Tunis, and both men were enslaved. Thomas, a relatively wealthy man , bought his freedom two months later, for the sum of eight hundred pieces-ofeight. Then, after blithely informing their captors that Ned had been first mate of the ship, and therefore should comma nd a much bigger ransom than the Turks had previously calculated, brother Thomas sailed off. Left behind, Ned worked in chains and ex isted on bread, horsebeans, olives, and water, haunted by the knowledge that "I had not the wherewithal to release myself, so that I knew not but that I mi ght a ended my days a slave under the hands of merciless me n; then the consideration of my poor wife at home, who had such an exercise with my troubles before, and now bi g with the second child ." Luckily, after five months of captivity , Coxere and the other English slaves were ransomed by a fleet of English frigates- and so Ned became a gunner on a man-of-war, fighting against the Spanish. He had the good luck to plunder a bag of gold ducats from one of their prizes, bu t thi s was stolen by a so-called English "consort" (comrade). And thus the months dragged by , with Ned existin g on hi s wits and hi s sk ill as a " lingui ster" (trans lator), and Mary somehow manag ing at home. Finally, after "I had been from England a year and a half, in which time I had been a slave with the Turks, a pri soner with the Spaniards," Ned Coxere arrived back in Dover, [with} only my clothes to my back to my poor wife, but poor and penniless yet glad to see each other in health again after these troubles. My son Robert died whilst I was a slave, and Elizabeth was born. I waspitiedbymany,[and] counted unfortunate. At this time my wife did begin to keep shop, there being a necessity for something to be done for a livelihood. Here ended this troublesome voyage . After such a long tale of profitless woe, it would seem logical that Coxere should swallow the anchor and settle to helping his wife keep the store, partic ularl y since her customers were seame n. Instead, however, Ned borrowed fifteen pounds "to fit myself with books, instruments, clothes, and a venture," and hied himself to sea again, shipping as chief mate on a ship commanded by Mary's brother Thomas-the same man who had let him down so badly in the Tunisian jail-on a voyage to Newfoundland fo r a cargo of "poor jack" (salt cod) . On the surface, Mary Coxere's story SEA HISTORY 85, SUMMER 1998
bears out the popular presumption that it was the regular thing for seamen's wives to stay at home and somehow cope until the master of the house returned. Surprisingly, however, Mary could have sailed with Ned. When they were first married, he was in charge of the ship 's gunroom, and in later voyages he was an officer, and so he had roomy accommodations on board. In fact, ship-owner John Tilly was surprised that he did not take Mary on voyage, or settle her in Amsterdam where he would have seen her more often. However, "it did not suit with me to carry my wife from her relations," and so Mary Coxere stayed behind in Dover, to keep the family solvent. Other men were more lenient, so that the wives of the boatswai n, the gunner, and the carpenter of any good-sized merchant ship often accompanied their husbands to sea. On men-of-war, the purser and sailing master often carried their wives as well, as did the cooper, the sailmaker and the cook. Thus, it is not as amazing as it might seem at fast glance, that in the year 1786 Richard Ireland , who was the quartermaster of the first rate ship Powe1ful, bved with hi s wife in the ship 's longboat. That is, he and she lived there until the day a certain Lieutenant Fry discovered them in their strange abode. Fry turned the unfortunate fe male out, much to her husband 's di sgust. "It's uncommon strange," Mr. Irel and sarcastically observed, "that my wife should be not considered good enough to go in the longboat, even though it's constantly employed to carry_" (pres umabl y whores). Obviously, though, most seamen' s wives did not go to sea. Like Mary Coxere, they kept the home fires burning throughout their hu sbands' long, uncertain absences-not an easy task. Elizabeth Linklater, the daughter of a sailing ship captain , once wrote, "It was a common say ing that when a sailor married he bought his wife a washing tub and a looking glass; and if she was too lazy to take in washing, she could look in the glass and see herself starve. " In New England, the myth still persists that the roof platforms built on seamen's houses were "widows' walks," where wives, daughters and mothers stood to scan the horizon for homecoming ships.
Seeing your family off was never easy. Women sometimes watched their husbands, sons and brothers leave on the same vessel, and tragedy could devastate a family . Painting by Ron Druett, Š 1998.
In reality, these were platforms where buckets of sand and water were kept, to put out the fires which so often happened when sparks from the chimney caught the shingles of the roof alight. Most, in fact, were not even in sight of the sea. The women of the portside communities of New England, just like their counterparts in Europe, were far too busy to waste time in promenading the roof, because they were keeping the household out of debt. This in itself was an invaluable contribution to the bu siness of ships and the sea, for these wives, daughters, and mothers were subsidizing seafaring with their labor. However, many played an even more positive part than this. The names of sailors' wives appear constantly in official records, applying for their husbands' release from French pri sons in wartime, pursuing debtors through the courts during both war and peace. Women were boardinghouse-keepers and tavern-keepers; they provided lodgings for the men who worked on the wharves; they supplied meals to the shipwrights; they sewed shirts and dungarees which they so ld to ship-owners and ship-agents for the "slop-chests"-stores of clothing that were sold to men at sea. Women featured in even the most staunchly masculine roles. In sixteenthcentury Dundee, Scotland, a woman ran a ship-owning business that was as extensive in its scope as any owned and managed by a male and faced exactl y the same problems. Her name was Agnes, 43