors took the longboat to Halifax to get help. There, the governor mustered an expedition to rescue the stranded people. But the rescue ship was hit by heavy weather too and had to abord the mission. Finally, a second rescue mission was successful and everybody returned home safely.

Is there no one else? Invisible women
When looking for maritime women with the help of the Connecticut Courant the first impression is that there were very, very few of them. But this picture is incomplete, because due to the nature and wording of the reports the bigger part of women at sea remained invisible. One needs therefore, to read between the lines and apply context knowledge – some obvious and some more farfetched.
Let’s start with the obvious. There are several cases in which the family of a newly appointed office-holder or military commander is mentioned as accompanying him to his new post (example p. 28). “Family”, albeit not explicitly, must have encompassed wives and children. In these cases, just like when they were mentioned explicitly, women traveled as part of their duty towards her husband. A rather prominent example for this would be Friederike Riedesel, wife of a German general who commanded auxiliary forces for the British during the American Revolution (see here). In her autobiography she also mentions other army wives traveling across the Atlantic.[4]
But that is not all. Studies on military history of the 18th century have shown that cases like the aforementioned Betsy and John with female camp followers abord were much more common. In fact many regiments in service in Europe or abord ship had at least a couple of women with them, most likely with relations to officers or petty officers.[5] Their number might not have been high, but half a dozen women per regiment were officially allowed.[6] This was also the case in transoceanic deployments. These women were encouraged to help with the laundry or support the regiment in other ways like mending clothes or nursing sick and injured soldiers. Regularly, they were not mentioned in official reports, so they might have been present on quite a lot of the military transport mentioned in the newspaper.
While these women travelled with the intend to return to their point of origin, the Courant lists tens of thousands of people who did not plan on returning at all. Especially throughout times of peace the newspaper reports on many groups of settlers crossing the oceans. Mostly, these people were just described as “passengers” or “settlers” only in some cases “families” are mentioned explicitly – for example “several Corsican families” on June 30th 1769 (p. 40). But as research on transatlantic migration has shown, family migration was quite common during the 18th century. Especially the larger groups mentioned, like 100-600 people are highly unlikely to have been only men, like almost 1000 settlers arriving from Ireland in Mid Juli 1773 (p. 61). Sadly, we only have one singular case in which the newspaper included information on the demographic development of the passengers. On August 10th 1791 the Ann and Susan from Londonderry arrived in New York with “about 450 Passengers” and the article reported about 10 deaths and 12 births during the passage (p. 166). Clear evidence for women abord ship.
But since the Courant not only mentions voluntary seafaring, we can also deduce the presence of women on many more ships. Several times the transport of slaves to the Americas, their arrival in the colonies, their fate if their ship was taken as a prize, and even a few cases of their forceful resistance are mentioned. In most of these cases the reports do not mention the gender of the enslaved persons, just calling them slaves or using contemporary derogatory terms. But thanks to the research of experts like Sowande Mustakeem we can extrapolate that it would be typical for a slave ship to have women and children abord, albeit the enslavers preferred men because of a higher possible revenue.[7] Their numbers are estimated to comprise at least 30% of the enslaved persons.
Another group that had to suffer forced migration and included men as well as women were convicts taken from British or Irish prisons and brought to America. The Courant mentions more than a dozen of these transports and describes how the convicts were sold as indentured servants in the Americas – even after the colonies gained their independence. Afterwards they were forced to work for a certain time with limited personal rights before they were released with resources to start their own life. As described in the Encyclopeadia Virginia, approximately 52.000 individuals came to the later US in groups that included men and women.[8] Still, in the newspaper they are only described with the single word “convicts”. The number and range of convict transports can be seen in a more elaborate report dating from the 15th of September (p. 151-152) that collects information in response to public debates in New York.
The report mentions 100 convicts brought upon the brigantine Nancy in 1784. Due to lack of provisions 46 of them were set ashore on the Isle of Ferro (Azores) where they were killed by the local military allegedly in fear of sickness. The Ann sold 176 convicts in Georgetown as indentured servants in 1785; The Dragon brought 190 convicts from Dublin and dropped them in Alexandria (Virginia); the Dispatch of Yarmouth took 183 convicts from England to Nova Scotia where they should enforce a loyalist settlement in 1787. But the established settlers refused to accept the convicts, so they had to be set ashore in a remote location in Maine from where they marched south on their own accord. A similar fate happened to 100 convicts on the Brig Chance who were dropped unceremoniously on an uninhabited island in the Bahamas. Later 49 survivors were evacuated to Massachusetts. Finally in June 1787 the Nancy arrived in North America again with 201 convicts whom the captain sold into indentured servitude along the coast of Connecticut. Until further research on each of these ships is conducted, it is plausible that each one had women abord.
Finally, we return to the report on the sinking of the Marquis of Rottenham from April 8th 1776 in which a group of women and children was mentioned not as passengers, but as belonging to the crew. This is remarkable, because as research from Suzanne Stark and David Cordingly has shown, in naval shipping of the 18th and early 19th century it was possible for wives of non-commissioned officers like the sailmaker, carpenter or master gunner to sail with their husbands (see here). This may have been against official regulation but happened on approximately 15% of British navy ships up until the war of 1812.[9] The presence of such a group of up to half a dozen of women depended on the captain. As we know from travel reports like the one from Friederike Riedesel, even private merchantman with letters of marque could also have these specialist’s wives abord (see here). After all, she mentions them quite casually, like a group that should well be expected to be seen abord a vessel.
It was therefore probably uncommon, but absolutely not sensational to permanently have some women abord. In regard to North American seafaring they can also be found on early 19th century US-Warships like the USS Constitution and the USS Chesapeake during transatlantic deployment.[10]

Final thoughts
Does this mean, there were hidden women everywhere? – Of course not. In fact, the entries on shipwrecks in the Courant mention all lives lost, regularly distinguishing officers, sailors, soldiers, boys, and women if present. Most of these reports do not include any women at all. So, it seems appropriate to conclude that seafaring, as suspected, was a profession mostly for men, and that ships as social spaces were for the most part exclusively male occupied.
But it would be a twofold mistake to stop here. For once, the reports in the Connecticut Courant directly and indirectly show women at sea. And there were surely far more than these sources acknowledge. Furthermore, it is not just about numbers. We know from many different sources explored on this BLOG, that the presence of even a single woman made a difference. It changed the social space of the ship, created conflicts and forced people to negotiate how they could and should interact with each other. On this, captains who advocated for the presence of women abord their ships and critics who tried to banish them agreed although they argued intensely if the consequences of having women present were good or bad.
And second, it would be very short-sighted to consider seafaring only as the practice of sailing or rowing a ship. The sources selected by Hinckley do not consider things like shipbuilding, supplying ships, loading or unloading cargo, owning or managing ships, taking care of crews in sickness or health, and many more activities that were obviously essential to seafaring. Regarding all these fields we find sources mentioning women carrying their own weight.
In the end, Hinckley’s edition of the Connecticut Courant is a great opportunity to understand how the type of sources we select shape the results of our inquiries. This is something to remember when further exploring the history of maritime women.
[1] Erik S. Hinckley. ed., Merchant and Naval Shipping 1764-1799. International Notices from the Connecticut Courant, Jefferson, NC, 2025.
[2] On the newspaper’s history see: October 29: The First Issue of the Connecticut Courant Published, at:
https://todayincthistory.com/2018/10/29/october-29-the-first-issue-of-the-connecticut-courant-published/ published 2018, accessed 12.10.2025 and also: The Hartford Courant: The Oldest US Newspaper in Continuous Publication, at: https://connecticuthistory.org/the-oldest-newspaper-in-continuous-publication/ published 2015, accessed 12.10.2025.
[3] Omission by S. Karstens
[4] She allegedly erected the first Christmas tree in Canada. See for her biography: Lorraine McMullen, “MASSOW, FRIEDERIKE CHARLOTTE LOUISE VON (Riedesel, Freifrau zu Eisenbach),” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/massow_friederike_charlotte_louise_von_5E.html published 2003, accessed 12.10.2025.
[5] Karen Hagemann: History and Memory of Army Women and Female Soldiers 1770s-1870s, in: Karen Hagemann; Stefan Dudink; Sonya O. Rose (ed.): The Oxford handbook of gender, war, and the Western world since 1600. Oxford 2020, pp. 176–200. Stefan Dudink / Karen Hagemann: War and Gender: From the Thirty years’ war and colonial conquest to the wars of Revolution and Independence, in: Karen Hagemann; Stefan Dudink; Sonya O. Rose (ed.): The Oxford handbook of gender, war, and the Western world since 1600. Oxford 2020, pp. 37–73.
Lynn, John A.: Essential Women, Necessary Wives and exemplary Soldiers. The military reality and cultural representation of Women’s military Participation (1600-1815), in: Barton C. Hacker (ed.): A companion to women’s military history. Leiden 2012, pp. 93–136.
[6]Miriam Bibby: Women on the March: Camp Followers of the 17th and 18th Centuries, at: https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/Camp-Followers/ published 2024, accessed 12.10.2025.
[7] Sowande’ Mustakeem: Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage Chicago 2016; compare: Jennifer L. Morgan: Accounting for “The Most Excruciating Torment”: Gender, Slavery, and Trans-Atlantic Passages, History of the Present, 6/2 (2016), pp. 184-207.
[8] Emily Salmon: Convict Labor during the Colonial Period, in: Encyclopedia Virginia. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/convict-labor-during-the-colonial-period. Published 2020, accessed 12.10.2025; compare Edith Ziegler: The Transported Convict Women of Colonial Maryland, 1718-1776, Maryland Historical Magazine, 97/1 (2002), p. 5-32.
[9] Margherita Desy / Kate Monea / Phaedra Scott: Women making Waves, at: https://ussconstitutionmuseum.org/2016/08/11/women-making-waves/ Published 2016, accessed 12.10.2025.
[10] Carl Herzog: Women On Board, at: https://ussconstitutionmuseum.org/2024/06/27/women-on-board/ Published 2024, accessed 12.10.2025.
OpenEdition schlägt Ihnen vor, diesen Beitrag wie folgt zu zitieren:
Simon Karstens (30. November 2025). Women at Sea – Findings from an 18th Century Newspaper. Identifying Maritime Women in the Age of Sail. Abgerufen am 15. März 2026 von https://doi.org/10.58079/158rr



