Female Tars by Suzanne J. Stark

Author:Suzanne J. Stark
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781682472699
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Published: 2017-08-12T16:00:00+00:00

SOCIETY’S ATTITUDE TOWARD WOMEN SEAMEN AND MARINES

When a seaman or marine was discovered to be a woman, she was not reprimanded, let alone convicted and punished for having duped the navy by enlisting under a false identity. On the contrary, she suddenly gained the kindly attention of her officers. Previous to the revelation of her gender, when she was merely one of hundreds of seamen, she was below the notice of her ship’s commissioned officers unless she misbehaved, in which case she was severely disciplined. But as soon as it was discovered that she was a woman, the officers’ attitude toward her changed; they were fascinated by her and treated her with gentle solicitude, and often she was lauded in the press for her bravery and patriotism.

We have already noted the case of the woman seaman Charles Waddall, who was convicted of the very serious offense of desertion and ordered to be flogged.64 As soon as it was realized that she was a woman, her punishment was canceled, and the most exalted of her superiors, including the admiral and the commissioner of Chatham Dockyard, rallied around to help her. They even gave her money from their own pockets.

A similar case was that of seventeen-year-old Margaret Thompson, who entered the navy under the name of George Thompson at Deptford in 1781.65 A theft was committed on board her ship, a general search was made, and when women’s apparel was found in Thompson’s sea chest, the officer on duty assumed that she had stolen the clothes when last on shore. She was brought before the captain, who ordered that she should receive three dozen lashes. At this point she revealed that she was a woman.

The romantic, breathless style of the news report about Thompson is representative of such accounts: “Judge what astonishment pervaded the mind of everyone on board who little expected to find in the person of George Thompson a blooming youthful girl.… The resolution with which she performed the most arduous tasks, mounting aloft with amazing intrepidity in the midst of danger, even when the most experienced seamen appeared daunted, astonished everyone.” Although the public were entranced by the vision of a “blooming girl” dressed as a man scampering up the rigging, they wanted to be reassured that there was no sexual deviation from accepted standards. This reassurance was, as usual, provided in the form of the lost-lover theme: “Being questioned by the Captain who she was and what could have induced her to take so extraordinary a step, she replied her name was Margaret Thompson, she had left her uncle, who lives in Northumberland Street [London], to see her sweetheart, who quitted England three years since, and is now resident at Bombay.”66

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