Joan Druett has put together fascinating stories about women that set sail with their husbands. Not only have their trials and tribulations been recorded, but first hand accounts from diaries were beautifully interlaced among the stories.

The illustrations are well done and I agree with other reviews in that it was a hard book to put down. The material was well researched and very easy to read.

Joan Druett's Hen Frigates: Wives of Merchant Captains Under Sail is a delightful book. Profusely illustrated, this largely anecdotal account gives the sense of life at sea during the age of sail from the woman's perspective. Because, however, so much of the hardships of sail belonged to the whole crew, Dreutt does not limit her writing to the wives, although much of her point of view is taken from several journals and diaries of these intrepid women. This is not so much a work of interpretative history or argument as it is a collection of delightful yarns. I found Druett a very pleasant and amiable companion.

Well researched and packed with information - yet it reads like a novel. Very enjoyable. Give us more Joan Druett!

I can guarantee that this is the best researched mystery ever written. I enjoyed every moment -- from the first moment of research to reading the ultimate result. A terrific book

I could not put this book down. The aspects of sailing and being a pirate added such color to the overall story. I had to have more of Joan Druett to read. She's simply a wonderful writer. I WANTED TO BE ON THAT SHIP!

In "Rough Medicine," Joan Druett continues the excellence of such previous works as "Hen Frigates" and "She Captains" in bringing to her audience everday life upon the sea when ships under sail roamed the oceans. Where these other books focus on women who found themselves on long voyages, usually with their husbands who captained the ships, this new volume of easy to read history looks at life on the whaling ships of the early 1800s. These ships left port in search of whales and did not return until the holds were full of their valuable oil. If the captain and crew were lucky, it only took a year or two. To be gone four years or even five was not out of the question. Ms. Druett tells this story through the surviving diaries and journals of surgeons who accompanied the crews on these long and hazardous voyages. Along with extraordinary eye-witness accounts of whaling methods, the reader is shown that to be put under the knife in those days of rough medical techniques was scarcely less dangerous than battling whales in tiny boats. A main requirement to be a surgeon, it seems, was to be strong enough to hold down the unwilling patient. Reading "Rough Medicine" will leave you thankful to be living in our modern age, while at the same time make you wonder how archaic our methods of medicince will seem a hundred years from now. In the meantime, sit back with this good read of a life at sea, as so many of us have often wished to experience. And be glad you have all your arms and legs, and that no well-intentioned sea surgeon has hacked them off. -Doug Kelley

A thoroughly engaging presentation of nautical history on the lives and times of the early ship's surgeons on British and American naval and whaling vessels. The drawings of the early surgeon's tools, the descriptions of the surgical procedures and the stories of illness and injury makes one wonder why did anyone sign on as a ship's surgeon? Very informative and highly recommended.

My angle on this book is from an avid adventure & exploration reader's perspective. I enjoy reading the exploits of Franklin, Shackleton, Cooke, and such sea borne explorers.

One of the constants of all of the fantastic voyages of exploration is the inclusion of a physician / scientist. Almost in cliche style these doctors play a major role in the direction and guidance of the expedition. (If you will pardon the comparison, most ships doctors seem just like Bones on Star Trek.)

This book gathers together the biographies, anecdotes and histories of many of these physicians into a conherent historical theme.

Great book!! (Very readable and accessible.)

"Hen Frigates" is such a specific book, one can hardly imagine the time and research it must have taken to pull it all together. Ms. Druett has compiled list after list, diary excerpt after diary excerpt etc. to transport us into days past. Even though the time periods vary with the womens accounts, the stories all seem to ring the same. Each wife suffered through the same torments of life on the sea, but also in time relished with her husband. This is an interesting fact as husbands could sometimes be away for three years at a time with ittle or no contact home. By allowing the wives to share in the shipping/whaling experience, their marriage became all the stronger, or all the weaker in some cases. It is so easy for we in the 21st century to take advantage of all the amenities we use in everyday life, but the brave women portrayed lived as the sailors lived...sparsely. Raising children is difficult enough on land, but to do it on a ship sailing the seven seas, must have proved to be near impossible at times. All in all, a very interesting book on a forgotten subject.

This book is a compendium of the experiences of 19th century women who spent much of their lives on board sailing ships. Largely invisible in naval chronicles, a not inconsiderable number of wives and daughters accompanied merchant captains of that time. These globe-hopping women and girls led highly unconventional lives. They faced everything from abject boredom to dire peril from pirates, mutineers and the loss of loved ones from illness and injury - yet managed to overcome almost every challenge.

The book is organized into broad categories of experience, and uses the womens' own words from letters and diaries to tell their stories. There are lots of thumbnail illustrations of shipboard life, too. All in all this is a fascinating peek at Victorian conventionality and how far women could go in stretching it while remaining firmly trussed within its bounds.

This is an outstanding non-fiction book so alive with detailed stories about women aboard ships that it reads like a novel. It discloses not only women's stories about long journeys, shipwrecks, and daily experiences on board, but how women served as navigators across seas around the world. A splendid source on 19th century sailing.

What a disappointment! I expected an adventure story with a headstrong, female protagonist with a mystery looming on the horizon. What do I buy? An adventure stor with a headstrong, female protagonist with a mystery looming on the horizon THAT IS SOLVED BY HER HUSBAND. Plus, how could Abigail fall in love with a man who has a terrible, ugly lust for her body? He never loved her, never grows to love her, yet she changes and becomes a model wife. It was sickening. Don't read it!

Whales breach, harpoons fly, blubber melts, canvas fills, sailors chant, and action abounds as Druett explains the complicated and fascinating business of whaling through the life of the title character, a young woman born aboard a ship involved in that dangerous, bloody, smoky maritime enterprise. The action travels from the wilds of Mongonui, New Zealand,(where Abigail and her father live and her father hopes to make his fortune) to the far more sedate and civilized New Bedford, Massachusetts, then center for one of the 19th century's most lucrative businesses. If murder, mystery, and mayhem weren't enough, this fascinating tale pulses with period detail as well. Written by the author of the very well-received Hen Frigates (named as one of the New York Public Library's "Books to Remember 1999"), Abigail was first released in hard cover by Random House in 1988, then again in paper by Bantam, both editions with covers that made them look like real bodice-rippers, which the book most certainly is not. Some enterprising publisher ought to option Abigail, out-of-print for several years now and release it in a nice trade paper edition sans the sensational covers. The book belongs in the genre of fine historical fiction, as in the writings of Iain Pears and Margaret George, both noted for their historical accuracy. Who knows, now that period films are back in fashion, maybe someone will option if to film and star Gwyneth Paltrow as Abigail.

I picked up this book recently and couldn't bear to put it down. I'm disappointed that I'm done with it! The characters were believable and interesting. They were an intrinsic part of a solid, suspenseful tale told at an exciting pace. The wealth of fascinating, historically accurate detail about the whaling industry in the early 1820s was woven artfully throughout the story. Ms. Druett does a great job of twisting the plot, so just when you think you know what's going to happen...it doesn't. A wonderful read! Highly recommended.

The whaling industry today is a controversial practice that has become a very public battle as the numbers of whales decrease globally. Whales today are often the objects of public sympathy as the beach themselves and volunteers work to return them to a sea they have apparently abandoned. Joan Druett brings readers a story of 19th century whaling when a young author named Melville had yet to write his classic, when whaling was a deadly activity in the best circumstances, and when it was murderous in the case of the Whaleship Sharon.

The author introduces her story by explaining what the lives of those who took these multi-years round the world voyages were like. She recreates 19th century Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, New Bedford, and Fairhaven for her readers. You will read of the family's that would wait for up to 5 years for a family member to return, and also those who might return after 4 or 5 years to find they had new children or even their wife had remarried believing her husband had been lost as sea. Ms. Druett also shares the details of the crew manifest, why fugitive slaves often were found on these ships and why many who embarked on one ship would return on the second or even third ship they had crewed upon since leaving.

The story of the Sharon is brutal by any measure. Captain Howes Norris was unfit to captain a ship over 150 years ago, and would be a villain in any year since then. Sadistic behavior cannot take place without the active or passive consent of others in authority, and those who were complicit had every reason to hide what took place and are responsible for this story's remaining buried for so many years.

The author does not sensationalize the events of 1841-1845; she takes the reader from the earliest hunting of whales by Native Americans to the spectacular growth of international whaling that needed captains that could bring in ships loaded with whale oil. Their ability to bring in this cash crop was what ship owners were interested in, not the personality, civility or the humanity of the man at the helm. There were far more ships than qualified men to run them. This shortage also explained the willingness of captains to fill their ships' compliment of crew during the voyage with men who had deserted from other ships.

The last book about whaling I enjoyed this much was, "In The Heart Of The Sea", by Nathaniel Philbrick. In addition to telling this tale the writer provides wonderful notes that can direct the inquisitive reader as far as they would like to go in further reading. This book's drama is created by men and not a whale that brought about one of the great survival stories in History however, readers will be well rewarded by spending their time with Joan Druett, and if they enjoy what they have read, happily this lady has several other books she has written.

Joan Druett's "In the Wake of Madness" joins the glut of recently published worksks about historical nautical disasters and mutinies that are lining the bookshelves these days. The quality of these books varies widely, but fortunately Druett's is both well-researched and well-written. The story of the ill-fated 1841 voyage of the whaleship Sharon is fairly grusome in its details. The ships's captain, Howes Norris, a respected member of the Martha's Vineyard community, became increasingly mentally unhinged, turning on members of his crew with savage fury. Things came to a head when he literally beat his cabin steward to death in front of the crew. Not long after, Captain Norris was himself savagely murdered by several Pacific islander crew members that had been picked up as replacements for deserters from the original crew.

All of this Druett recounts with prose that is elegant and highly readable. Throughout, she intertwines the story of the Sharon with that of Herman Melville, the "Moby Dick" author who had sailed on a whaling ship and was starting his writing career at around the same time. She describes the awful conditions that the whaleship crews labored under and throws in enough historical backdrop to frame the story.

If the book has a drawback, its that there were no surviving firsthand accounts of Captain Morris's death. Most of the book draws on never-published journals kept by two of the crew members. Unfortunately, both journals have signifcant gaps in them, which Druett attempts to fill with other contemporary accounts of whaling vessles. For the most part, she succeeds, though the book could also have used an illustrations section. At 230 pages of narrative, it is a relatively fast read.

Overall, an excellent work of narrative nautical history that will appeal most strongly to those who love good sea adventure tales.

Joan Druett's "In the Wake of Madness" joins the glut of recently published worksks about historical nautical disasters and mutinies that are lining the bookshelves these days. The quality of these books varies widely, but fortunately Druett's is both well-researched and well-written. The story of the ill-fated 1841 voyage of the whaleship Sharon is fairly grusome in its details. The ships's captain, Howes Norris, a respected member of the Martha's Vineyard community, became increasingly mentally unhinged, turning on members of his crew with savage fury. Things came to a head when he literally beat his cabin steward to death in front of the crew. Not long after, Captain Norris was himself savagely murdered by several Pacific islander crew members that had been picked up as replacements for deserters from the original crew.

All of this Druett recounts with prose that is elegant and highly readable. Throughout, she intertwines the story of the Sharon with that of Herman Melville, the "Moby Dick" author who had sailed on a whaling ship and was starting his writing career at around the same time. She describes the awful conditions that the whaleship crews labored under and throws in enough historical backdrop to frame the story.

If the book has a drawback, its that there were no surviving firsthand accounts of Captain Morris's death. Most of the book draws on never-published journals kept by two of the crew members. Unfortunately, both journals have signifcant gaps in them, which Druett attempts to fill with other contemporary accounts of whaling vessles. For the most part, she succeeds, though the book could also have used an illustrations section. At 230 pages of narrative, it is a relatively fast read.

Overall, an excellent work of narrative nautical history that will appeal most strongly to those who love good sea adventure tales.

In general this is a collection of stories of women associated with seafaring. Not all were 'captains', but that's not really material to the focus of the book, which is to provide the reader with ample examples of women who worked in the maritime trade (in one way or another).

The topics range from royalty and psuedo-royalty, to pirates, to wives. For the most part the women are of strong character and know what they want. Druett, writes well and the stories are entertaining and well researched.

People may think that the womens' movement began in the 1960s or '70s, but the ladies whose stories are told in this book prove that female empowerment was alive and kicking on-board clipper ships and at the helm of pirate cutters long before Gloria Steinem was a gleam in her mother's eye. This book tells the stories of numerous fascinating female buccaneers who could be just as ruthless as their male counterparts and hold sway over crews of male sailors. Even if you're familiar with Anne Bonny and Mary Read, you will learn about many of their lesser-known compatriots and their world. This is an intriguing study of women in a career that has been generally relegated to the male realm in popular thought.

Explorations of women's relationship to the sea are rare - but growing. This book is a valuable foundation stone. I know this because of my involvement in women's maritime history, which has become a new and important sub-discipline of maritime history. It has a home at the Women and the Sea Network (which I co-ordinate), based at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich UK. Joan Druett's book was the first to explore women on whalers - who were there mainly as wives and daughters of captains. I especially enjoyed reading about 'gamming' - the way these women gossiped with each other when they met, being rowed over to each others ships, dressing up, taking tea, exchanging presents. I also enjoyed her novel Abigail (Macmillan New Zealand, 1988), which is about a very spirited woman, daughter of a whaling captain, and her connections with the whaling industry, incl whaling lovers. Reading both books in tandem gave me a very good picture of women in that branch of maritime industry. Thanks. I loved them both and look forward to reading Joan's new book Hen Frigates, about women on non-whaling ships.