The Marietta journal. [volume] (Marietta, Ga.) 1866-1909, 1896-04-23
WOMEN OF THE SEA.
These Have Followed Lie on the Wave
from Choice.

l
] from Choice.
The sailors superstitious fears
that a woman's presence on ship.
board invites i'll luck have failed to
deter women whose hearts yearned
for tho sea from gratifying this de.
sire. The pages of the maritime his.
tory of the world contain the names
OF many matrons and girls in va
rious periods who, disguised as
men, have followed a life on the
ocean wave. The majority of them
not only proved excellent sailors,
but even fought bravely with cut
lass. pike and pistol against the foes
of their native land.
They did not even shrink from
sailing under the black flag, for the
English women Anne Bonny and
Mary Read Joined the buccaneers,
the typical pirates of the Antilles, in
order to gain booty to their hearts
content.
A German writer gives o mum Der
Of names of women who have gone
to sea, among which the following
are interesting:
Jean de Belleville, to avenge her
husband, who was murdered in the
year 1343 in Paris, fitted out a squad
ron of ships and ravaged the coasts
of Normandy, burned castles and IL
Illuminated the sea at night with
the glare of blazing villages. Jean
de Belleville was famed in her age
as one of the most beautiful women
in Europe.
Sometimes jealousy has sent a
young wife to sea in sailor garb.
The ballad of bold Hannah Smell is
known by all sailors. This woman
was born in London in 1928 and in
the course of time married German
sailor named Jacob Summs, who
squandered her little property and
then deserted her. To seek this
faithless fellow Hannah donned
mans attire and went to sea. Her
experiences during her quest would
ill volumes, grave and gay, tragic
and comic incidents alternated. She
served only on English men-of-war,
took part in numerous battles and
received several wounds. After
many years she had the news that
Jacob, in punishment for a serious
crime, had been put into a sack and
thrown into the sea somewhere in
France. From that time she left the
royal service, where her disguise
had never been discovered, and re.
turned in woman's clothes to Lon
don. The government granted her
an annual pension of ESQ for life.
She is said to have gone on the stage
afterward and acquitted herself ad-
mirably in sailor characters.
There are also high hearted wom-
en- who have performed many bravo,
heroic deeds while sailing the seas
with their husbands. Among them
Louise Dittmar, the wife of the cap
tain of the Prussiany steamer Edgar,
deserves the highest praise. On the
way home the entire crew, except
the captain and the helmsman, were
attacked with serious illness. The
two men undertook to attend to the
engine, while the woman stood at
the helm and steered the ship, and
this was done night and day, almost
without relief, for weeks. The
steamer arrived in port safely after
seven of the crew had died on the
passage. In this case the valuable
vessel had actually been saved sole
ly by the captains wife, for it is
difficult to estimate what the two
men could have done without her
aid. Captains whose shipowners for
bid them to take their wives with
them might aptly cite as an oppos-
ing argument the example of Louise
Dittmar.