Reviews for Captain Ahab Had a Wife: New England Women and the Whalefishery, 1720-1870

The average rating for Captain Ahab Had a Wife: New England Women and the Whalefishery, 1720-1870 based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-02-16 00:00:00 Robert Lagomarsino An excellent book for learning very detailed accounts of what middle-class women did while their husbands/fathers/sons went "a-whaling" during the 18th and 19th centuries. (However, I found it helpful to have read another book about whaling in general first.) Norling only covers the prime time of the whaling industry without going to much into why it stopped around 1870 and how it affected the women (and men). I would also have liked to know more about divorces or remarriage. When could a woman remarry if her husband had gone to sea and was gone for years (never knowing if he would return)? And if a husband came back and found his wife remarried, what happened? A look at the poorer sailors would have been good too, even though I realize this portion of the population is much harder to study. A lot of her focus was on the middle-class and of the wives of the captains. Would the ship owners, families, and social circles have been as supportive of the "regular" sailors?

Review # 2 was written on 2015-08-02 00:00:00 Paul Torchia the book is comprehensive as fuck. Norling did extensive research to write this. It is a good read if you are at all interested in understanding what the east coast/Atlantic seaboard communities were like over a span of 150 years when america was young. The voices of women tell a different story than what you are used to.