She Was a Sister Sailor

She was a sister sailor." wrote Mary Brewster upon meeting another whaling wife at Hawaii in 1846, and indeed, these women were members of a pioneering sorority. Although a few whaling women preceded Mary Brewster, her journals of two voyages, 1845-51, now preserved at Mystic Seaport's G.W. Blunt White Library, offer us the earliest full picture of a woman's life at sea.