Women in Boats - some Lighthouse Heroines

Old lighthouses can be spectacular and awe-inspiring, located as they so often are in remote and dangerous locations, and one can only have great admiration for the men who had to design and construct them in the first place, as well as those who came after and operated them: the keepers, their assistants and families who had to keep the light burning every night for untold years on end.
Before writing about lesser-known lighthouse heroines, one simply cannot avoid the first one to grab the headlines: Grace Darling who was, according to a florid poem much beloved of teachers in the British Empire days, "... an English maid, pure as the air around her, of danger ne'er afraid ..." and whose actions "... tell the wide world over, what English pluck can do ..."
The story of Grace and her rescue of passengers from the Forfarshire is too well-known to repeat at length here, although the bare truth is that she was just commandeered at short notice to assist in the rescue due to the absence of her father's assistant. She simply did what all able-bodied family members of lighthouse keepers were expected to do, and that was row the boat in an emergency. At first, Grace was not even mentioned in news reports but then somewhere along the way a hack journalist spotted a good yarn and he went into hysterical hyperbole about this virginal flower of English womanhood who boldly braved the fury and tempest of the turbulent seas to rescue near doomed souls with skill and dexterity that had no match, etc. blah etc. After she was awarded a couple of medals for bravery, the Darling family nearly went nuts with the ensuing publicity and being hounded by voyeurs and the paparazzi of the day, not to mention a proliferation of romantic portraits that looked nothing like plain Grace, as well as poems, songs, and product endorsements.

As with all good celebrity stories, there is nothing like dying young to ensure tabloid immortality, which Grace did at the age of 27, and the legend kept growing until it imploded under the weight of its own Victorian sentimentality. Even today, however, there are still tourists sucked in by the romantic and tragic story and drawn to Grace Darling's grave in the churchyard in Bamburgh, Northumberland.

Image: 19th Century engraving of children at Grace's tomb.

The Americans can boast a large number of rescuing lighthouse heroines, some better known than others.

Joan Druett's excellent book "She Captains" devotes an entire chapter to these women and there are several more works that can be searched via http://www.bookfinder.com/ such as "Women Who Kept the Lights - an Illustrated History" by  M L and J C Clifford.

One was Maebelle Mason, daughter of the lighthouse keeper on the Detroit River, who launched a small skiff and rowed a mile to rescue a drowning man. She was able to pull him aboard the skiff and row back to Mama Juda Island with the overturned boat in tow. Maebelle was awarded the Silver Life Saving Medal plus a gold medal from the Ship Masters Association for her heroics. More detail click here (scroll down to Mason).

A woman with a more impressive rescue haul than Grace Darling, was Kate Moore of Fayerweather Light, Connecticut, who was reputed to have saved 21 lives in her long years at the lighthouse. Kate didn't die young or beautiful enough to have become a legend like Grace Darling, but the nature of her hard life is reflected in her portrait, and her own summary of the lonely life of a child of a lighthouse keeper of the time.

"You see, I had done all this for so many years, and I knew no other life, so I was sort of fitted for it. I never had much of a childhood, as other children have it. That is, I never knew playmates. Mine were the chickens, ducks and lambs and my two Newfoundland dogs."
Image: Kate Moore (Bridgeport Public Library Historical Collections)

Not all lighthouse heroines were destined for a lonely, virginal existence. Abbie Burgess Grant who had sole responsibility for her father's light at the age of 17 during a terrible storm at Matinicus Rock, married another lighthouse keeper. In later years, she wrote:

"It has almost seemed to me that the light was part of myself. ... Many nights I have watched the lights my part of the night, and then could not sleep the rest of the night, thinking nervously what might happen should the lights fail.

I wonder if the care of the lighthouse will follow my soul after it has left this worn out body. If I ever have a gravestone, I would like it in the form of a lighthouse or beacon."

Abbie had her wish, or near enough, as a US Coastguard Buoy tender was named after her.

Another woman recognised by having a tender named after her and with an even more formidable rescue rate of 50 is that of Kate Walker, keeper of the Robbins Reef Lighthouse for over 30 years and second only to "Lady Liberty" herself, as the most famous woman in New York Harbour.

Although not strictly a lighthouse heroine, Canadian Abigail Becker was a regular rescuer from the shores of Lake Erie and is an exemplary example of the tough, pioneering 19th Century woman. Not only did she save 11 individuals in total (including one who had fallen down a well), she also managed to raise 17 children on her own. Her life story is available to read online at Internet Archive.

Image:Abigail Becker in old age

Perhaps the most famous American heroine of all was Idawalley Zorada (Ida) Lewis, who had a brief stint at marriage, but decided the solitary life of a lighthouse keeper was preferable. She was feted by presidents, popularised in the press and in song and dance, and awarded medals for rescuing upwards of 18 or more lives in the 39 years she was keeper at Lime Rock, Rhode Island, for which she was called "America's Grace Darling" and "Bravest woman in America".

Not only does she also have a buoy tender named after her, but she received the ultimate recognition in having the light she had looked after being renamed the Ida Lewis Light and her name also lives on in the Ida Lewis Yacht Club of Newport, RI.

A Rose Island by any other name

It would be interesting to research how many geographical features of the world that have been discovered by men are named after women: not royal or privileged women such as Queen Victoria, who probably heads the list around the planet, but after ordinary wives, mothers, daughters or sweethearts.

As much of the world was mapped in an age when even the most enlightened man considered women to be second-class citizens, the story of Rose de Freycinet is unique.
If her story were fiction people would call it romantic nonsense, but it is all completely true.
In 1817 she was aged just 22 when against all official rules her husband of three years, Louis de Freycinet, decided he couldn't bear to be parted from her so he smuggled her aboard his vessel Uranie which was to embark on a three-year scientific voyage into the unknown.
The only woman in a crew of 125, Rose had to face all the same fears and apprehensions of the men: the hazards of the sea, unfamiliar climates, tropical diseases, scurvy and dysentery. 

While Rose wasn't the first woman to have circumnavigated the world, she was the first to have left documents and letters detailing her experiences. Marc Serge Rivere's English translation of her journal, "A Woman of Courage", tells her story in detail and it is a refreshing change from the often dull and laborious expedition journals of men to have a woman's almost chatty perspective and to learn about bitchy women in Mauritius and greedy aristocrats in Hawaii, the hospitality of the convict colony at Sydney and hair-raising encounters with pirates off New Guinea. To top it off, there is even the shipwreck of Uranie on the Falkland Islands on her return to France.
Louis named a small atoll in what is now American Samoa after Rose, and the expedition's artist, Jacques Arago, said of her:

And in return for so much inconvenience, for facing so many dangers, for such deprivation, what recompense did she receive? What glory was hers? Alas! What did it matter to this brave lady, taken from her friends and from all her admirers at such an early age, that her name had been given to a small island a league in diameter at the most, to a sharp rock surrounded by reefs which we had discovered in the middle of the Pacific Ocean?

But Rose was happy and proud all the same:

It is done; my name has been linked with a small corner of the world.

For more about Rose, see talk given by Myra Stanbury
Woodside Valley Foundation


Original images of Rose and Louis in possession of de Freycinet family

 Photo of Rose Island by Phillip Colla

A Russian Countess from Down Under

Some of the best and most remarkable human interest stories are to be found in small publications that go unnoticed by the world at large and are often stumbled upon by accident. These are usually produced by family research or historical societies with the aid of local sponsorship or grants, or are self-published at their own expense by descendants. They can be a treasure trove of historical information and real insight into the lives and achievements of those who have been forgotten by subsequent generations.
A recent addition to my collection is a slim volume by Susanne Foster Atkins entitled "How a Red Cross V.A.D. Became a Russian Countess and Other Soldiers' Stories" *. 
It caught my eye largely because I have both a VAD and Russians in my own Atkins family tree and naturally my curiosity was aroused.

Much of the book focuses on the stories of the male relatives in Atkins' family, one of whom died during the Boer War and was buried at Umtali, Rhodesia (a place mentioned in an earlier blog) and another who died at Polygon Wood in France during World War I - their stories would be common to so many families who lived during those eras.

However, it is Atkins' Great Aunt Lil - Lilian Avice Foster OBE - who is unique and more than worthy of a prominent place in history.

Lilian was an Australian, born in Sale, Victoria, in 1870. Her father was a magistrate and during his time at Beechworth, he sat for the indictment of the famous bushranger, Ned Kelly. Lilian remembered Ned and his "black, beady eyes" and how children danced alongside him as he was to led to the Court House, while he pretended to shoot at them.

Lilian went on to study and teach piano and it was while she was undertaking extra study in Berlin in 1914 that her world changed forever and she never played piano again. She joined the war effort as a V.A.D. (Voluntary Aid Detachment) and after serving in London, France, and the island of Lemnos, ended up " ... as a Quartermaster of three hospitals under the British Committee of the Russian Red Cross". Atkins further summarises her Great Aunt Lil's achievements as follows:

"She is quite possibly the most notable Australian woman to have served in the Great War ... She received the British War Medal, the Victory Medal with an oak leaf for being mentioned in despatches, the Russian Orders of St. Stanislas and St. Anne, and the O.B.E. for service to new settlers when she returned to Australia [and] the Coronation Medal with an Authorisation letter from Buckingham Palace 1937".

It was for her work in Turkey with Russian refugees escaping from the Bolsheviks that earned her the highest Tsarist accolade from General Wrangel, the leader of the White Russian Army and Provisional Government. (Both of the Russian Orders carry personal nobility, thus Lilian was entitled to call herself a Countess.)
Lilian returned to Australia and continued with welfare work until she died in 1955. She was also a regular volunteer at Anzac Day Dawn Services in Melbourne.

* Published Colando Press 2004, PO Box 484, Hobart, 7001. Copyright Susanne Foster Atkins.

Bucket of Enlightenment

I must admit I'd never been aware of any women in the life of the Buddha until I read an online article from the San Francisco Chronicle about a new novel by Gabriel Constans called Buddha's Wife.

I really oughtn't to have been astonished that I didn't know Buddha had a wife, because all the major religions have been founded by men who needed someone to carry the buckets.

Aside from the popular overload of Holy Grail and Jesus-married-Mary-Magdalene-and-moved-out-West wacky theories and novels, the official stance is that Christ was a celibate bachelor who lived with a lot of other men and started a rather worrying tradition in the church about what happens to bachelors and enforced celibacy.

The personal life of Abraham has murky undertones - was first wife Sarah really his half-sister? - and then there's that deliberate desert abandonment of another wife, Hajar, and whose son in turn begat several generations that begat one Muhammed. And he in turn founded a religion but still had time for eleven wives, including one underage - something that might have been perfectly legal in his day but would now place him in the rock spider bracket.

So Yasodhara is not much different, just your typical neglected wife of a workaholic although it seemed she eventually found a kind of fortitude of her own, forgave her wandering husband and became a nun working on his cause: probably her only option.
It is really encouraging to see that it is a male author who has noticed her absence from the Western mainstream and has given her some recognition. Congratulations to Gabriel.

An Aussie gold medalist of a different sort

Following on from the previous post about missionaries, Australians in particular should know about one woman who doesn't feature in the Australian Women's Register and rates less than a single line in the Dictionary of Biography, yet her achievements in China and working with the blind in particular were monumental and for which she was awarded a gold medal ("Order of the Golden Grain") by none other than the President of the Republic of China himself, Hsu Shih-chang (Xu Shichang).

She was Amy Isabel Wilkinson, nee Oxley, granddaughter of Australian explorer, John Oxley, and was also descended from the infamous Reverend Samuel Marsden.

Amy was one of the first female missionaries sent from Australia by the Church Missionary Society to Foochow (Fuzhou), China, where she founded a school and worked at adapting the English Braille system for teaching the blind.

Two researchers, Ellen Hope and Ian Welch, have produced a wonderful document of her letters which is freely available here online, but they state that nothing is known of Amy's life after about 1903 which is incorrect. Through a good friend who has been researching Amy's famous grandfather, John Oxley, I have obtained a copy of an article written by Amy herself, in which she details her very busy charitable and religious work in England in the 1920s. In it, she also describes the ceremony in 1918 in which she received her gold medal. (Original article held by Berrima Historical Society archives.) Photo from the Hassall Family history, page 4

God's second choice

Missionaries have long held a curious fascination for me. I have never been convinced enough by any religion myself to have strong beliefs, but all the same I am full of admiration for their singlemindedness and dedication. I wrote an earlier post on Mary Livingstone who is one of the better-known missionary wives, but was in reality a female bucket-carrier, being first a missionary's daughter and then later a missionary's wife and not someone born with her own evangelizing fire burning within her.

Many other less well-known women went out into dangerous and forbidding territory and have been forgotten by history. Although she enjoyed somewhat of a revival in the 1950s after Ingrid Bergman portrayed her in the film "Inn of the Sixth Happiness", who today remembers Gladys Aylward? There are a number of sites that carry her biography. But, as is so often the case, sooner or later somebody had to besmirch her reputation and she was the subject of a controversial BBC documentary. This Chinese language website might have another viewpoint, and perhaps there are still some people alive today who were rescued by her who will be truly thankful for what she did.

"I wasn't God's first choice for what I've done for China…I don't know who it was…It must have been a man…a well-educated man. I don't know what happened. Perhaps he died. Perhaps he wasn't willing…and God looked down…and saw Gladys Aylward…And God said - "Well, she's willing."

Gladys Aylward

Josephine and the Porno Queens

Being of a certain age, I have seen many fads and fashions come and go and in my lifetime have witnessed huge shifts in standards of morality, social behaviours, the rise of equality for women with a corresponding decline of religious faith and, dare I say it, respect for others, common sense, and discretion.
While I believe some of those changes have been a very good thing, I have also seen the faltering of feminism and a new and rather alarming modern young female creature come of age.
She is simply awful, this girl of the Noughties. She's proud of being stupid, never heard of subtlety, never mind decorum. Her mouth is muddier than that of any trooper and she blabs loudly and proudly into her permanently affixed mobile phone about how she's such a cool bitch. She wears stretchy clothes several sizes too small that expose spray-tanned flesh and an excess of studs and tattooes. She staggers about on ludicrous strappy heels that Germaine Greer so aptly described as "f***-me's". Her hair is a sprawling mess that has never known control either. She boasts about how she binge-drinks every weekend until she vomits and has lots of casual sex with men she doesn't like, or even know. She fills me with despair.

If we could transport some of those early female reformers and activists of the Victorian age to our present day, I wonder what they would have to say about her? Apart from an initial rude shock and a good dose of sal volatile, I'm sure they would be in turns disappointed, sad, and ultimately infuriated to think that this example is what has been achieved by womankind after they commenced that first struggle along the long, hard road to equality. 

I particularly wonder what one of my personal heroines from that age, Josephine Butler, would think? Josephine was no stranger to hookers and I won't go into her work here as it is well-documented elsewhere, but I'm sure she couldn't possibly have foreseen the day when porno queens rule OK.

On the other hand, being the brave and feisty individual she was, she just might roll up her leg o' mutton sleeves and tackle the problem from a new angle. She could even decide that the poor men who have to put up with these creatures are now the victims and need saving!
The photo on the right is of a stained glass window commemorating Josephine in the church at Kirknewton, Northumberland, where she is buried (© Phil Brown docspics 2009)