This book contributes to what has recently been called a 'new social history of seafaring'. This new maritime history places sailors themselves at the center, not the periphery, of the maritime past, and explores ways that the history of the sea and the history of the shore have intersected. It differs from traditional accounts which celebrate exotic trades, powerful merchants, maritime technologies, and military exploits. Drawn on the evidence of nearly two hundred ship logs and sailors' diaries, Rites and Passages examines American whalemen at the height of the whaling industry in the 1800s and argues that whaling life and culture was shaped by both the American mainland and by the exigencies of ocean life. Unlike other published accounts of seafaring, this work brings gender into the maritime equation, not only with a discussion of the ways that women figured in this male world, but also with an examination of the ways that seafaring served as a rite of passage into manhood.

From the voyage of the Argonauts to the Tailhook scandal, seafaring has long been one of the most glaringly male-dominated occupations. In this groundbreaking interdisciplinary study, Margaret Creighton, Lisa Norling, and their co-authors explore the relationship of gender and seafaring in the Anglo-American age of sail. Drawing on a wide range of American and British sources--from diaries, logbooks, and account ledgers to songs, poetry, fiction, and a range of public sources--the authors show how popular fascination with seafaring and the sailors' rigorous, male-only life led to models of gender behavior based on "iron men" aboard ship and "stoic women" ashore.

Yet "Iron Men, Wooden Women" also offers new material that defies conventional views. The authors investigate such topics as women in the American whaling industry and the role of the captain's wife aboard ship. They explore the careers of the female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read, as well as those of other women--"transvestite heroines"--who dressed as men to serve on the crews of sailing ships. And they explore the importance of gender and its connection to race for African American and other seamen in both the American and the British merchant marine. Contributors include both social historians and literary critics: Marcus Rediker, Dianne Dugaw, Ruth Wallis Herndon, Haskell Springer, W. Jeffrey Bolster, Laura Tabili, Lillian Nayder, and Melody Graulich, in addition to Margaret Creighton and Lisa Norling.

Traditional accounts of whaling celebrate exotic locales and dangerous exploits but shed little light on the lives of the men who went to sea. Rites and Passages places sailors at the center of a social history of whaling and explores the ways in which the history of the sea and the history of the shore have intersected. Drawing on the evidence of ship logs and sailors' letters and journals, Margaret S. Creighton examines American whalemen during the industry's peak--the mid-nineteenth century--and argues that whaling life and culture were shaped by both the American mainland and by the exigencies of ocean life. Unlike other accounts of seafaring, this work brings gender into the maritime equation, not only with a discussion of the ways that women figured in this male-dominated world, but also with an examination of the ways that seafaring served as a rite of passage into manhood. Professor of History at Bates College, Margaret Creighton is the author of Dogwatch and Liberty Days: Seafaring Life in the 19th Century and co-editor of Iron Men and Wooden Women: Gender and Maritime History. She has been guest curator at The Peabody Museum of Salem and the U.S.S. Constitution Museum of Boston.