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Hen Frigates: Wives of Merchant Captains Under Sail

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Joan Druett has put together fascinating stories about women that set sail with their husbands. Not only have their trials and tribulations been recorded, but first hand accounts from diaries were beautifully interlaced among the stories.

The illustrations are well done and I agree with other reviews in that it was a hard book to put down. The material was well researched and very easy to read.

Joan Druett's Hen Frigates: Wives of Merchant Captains Under Sail is a delightful book. Profusely illustrated, this largely anecdotal account gives the sense of life at sea during the age of sail from the woman's perspective. Because, however, so much of the hardships of sail belonged to the whole crew, Dreutt does not limit her writing to the wives, although much of her point of view is taken from several journals and diaries of these intrepid women. This is not so much a work of interpretative history or argument as it is a collection of delightful yarns. I found Druett a very pleasant and amiable companion.

Those of us accustomed to the luxuries of modern life will surely appreciate them even more after reading this mesmerizing book! These women who sailed with their husbands had a hard life, one which few of us would choose today to pursue. This book was hard to put down, and I stayed up very late to finish it. Top-notch and well-researched.

Well researched and packed with information - yet it reads like a novel. Very enjoyable. Give us more Joan Druett!

This Amazon book won the John Lyman Award for the Best Book of American Maritime History because it permits the reader to learn about sailing the seas in the early 1800's from womens experiences. The author has used many resources chief among them being historical letters and diaries of new brides and wives of frigate sea captains. Life at sea, isolation, elation just seeing or "speaking" to another passing frigate, along with the captains need to practice medicine on board, including helping his wife giving birth at sea and her raising children among the conduct of a crew of seamen are eye witness accounts. Would you like your four year old to climb the rigging of a tall ship?

Numerous wives learned navigation skills better than many first mates. Some had to commandeer the ship if her husband was ill, injured or died. Animals and conditions on-board, types of cargos, disease, storms, injuries and deaths all intermingle in the high adventure on old masted sailing ships. The world fleet of independently owned sailing frigates networked the global seaports together with trade goods delivered upon fate's willingness and unexpected risks including the weather.

The 1800s era of the global cargo delivery system was by chance; 100 years before some normality was acheived by steamships, and 200 years before UPS & FedX effiency. The anticipated social events in foreign harbors and ports cross-culturally educated the captain's wives. Inturn this book's recorded experiences of the wives provides reader fascination. So much so, when told to family and friends back home, the wives that survived life at sea kept their listeners spellbound and sometimes agast as you may be as you read this very interesting and historically factual book.