Captain Ahab Had a Wife
Subtitle: New England Women and the Whalefishery, 1720-1870 (Gender and American Culture)
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: September 27, 2000
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 392
ISBN-13: 9780807848708
Subjects: American history: c 1500 to c 1800; American history: c 1800 to c 1900; Cultural studies; Fisheries & related industries; Social history; Women's studies; c 1700 to c 1800; c 1800 to c 1900; Ships & Shipbuilding - History; History: American; Women; Technology; History - U.S; United States - State & Local - General; Northeastern & North Atlantic states; Social conditions; United States - 19th Century; Social Science / Women's Studies; Women's Studies - General; Whaling; Agriculture - General; History; Massachusetts; New Bedford; Whalers' spouses
Description: "During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the whaling industry in New England sent hundreds of ships and thousands of men to distant seas on voyages lasting up to five years.

In Captain Ahab Had a Wife, Lisa Norling taps a rich vein of sources - including women's and men's letters and diaries, shipowners' records, Quaker meeting minutes and other church records, newspapers and magazines, censuses, and city directories - to reconstruct the lives of the "Cape Horn widows" left behind onshore."--BOOK JACKET.