Beyond Bleeding and Blistering
Until the twentieth century, with a few notable exceptions, there was little science involved in the practice of medicine. Yet there were some attempts made to save the lives of [...]
Books that guided and inspired Patricia MacPherson
Thanks to Lisa Goodwin, the Women who Sail New England and the Between the Lines Book Club for inviting me to your discussion of The Surgeon's Mate! As promised, here [...]
Sea Voyages Gone Badly
Don't get on that ship! The Bounty, Essex, Pequod, Titanic, Andrea Gail, Sea Wind, Lucky Dragon -- these are names of doomed ships, the epitome of sea voyages gone badly. [...]
Trafalgar Chronicle
Beyond Lady Barbara; Women as Portrayed in British Naval Fiction by Linda Collison This is the unedited draft of an article that first appeared in the November 2020 issue of [...]
Fanny Palmer Austen, Navy Wife
Navy Wives Aboard British Warships A critique of Jane Austen’s Transatlantic Sister; The Life and Letters of Fanny Palmer Austen Jane Austen was a social realist in portraying everyday life [...]
John Nichol, mariner and memoirist.
John Nichol, mariner. I would have liked to have known him. Re-reading his episodic memoir (I first read it at sea on a Pacific voyage - the same waters he [...]
Women Aboard!
Women have always been aboard ship. As passengers, girlfriends, and wives. As sailors, surgeons, nurses, helmsmen, and shipmasters. Women aboard — I got caught up in the history back in [...]
Herstory: Seawomen of Iceland
To visit Reykjavik's Maritime Museum you would think there were no seawomen in Iceland's history. (As of November, 2017, that is.) I first came across the mention of Icelandic female [...]
Iceland’s Immigrant Song
Iceland's original immigrant song may have been the poems composed by the helmsmen and women of the open rowboats, to aid them in remembering choice fishing spots. The first immigrants [...]
Women on board
Transgenders serving on ships is nothing new. I’ve long been interested in women on ships in the Age of Sail -- particularly women posing as men, passing as men, doing [...]