Sisters of the Black Sail

A Secret History of Women Who Loved Women at Sea History remembers pirates through men. Blackbeard. Morgan. Kidd. Rackham. Even when women appear, they tend to enter the story as exceptions — a disguised sailor, a captain’s lover, a woman who fought beside men and was therefore considered remarkable enough to be remembered. There was another history. Not enormous fleets or kingdoms powerful enough to leave monuments behind, but a scattered tradition passed quietly from ship to ship: vessels crewed entirely by women, appearing for a generation in one ocean, disappearing, and then unexpectedly reappearing decades later somewhere else. Aboard those ships, far from the expectations of husbands, fathers, churches and governments, women created something even more unusual. Lives with one another. Not every woman aboard such a vessel would have loved women, of course, but over time these ships would inevitably have become places where relationships that were difficult or impossible ashore could exist with surprisingly little explanation. A sailor might share another woman's hammock for warmth. A gunner might leave her wages to the ship's carpenter. A captain might keep the same woman beside her for twenty years. Nobody needed to name it. At sea, everyone already knew. The Daughters of Lesbos Eastern Mediterranean — 1540s The earliest stories concern a small galley called The Artemisia , supposedly operating between Crete, Cyprus and the coast of Anatolia during the middle of the sixteenth century. Its captain was said to have been Thalia Mavros , the daughter of a Greek merchant whose ships had been seized after his death. Thalia did not inherit her father's business. She stole one of his ships. Her original crew consisted largely of women connected to maritime households — widows of sailors, dockworkers, servants, merchants' daughters and several women who had reportedly escaped arranged marriages. The Artemisia was never a large vessel, perhaps carrying thirty women at most, and its crew preferred raiding isolated merchant ships rather than confronting naval vessels. But one peculiar custom became associated with them. Women joining the crew were asked two questions. “Can you work?” And: “Do you wish to return home?” If the answer to the second question was no, nobody asked why. Several later accounts describe partnerships aboard the Artemisia called adelphí desmós — sister bonds . Two women entering such a partnership shared possessions, earnings and sleeping quarters, and inherited from one another if one died. Whether the relationship was friendship, love or something between the two was considered the women's own concern. Among sailors, however, everyone understood that some sister bonds involved considerably more than sisterhood. The Wives of Saint Mercy Caribbean — 1667 A century later, stories begin circulating around Tortuga and Hispaniola about a brigantine called Saint Mercy . Its crew originated after a Spanish transport carrying female prisoners, servants and colonial laborers was captured during a storm. The men commanding the attacking vessel expected to sell or ransom the women. Instead, during the following night, someone opened the weapons locker. By sunrise the ship belonged to the prisoners. Its captain became Isabel de Rojas , thirty-eight, formerly the wife of a Havana customs official. Under Isabel, Saint Mercy developed one of the strangest marriage customs in our imagined pirate history. Crewmembers could declare themselves sea wives . The ceremony required no priest. Two women stood before the ship's company while the quartermaster tied a narrow piece of red sailcloth around their joined wrists. Each promised to defend the other, share her earnings and never abandon the other during battle. Then the cloth was cut in half. Each woman wore one piece tied around her wrist. Some unions lasted months. Others lasted decades. Isabel herself supposedly shared the captain's cabin with Marianne Duclos , a French navigator famous for arguing with her captain in three languages and kissing her immediately afterward. According to one highly questionable tavern account, their arguments became so legendary that new crewmembers occasionally placed wagers on whether an evening would end with Marianne throwing a chart across the cabin or Isabel pulling her onto the chart table. Apparently both outcomes were common. The Monsoon Sisters Indian Ocean — 1720s During the great age of European trading companies, another female pirate community appeared between Madagascar, Zanzibar and the western coast of India. Their ship was called The Red Jasmine . Unlike Saint Mercy, this vessel had no single cultural identity. Its sixty-woman crew included Africans, Indians, Arabs, Europeans and several Southeast Asian sailors. The captain, Asha Devi , was said to have begun her career working aboard a merchant vessel disguised as a young man before eventually organizing a mutiny with several other women aboard. Life aboard the Red Jasmine was considerably more organized than romantic pirate legends suggest. There were watches. Cleaning schedules. Food rationing. Medical duties. Weapons drills. Arguments over laundry. And relationships. Many relationships. Because voyages could last months, couples naturally formed aboard ship, separated and occasionally reformed with entirely different partners. Jealousy was regarded as particularly dangerous. Asha supposedly introduced a rule stating that romantic disputes could not interfere with ship duties. A surviving regulation reads: No woman shall refuse her station because the woman beside her has lately preferred another bed. Punishment consisted of an additional night watch. Apparently heartbreak was permitted. Missing cannon drill because of it was not. The Orchid Fleet South China Sea — 1810s By the nineteenth century, stories shift east. Along the southern Chinese coast appeared a collection of small vessels collectively nicknamed The Orchid Fleet . Unlike earlier ships, these women rarely considered themselves pirates. They described themselves as traders. Unfortunately, many governments disagreed. Their crews included widows, fisherwomen, smugglers and women who had escaped brothels or difficult marriages. Life aboard these vessels developed into small floating communities. Women cooked together, repaired sails together, traded together and occasionally raised children aboard ship. Partnerships between women were so common that some ports developed informal expressions distinguishing a woman's shore husband from her sea companion . One captain became particularly famous in the chronicles. Lin Meiying , captain of the Golden Orchid , lived with her navigator Zhao Lian for twenty-seven years. Visitors occasionally assumed Zhao was simply an officer. The crew never made that mistake. When an official once asked Captain Lin whether Zhao was her servant, Lin answered: “No. I usually obey her.” The Velvet Cutlasses Mediterranean and North African Coast — 1870s By the late nineteenth century, piracy was becoming increasingly difficult. Steamships were faster. Navies were stronger. Ports were better controlled. So the female pirate tradition changed. The Velvet Cutlasses became smugglers rather than raiders. Their schooner, La Victoire , moved jewelry, weapons, alcohol, letters, fugitives and occasionally people who desperately needed to disappear. The crew became known for something previous generations of pirates would have found rather extravagant. Fashion. Corseted jackets. Silk waistcoats. Tailored trousers. Long skirts when entering respectable ports. And boots polished to a mirror shine. Captain Élodie Marchand , a French-Algerian smuggler in her early forties, reportedly insisted that being wanted by three governments was no excuse for looking badly dressed. Her partner, Samira Ben Youssef , served as ship's surgeon. They had been together for sixteen years. In Marseille they rented adjoining rooms. In Tunis they pretended to be cousins. In Malta they occasionally claimed to be widows. At sea they bothered pretending to be nothing. Their cabin had one bed. Everyone aboard knew whose bed it was. The Last Black Sail Atlantic — 1912 The final chapter of the tradition belongs to The Persephone . By 1912 there were wireless radios, steam-powered patrol ships and international shipping companies capable of tracking cargo across oceans. The age of sail had nearly ended. So had piracy as the women aboard Persephone understood it. Its captain, Eleanor Shaw , forty-six, had grown up hearing stories from an aunt who claimed to have sailed with the Velvet Cutlasses. Whether those stories were true hardly mattered. Eleanor believed them. Her crew of twenty-two women operated between the Caribbean, West Africa and Europe, transporting contraband and occasionally helping women escape situations they could not legally escape themselves. Persephone became less a pirate vessel than a moving refuge. Among its crew were several couples, including engineer Ruth Bell and deck officer Amélie Fournier , who had lived together for eleven years. They owned almost nothing individually. Their savings were shared. Their cabin was shared. Their plans for retirement were shared. Nobody aboard used the word lesbian very often. They simply called them Ruth and Amélie. When Persephone was finally sold in 1914, the crew gathered on the dock for one final photograph. There are twenty-two women in the picture. Several are standing with arms around one another. Two women are holding hands. Captain Shaw sits in the center. Beside her sits another woman whose name has been lost. Their chairs are touching. So are their shoulders. A History That Could Have Hidden Easily History has never been particularly good at remembering people who had reasons not to be remembered. Sailors vanished between ports, names changed with borders, ships were renamed after capture, records burned, captains lied to officials, and entire crews could disappear into another ocean carrying little more than the stories told about them in taverns years later. For women, the gaps were even larger. A woman who went to sea might appear in one document as a widow, in another as a servant, somewhere else as a passenger, and perhaps nowhere at all under the name by which her shipmates knew her. The woman who shared her cabin, inherited her possessions, waited for her in port or stood beside her during battle might be described simply as a companion, a friend, a cousin or not mentioned at all. That silence leaves enormous spaces between the surviving facts. And the sea was unusually good at creating spaces in which ordinary rules became less useful. Aboard ship, competence mattered quickly. Someone had to steer through a storm, repair a torn sail, calculate a position, load a cannon, treat an infected wound and decide whether the vessel should run or fight. Whatever expectations waited on shore became considerably less important when the woman beside you was the reason the mast was still standing. Relationships would have developed in the same practical fashion. Two women sharing a watch might begin sharing meals. Two women sharing a cabin might begin sharing money. One might wait anxiously beside the hatch while the other returned from a raid. Arguments would happen. Jealousies would happen. Breakups would happen. And somewhere between ports, two women might quietly realize that the life they had accidentally created together was the first one either of them had ever been allowed to choose. Perhaps that was the greatest freedom such ships could offer. Not treasure. Not adventure. Not even escape. Choice. The choice of where to sail, whom to follow, whom to trust and whom to love. Governments would have called them smugglers, pirates, fugitives or criminals. Merchants would have cursed them. Naval officers would have hunted them. Tavern storytellers would have exaggerated them. But aboard their own decks they might have used much simpler words. Captain. Navigator. Gunner. Carpenter. Shipmate. Lover. Wife. And perhaps, somewhere beyond the reach of the official histories written ashore, there really was no need for any greater explanation. The sails filled. The harbor disappeared behind them. And for a little while, the world belonged entirely to the women aboard. Fiction Notice: This article is a work of historical imagination. The ships, captains, crews, relationships, events and traditions described above are fictional and were created as a “what-if” exploration inspired by the real history of piracy and women at sea. It should not be interpreted as a factual historical account.