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Female Tars: Women Aboard Ship in the Age of Sail
Suzanne J. Stark. (Annapolis MD Naval Institute Press, 1996, 197 pp. $26.95)
Suzanne Stark has written a well-researched history of women who were aboard ships in Great Britain's Royal Navy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. She has uncovered the stories of many women like Anne Chamberlyne. Most of those who object to women serving on naval ships are unaware that there is more than a three hundred year old history of women on board ships. Official historians tended to ignore the presence of women and often the navy preferred to hide the fact. We are beginning to see books which attempt to remedy that lack. We have Linda Grant De Pauw's Seafaring Women which was published in 1982. Now Suzanne Stark brings us her well-documented and readable history of women on ships in Great Britain's Royal Navy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Separating fact from myth, she divides the women into three categories. The first consists of prostitutes, who shared the lower deck quarters with the sailors whenever a ship was in port (not...