June 28, 2018 Paintings of Captain George Seymore Brewster and his wife Mary Lockwood Clark Brewster were recently acquired by Mystic Seaport Museum.
The two paintings below are a recent acquisition via bequest from the estate of Barbara Snow Delaney, former managing editor of Antiques Magazine
Captain and Mrs. George Brewster George S. Brewster was from a family of seafaring men and two of his brothers also made their living as captains of whaleships. George’s brother William was also married to a woman named Mary who has become well known in maritime circles because of her writings as she sailed with her husband during his whaling career. And surprise! George’s brother Charles was married to a woman named…..Mary. Dinner talk must have been confusing when all three couples got together.
George S. Brewster, born in 1811, supposedly started his career in sailing vessels at the early age of 9, according to his obituary in the Stonington Mirror
George met an unusual and press worthy demise in August of 1882. He and his two brother captains were to be pall bearers at the funeral of their Aunt Lydia Chesebro who died at the age of 92. At this time George was a selectman of Stonington and after standing to say a few words about his aunt and her upstanding character, George went back to his pew, sat down, and died. His death caused quite a stir in the church and later in the community. His brothers went about the business of burying their aunt and then returned to the church to bear their brother back to his home where he was prepared for his own funeral.
May 17, 2018 This project was sparked when I came across a description of Marian Moore’s personal narrative in the Mystic Seaport Collections Research Center online catalog. I wanted to know more about this “melancholy” woman who presented as a man at sea, and the harrowing details of her experiences with cannibalism and shipwreck, but there was no … Continue reading "Shipwreck Tales: Melancholy Women Found and Lost at Sea."
This project was sparked when I came across a description of Marian Moore’s personal narrative in the Mystic Seaport Collections Research Center online catalog . I wanted to know more about this “melancholy” woman who presented as a man at sea, and the harrowing details of her experiences with cannibalism and shipwreck, but there was no digital version of the text available at that time. Thus, a partnership began between the University of Rhode Island and the Library at Mystic Seaport Museum which allowed me to collaborate with the Museum in an effort to make several compelling narratives of shipwrecked women at sea available to scholars and enthusiasts around the globe through digital access.
Below are links to the digital archives of some of the most captivating shipwrecked women’s narratives that I worked to make available in the spring of 2018. In my selection of narratives that focus on the hardships endured by women while at sea, I wanted to make more visible the gendered and moralizing constraints placed on women while on land and how voyages at sea, while dangerous, often presented the promise of a more negotiable and open space for self-definition. More broadly, I wanted to make narratives that have often been overlooked or neglected more accessible to a larger audience.
Marian Moore ’s narrative invites many ways to interpret Moore’s piece, from focusing on larger genre categorization (is this text truly a personal narrative as it presents itself to be, domestic fiction, a blend of genre?) to the provocative poetic disruptions which break Moore’s at times journalistic approach and at other times pathos-driven style of narration.
Julia Dean ’s narrative, touted as a tale of a “veritable female Robinson Crusoe” depicts the wonderful adventures of a woman who remained on an uninhabited island for nine years. Positioning herself as a novice writer and most certainly not an egoist, Dean recounts her acts of bravery, most notably the depiction of her wrestling and bludgeoning an amphibious animal’s throat.
Since the Father of Mercies has seen it fit to deliver her from “the hands of barbarians,” Mrs. Eliza Fraser feels justified in publishing her own captivity narrative in spite of her reluctance and fear of her “indifferent education” and being deprived of her husband’s influence and support. Her self-described “plain, unvarnished tale” depicts her suffering experienced at the hands of what she disparagingly describes as “savages”, an unspecified group of Indigenous captors, which she finally evades with the help of a thirteen-man crew led by Lieutenant Otter and Graham. In the afterward, the reader is told that “probably through modesty” Mrs. Fraser has omitted the account of the birth of her baby which drowns while onboard the rescue vessel.
Flora A. Foster recounts her experiences of being wrecked en route to Peru off the coast of Patagonia with her husband, First Officer Robert Foster while aboard the MARY E. PACKER, a vessel built in Mystic, Connecticut. As fate would have it, after surviving their time on Carmen and finding passage back to New York aboard the brig EMILY T. SHELTON, Robert Foster plummets to his death from the topsail when only 300 miles from New York, making Foster’s descriptions early on in the narrative of how perilous the “cruel partings, the months and years of separation, the long dreary hours of loneliness and anxiety, the constant, unremitting strain of heart and brain” to only be understood by those separated from “dear ones at sea” all the more poignant.
Caroline Stoddard’s diary details her train trip from Boston, Massachusetts to San Francisco, California to join her husband Captain Thomas C. Stoddard for a voyage to Australia. Of particular note are Stoddard’s descriptions of her natural surroundings. Her style of writing can be likened to the “very pretty sheets of water, lying so quietly many hundred feet above the sea” that she uses to describe Donner Lake. This focus on the pleasantries of nature shifts from depictions of the Salt Lakes and the Sierra mountain range to a more critical tone of her physical environment after she experiences a harrowing shipwreck. Having to spend five days in a boat before being rescued by the brig COMMERCE of Sydney, Australia deeply unsettles Stoddard, but she continually returns to a focus on descriptions of nature to soothe her anxiety as she finds comfort in the “large bushes of heliotropes” in New Zealand that remind her of familiar “lilac bushes.”
Contained within William Dorset Fellowes text describing the tragic events of the Lady Hobart is the inclusion of the curious particulars of Emmanuel Sosa and his wife, Eleonora Garcia Sala , who were shipwrecked on the east coast of Africa. The hero identified in the narrative is Emmanuel, while his wife Eleonora is also described favorably but also complicatedly gendered as “a woman of a masculine courage.” Finding themselves in a compromising position with a group of Caffres, the heroic Emmanuel fails to listen both to the advice he received previously from a king about the threats he faces in the region and the admonitions of Eleonora that Sosa not trust the Caffres. Eleonora alone resists the attacks from the Caffres and is stripped of her clothing. Refusing to be seen in a vulnerable state, Eleonora buries herself in the sand while Sosa wanders aimlessly in search of resources to rescue his family to no avail.
In the longest text that I digitized this spring, William Allen’s Accounts of Shipwreck and of Other Disasters at Sea
Marian Moore
Miss Julia Dean
Mrs. Eliza Fraser
Flora A. Foster
Caroline Stoddard
Eleanora Garcia Sala
Drew of the Sloop Nautilus and Others
Danielle Cofer is a third-year PhD candidate in the English Department at the University of Rhode Island. April 25, 2018 The G.W. Blunt White Library acquires a Mediterranean Passport, also known as a ship's passport, for a locally-built ship.
A recent acquisition by the Library has links to both the local area and our own collections. The document pictured below, a Mediterranean Passport, pertains to the ship ORRIS of New York in 1809. The ORRIS was built in Old Mystic with Christopher Leeds as the master carpenter. She measured 249 tons and was 87 feet in length. The signature at the bottom right belongs to the collector of the port of New York, David Gelston, whose digitized collection of papers is in our library.
Mediterranean Passport for Ship ORRIS According to Doug Stein’s American Maritime Documents :
“The Mediterranean Passport, commonly called a ship’s passport, was created after the United States concluded a treaty with Algiers in 1795. During the early years of independence, America was one of several nations paying tribute to the Barbary states in exchange for the ability to sail and conduct business in the Mediterranean area without interference..…the “Passport” would be recognized by Algeria and later by other Barbary states through similar treaties……
…it was a printed document, on vellum, that measured approximately 15″ by 11″. Centered in the upper half were two engravings, one below the other. Signatures of the President of the United States, Secretary of State, and Customs Collector appear in the lower right-hand corner. The United States seal is in the lower left-hand corner.”
A distinct characteristic “was the presence of a scalloped line of indenture across the upper part of the document which was used as a method of authentication.”
Although faded, you can see that our example has the signature of the President, James Madison, the Secretary of State, Robert Smith and the Collector of Customs for the port of New York, David Gelston.
