Evans - Silk Sails: the Women of Newfoundland and Their Ships

SILK SAILS

Women of Newfoundland
and Their Ships

CALVIN D. EVANS

100 Water Street P.O. Box 2188 St. Johns NL A1C 6E6
www.breakwaterbooks.com www.jespersonpublishing.ca

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Evans, Calvin D.

Silk sails : women of Newfoundland and their ships / Calvin D. Evans.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-55081-242-8

1. Women in fisheries--Newfoundland and Labrador--History.

2. Women fishers--Newfoundland and Labrador--History. 3. Fisheries--Newfoundland and Labrador--History. 4. Businesswomen--Newfoundland and Labrador-- History. I. Title.

SH224.N7E93 2008 338.372708209718 C2008-905007-XISBN

2008 Calvin D. Evans

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

Printed in Canada.

Let our sons in their
youth be as grown-up plants, and
let our daughters be as corner pillars
fashioned as for a palace.

Psalm 144:12

This book is dedicated to all
women of the sea in general,
and lovingly to two women in particular:

my mother,
Mary Jane (Lidstone) Evans,
who died in 1949 at age 42

and my mother-in-law,
Minnie Goldie (Waterman) Locke,
who died in 2002 at age 96.

Appendix A:
Other Newfoundland Women in the Ship Registers

Appendix B:
Women in the Conception Bay Plantation Book of 1805

Changes in the status of women during modern times the right to own property, to vote and participate in public life, and to choose their own careers tend to obscure achievements of individual women, and women generally, in the past. This has certainly been the case in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Calvin Evans performs a most valuable service by researching the historical role of women as owners of ships and fishing properties (rooms) in Newfoundland. Additionally this book is a significant contribution to the recent literature focusing on the role of women in spheres of life traditionally reserved for men.

Only recently has Newfoundland history, mostly written by men, begun to acknowledge the fundamental contributions of women in the settlement of Newfoundland and in traditional basic economic activities such as the fishery and shipping. Hilda Chaulk Murrays seminal work More than Fifty Percent: Womans Life in a Newfoundland Outport, 1900-1950 (1979) helps redress this neglect by showing that outport women were fully involved in all aspects of earning a livelihood in the pre-Confederation era. Calvin Evans now illustrates how women participated and shared more fully in other big events of Newfoundland life than previously known or perceived even by scholars of maritime history. He also identifies these women personally and in the context of their families and communities.

It could be argued that the arrival and continuing presence of women in the resident population played a crucial role in the successful establishment of early communities in Newfoundland. Among other influences, determined and resourceful women were collectively a major force, perhaps the most important, in ultimately helping undermine formal attempts to prevent and restrict the growth of a permanent population.

Historically, seafaring and fishing were activities from which women were normally excluded because of gender proscriptions, often codified into legal systems, related to property ownership and inheritance. It was traditionally held, for example, that women, the so-called weaker sex, were not physically or emotionally capable of dealing with the challenges of seafaring or coastal and deep-sea fishing, and therefore had no place on ships, in fishing boats, or at sea. Despite these norms and English Common Law generally (giving husbands almost unlimited rights over property belonging to their wives), there were exceptions and circumstances in which women did assume and perform male roles. It is these exceptions in the context of the Newfoundland fishery that Calvin Evans identifies, analyzes and describes.

Traditionally women had the acknowledged right to become owners or shareholders of ships when their husbands died without male heirs of sufficient maturity or suitability to assume these roles. Thus in eighteenth and nineteenth century England, female owners were most frequently widows who became temporary shareholders until any sons they might have were of age and experience to replace their fathers. In rarer cases shares were held by spinsters. Calvin Evans documents a much more complex pattern of female shipowners in Newfoundland. Although most were widows and spinsters, many were actively involved in fishing and shipping enterprises. Indeed, he found women in sundry roles as owners sole owners, joint owners, co-partners in trade (with other women or men), and managing owners and discovered it not at all uncommon for women to purchase shares as well as to inherit them.

Silk Sails explores thoroughly, from ship registers, court records, wills and deeds, and field research (interviews), instances in which Newfoundland women from at least the time of Lady Sara Kirke of Ferryland in the 1650s formed part of the owners (and operators) of trading and fishing vessels and fishing enterprises. In modern times women have become even more prominent in these roles. In 1949, for example, upon the death of her husband, Marie Smart Penny of Little Bay assumed the presidency of John Penny & Sons of Ramea and directed the operation of a major fish-processing company. In 1967 she was elected president of the Fisheries Council of Canada, thus becoming the first woman to hold that position. But there were many more women like Marie Penny, not as prominent, but nevertheless influential in their own respective domains.

In all, Silk Sails profiles more than 500 exceptional women who influenced the development, growth and maintenance of their respective fishing and seafaring communities, especially in Conception Bay, the Burin Peninsula, and along the South Coast. Their stories are well worth the telling and Calvin Evans does a splendid job of recounting them.

W. Gordon Handcock

Professor Emeritas, Memorial University of Newfoundland

March 2008

This book is about a piece of lost history: the knowledge that women played important roles in early fishing enterprises and made significant contributions to the early economies of the Atlantic region. The information presented in