- Title
- Women's Networks among Seafarers in Newcastle
- Creator
- Atkinson, Justine
- Relation
- Journal of Australian Colonial History Vol. 19, p. 119-138
- Relation
- https://web-s-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.newcastle.edu.au/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=0&sid=f0773e3a-0958-4bc7-8d36-c2ff235f390f%40redis
- Publisher
- University of New England * School of Humanities
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2017
- Description
- The port city of Newcastle was home to families whose livelihood depended on shipping and the harbour. This article considers the women of this seafaring community — the wives and daughters of ships' captains and harbour masters who played a crucial role in building and maintaining networks of support, both for themselves and for their men, whose occupations often placed great distances between them. While the dangers of the shipping industry created a need for such support networks, it also provided solutions to which these women were quick to respond. This could be in both private circles that were traditionally their 'place', as correspondents and hostesses to intercolonial visitors; and in recently developed public circles, as active members of reform movements such as temperance and missionary societies. The seamen's mission movement drew on popular imagery of the seafarers' women on shore as part of its campaign to bring about spiritual reform within the 'sailor class'. For the most part, the women of seafaring families remain invisible in what was stereotypically an ultra-masculine sphere. However, the recently published correspondence of one Novocastrian family gives us insight into the workings of family and neighbourhood networks amongst middle-class seafarers, which allowed women to look after their loved ones in their home port, and ensure they were in safe hands when disembarking in foreign lands. When compared with endeavours in the public sphere to address sailors' welfare, their priorities and attitudes differed from those of women from merchant families reliant on but less directly connected with the sea.
- Subject
- Newcastle; women; middle-class seafarers; seafaring community
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1481799
- Identifier
- uon:50805
- Identifier
- ISSN:1441-0370
- Language
- eng
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