JOAN DRUETT

In 1986 I was fortunate enough to have a Fulbright grant to research women on whalers in New England, and Hawai'i. I’d read quite a few journals kept by the enterprising females by the time I got to Mystic Seaport Museum, so I felt quite blasé when the tall blue-lined book that had been written by Mary Brewster, wife of the captain of the Stonington, Connecticut, whaleship Tiger, was placed on the desk before me. Then I read the first entry, and was riveted.

Mary had not only sailed in the same year—1845—as Mary-Ann Shearman, the lost girl of the grave, but she, too, had been disowned by her family when she made up her mind to sail! Mary Brewster’s family did not put up a gravestone to prove she was “dead,” which was lucky, because she survived the adventure, but they never had anything to do with her after the day she stepped up the gangplank.

Mary Brewster had a lot more to rivet me than that, as I found out very shortly. She might have sailed to be with her beloved husband, whom she called "the bright star of my existence," but she had an eloquent pen, too, and strong opinions, as well as the saving grace of a dry sense of humor. She might have been pious, but she was able to tell jokes about herself -- such as her humorous recounting of the time a reprehensible whaling captain came on board the Tiger to pay a call.

Not only was Mary annoyed at the interruption, as she had just sat down at the table to enjoy a plate of her favorite delicacy, oysters, but she disapproved greatly of this fellow, who, despite being married to one of Mary's neighbors at home, had a "fallen woman" living with him on his ship. So, Mary decided to take a strong stand. She stood up, "so prim," and flounced out of the cabin.

Was he embarrassed? Did he see the evil of his ways? Not on your tintype. He rubbed his hands together with a wolfish grin, and sat down and ate her oysters.

And then there were the skippers who, when at anchor in a secluded bay in Baja California, decided to go goldhunting instead of whaling -- anticipating the goldrush by a year, and in not quite the right place ...

When the publications department at Mystic asked me to think about putting Mary Brewster in a book, I was naturally intrigued. The job was to transcribe the journals, and write lots of footnotes illustrating what she wrote with extracts from other female diaries. It took me years, but the result was worth it. As the reviewer in Publisher’s Weekly said, “Mary’s candid and lively daily entries provide a wealth of detail concerning shipboard life and the whaling industry as well as a portrait of missionary life on the island of Maui.”

Not only did Sister Sailor win the John Lyman Award for Best Book of American Maritime History, but it is a beautiful book as well, doing justice to a woman who, without a word of doubt, was a Character.