Precursors of Women Seafarers in the Western Maritime History: Seafaring Heroines as Navigators and Lighthouse Keepers

抄録

From earliest times, the maritime world was recognized as a male domain. This tendency still persists into the present day. However, the impression that it is a man’s world has been caused by a stereotype for shipping in the social ideology that suggests that the gender difference between men and women is an overreaction in the maritime world. In fact, recent studies show that a number of women went to sea in the past. For examples, Western captains and chief officers were often accompanied by their wives. Even more surprisingly in some emergency cases, for example, when captains fell ill, some wives took in charge of the ships on behalf of their husbands and crew. Women at sea from the 17^th century to the 19^th century could be divided into two categories: women who accompanied their fathers or husbands, and women who made volitional decisions to go to sea as self-subsistent seafarers and not as members of a family protected by males. Especially, I examine the former examples in this paper: Mary Patten, Grace Darling, and Ida Lewis. All of them have gained the art of navigation, commanding a ship, and rescuing many lives, as seafaring women or lighthouse keepers. The conclusion is that some women, like men, chose to live life under sail and in many cases with associated challenges with courage and forbearance. In this paper, I analyze the gender convention in the maritime world in the early maritime history.