Domestic Labor on Ships and on Shore in the Industrializing Great Lakes of North America

What is it about?

Miss Lydia Dale died in a shipwreck on Lake Huron while employed to cook on the cargo schooner J.H. Hartzell in 1880. The fragments of Dale’s life and those 400 other women identified in this study reveal a dynamic interplay of economic, technological, and cultural forces associated with the inclusion and exclusion of women from shipboard employment, and reveal overlooked intersections between urban and maritime labour systems in the Great Lakes region. Reconstructing and contextualizing Dale's story sheds light on the experiences and historical significance of thousands of now-forgotten women employed on Great Lakes cargo vessels between 1850 and 1930.

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Photo by NOAA on Unsplash

Photo by NOAA on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This article presents a major revision of the history of women's paid labor at sea in North America. It describes previously unrecognized linkages between the history of women's domestic labor on land and on ships in the North American Great Lakes region.