Japan-Nantucket (Rashomon): Episode 7 - Hen Frigates: Life was precarious.

Jim spent more than a year researching the Nantucket diaspora in Japan, so a lot was left on the cutting room floor. There were a few books that we couldn’t quite fit into the main story line that we’re going the discuss in a bit more detail.

First up, Hen Frigates by Joan Druett.

This is a production of the Nantucket Atheneum. It is hosted and edited by Janet Forest. It was researched, fact checked and co-hosted by Reference Library Associate Jim Borzilleri. Special thanks to the Berkshire Athenaeum for use of their space and Shire Video for production support.
 
 SHOW NOTES:
 If something piqued your interest and it isn’t in the Show Notes, please email info@nantucketatheneum.org. and include “Podcast Question” in the subject header.

• In addition to Hen frigates: wives of merchant captains under sail, Joan Druett has four other books in the Nantucket Atheneum collection. We highly recommend Petticoat whalers: whaling wives at sea, 1820-1920.  She has almost thirty books in the CLAMS and online collections, including several works of historical and crime fiction. 
  
  
• A thousand leagues of blue : the Pacific whaling voyages of Charles and Susan Veeder of Nantucket by Betsy Tyler is based on the remarkable illustrated journals Susan Veeder kept during a four-year whaling voyage with her husband, Capt. Charles Veeder. It also illustrates the preciousness of a mariner’s life as Charles apparently descended into madness on a later trip. 
  • (Betsy also joined us in 2022 for a podcast discussion about the creation of the Atheneum’s 1900 catalogue.)
• Eleanor Creasy and her navigation career is discussed in Steven Ujifusa’s Barons of the Sea, and in Flying Cloud: the true story of America's most famous clipper ship and the woman who guided her by David W. Shaw.
  
  
• Recognition of Emma Armstrong’s actions on the clipper Templar was grounded in acclaim for her father’s overall command.  The citation from the Board of Marine Underwriters of San Francisco is representative.
  
  
• Mary Ann Brown Patten replaced her incapacitated husband as commander and navigator of the clipper ship Neptune’s Car for 56 days. While she was slightly older than Ellen Armstrong, (nineteen vs fifteen), the First Mate had already been put in irons, the Second Mate had no navigational experience, she faced a mutiny, and was seven months pregnant. More details in the Feb 18, 1857, New York Tribune article is quoted here.
  
  
• As Joan Druett notes in her blog post, medical treatment on a 19th Century whale ship relied on the skills (and tools) used to kill and dismember whales.

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