And after the cross-dreesed cabin boys and whaling wives? Possible futures for women's maritime historiography

Abstract

Women's maritime historiography, like the historiography of other transport forms, is an area that offers substantial opportunities for development using more conceptual and theoretical methodologies, such as Foucaultian notions of heterotopia and the panopticon. Historians can turn ocean-focused telescopes far beyond the celebratory discoveries of the rare individuals who did sail - such as cross-dressed cabin boys and whaling wives. By doing so they can fruitfully espy the social structures that produced particular seafaring, coastal zone and indeed transport practices. As a result, malestream maritime historiography and transport studies can be strengthened by increased awareness of gender, class, sexual orientation and race. This conjunction can enable the creation - by women and men - of an inclusive, profound and multidimensioned maritime history that understands the roles women have played in relation to sea life, how the gendered situations have been produced and how the particular inclusions of women and the particular interplays with masculinities have affected the whole, on land and at sea.