We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Petticoat Whalers

from So Ends This Day by éilís kennedy

/

  • Buy the Full Digital Album

  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    A great sounding treat ! All lyrics and notes on the sleeve
    I will also include handwritten lyrics to When I Sleep , with your vinyl order ❤️❤️

    Includes unlimited streaming of So Ends This Day via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 2 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      €18 EUR or more 

     

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Comes in a shrink wrapped gatefold case with an accompanying booklet insert . Includes imaginative and delicate original artwork by Brenda Friel , all lyrics and translations , background on each track and a bibliography.

    Includes unlimited streaming of So Ends This Day via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 2 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      €15 EUR or more 

     

about

This is from a book called “ She Went A-Whaling” and is “ the journal of Martha Smith Brewer Brown . Around the world on the whaling ship Lucy-Ann , 1847 -1849 “

This book provides a vivid and human insight into the boredom , dangers , anxiety and fears of a wife who accompanies her husband on a whaling voyage and more so of the deep-rooted faith in a rather harsh Almighty which marked hers and the lives of her contemporaries . Oysterponds is on the tip of Long island’s North Fork .
During this long voyage she was separated from her young daughter whom she left in care of relatives at home. Her diary entry on May 11th 1848 , her daughter’s birthday , reads:
“ that precious little one , she has if alive ,commenced the fourth year of her earthly existence “ .
A fairly common practice was for ships to pull alongside one another so that the captains and families could do some socialising . All ships would have flags identifying their owners’ name and port . A gamming chair would be hoisted aloft to carry them across to the neighbouring vessel . This must have been a great respite from the daily routine and a chance to compare and possibly gossip as well as an opportunity to exchange letters and news of home .
Martha was left on shore in Honolulu, where her son William was born while her husband Edwin embarked on a further seven-month season in the Okhotsk Sea . This was not an easy time for her , judging by her journal.

The voyage was a profitable one for the ship’s owners - Wiggins , Parsons and Cook – returning with 2280 barrels of whale oil . But those were not easy times ; the little boy only survived a few short years after they returned. Martha , in a letter to her family wrote “ with my own hands , I washed him and pined him in his winding sheet .. on Christmas Eve , a sad one for us “ and enclosed a lock of his hair .
The book has an introduction by the remarkable Joan Druett , who has written widely about women at sea and coined the term “Petticoat whalers “ to describe women aboard whaling ships. The Lucy Ann in this song would have been a “ Hen frigate “ which was any ship with the captain’s wife on board.
Note Martha’s husband’s name was Captain Edwin Brown, but I have called him Smith for poetic reasons !

lyrics

2.Petticoat Whalers Lucy Ann 1847-1849

Words and Music : Eilís Kennedy


Captain Smith on his whaling voyage
Fair Martha had his heart beguiled
From every port that he touched in
He’d send a note, her heart to win

From Oysterponds to the Azores
From the Cape to Honolulu’s shores
Martha Brown the Captain’s wife
She has embraced seafaring life!

Chorus:
On land men toil from sun to sun
And woman’s work is never done
Petticoat whalers take a turn
Upon the ocean blue

From time to time upon the sea
They’d gam with a ship for company
They dined aboard the ship “Peru”
Roast pig, some pie and cheeses too

In raging seas when winds did blow
In her queasy cabin down below
Her journal filled each passing day
A time to write, a time to pray

Chorus
Home at last, from two years voyage
With Edwin and their dear wee boy
The cargo of the “Lucy Ann”
Three thousand barrels of whale oil

Martha Smith Brewer Brown
She sailed the mighty world around
On a whaling ship of high renown
They called the “Lucy Ann”

credits

from So Ends This Day, track released June 18, 2020
Music & Lyrics : Eilis kennedy
Performed by
Eilis kennedy
Gerry O’ Beirne : tenor ukuleles and Shonky tricone 4 string guitar Trevor Hutchinson : Bass

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

éilís kennedy image

éilís kennedy Dingle, Ireland

Singing , writing , composing ,learning, teaching.
,Amhráin , Béarla & Gaelainn from the South-West of Ireland.

New Album 'So Ends this day' out now

contact / help

Contact éilís kennedy

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this track or account

If you like éilís kennedy, you may also like:

Bandcamp Daily  your guide to the world of Bandcamp

On Bandcamp Radio

Seafood Sam joins the show to discuss his newest album, " Standing On Giant Shoulders".
listen now