BROWN, Martha
Smith Brewer (Mrs. Edwin Peter):
At the age of twenty-five, Martha Smith
Brewer Brown of Orient, Long Island, New York, sailed to the Pacific on the
whaling ship Lucy Ann. This was probably
at the urging of her husband, Edwin Peter Brown, as he had been obsessively in
love from the first day he glimpsed her, in early 1841. Despite being away
whaling most of the time, he had pursued her with letters and visits, and
finally she consented to marry him, which she did on May 23, 1843. According to family legend, it was with the
proviso that he signed the Pledge.
The ship departed from Orient on August 31, 1847. For two
months Martha was too seasick to write in her journal, but once started she provided
an eloquent glimpse into her daily life on board the whaleship: ‘it would be
useless for me to attempt to remember what the Capt. has found to occupy the
men on deck every day since we sailed: such a round of Coopering, Carpentering,
Blacksmithing, Corking [caulking], Pitching and Taring, Spliceing … Evry one is
occupied while I am snugly stowed away in the after part of the ship, siting by
an open window nearly two [feet] square ― sometimes sewing, sometimes knitting,
then reading, then attempting to sing …’
While everyone else was busy, Martha Brown was just a
passive observer, forced to entertain herself as best she could. On the Lucy Ann there were men ― the cook and
the steward ― who had been shipped to fulfil the ‘female’ roles of cleaning and
food preparation, so that while Martha occasionally recorded ‘making’ pumpkin pies,
what she was really doing was mixing the ingredients into the pan for the
steward to take to the galley for the cook to bake. Her only real job was to
provide company for her husband, something that he was often too preoccupied to
appreciate.
As she ruefully noted, ‘He was rather blue the other day
when he got fast to a large sperm whale and lost him. For my own part, I could
not win a smile ― then I recollected I had come a whaleing.’ Martha must have
been acutely aware that she was much more useful back in Orient, where she had
left an eighteen-month-old daughter. ‘Oh for one sweet kiss from my Dear little
Ella …’ she sighed. ‘At twilight, the hour for putting her to bed, I have no
other amusement but walking the deck, looking at the water, occaisonaly droping
a tear or two by way of relief to my anxious mind.’
A very pious woman, she devoted much time to perusing ‘improving’
books, praying with her husband, reading the Bible aloud to him, and writing
prayerful entries in her diary. ‘O that I might feel the worth of souls and
have grace and confidence given me to warn sinners to flee from the wrath to
come,’ she penned on Sunday 28 November 1847 — ‘We have need of a mishinary on board. We
number 31 in all, and not one, I believe makes any pretentions to religion.’ She
wasn’t confident enough to talk to the crew, even though she heard ‘[s]ome of
them say they would like to hear good reading’ — and was troubled, too, to find
that her husband was flogging his men ― ‘So Mother, you see I have very little
influence so far,’ she mourned.
It’s little wonder that she was delighted when the Lucy Ann reached Honolulu on 21 April
1848. Not only was she free to walk about on land again, but she could meet
other pious women and go to church. Unfortunately, however, she was five months
pregnant. Back on 18 October 1847, while admiring a spectacular ocean sunset,
she had romantically noted, ‘If quince grove and moon light night are
incentives to make love, surely moon light nights on ship board are doubly so.’
And expecting a child was to prove a huge problem, particularly as she was to be left on shore in the Hawaiian Islands to get on with it.
Her husband was an amiable man who jumped rope with his wife,
played the accordion, disliked having to discipline his crew, and was kind
enough to bring the ship aback and lower a boat to save a kitten that fell
overboard. He was tight with money, however. Back in 1844 he had gone off on
voyage without leaving her sufficient funds: as she wrote to him on November
1845, ‘rather
pushed this winter for money … I do inferior to either of my sisters and with
not half the independence for they own their own money.’
So Martha should not have been surprised that he left her with
insufficient funds when he sailed for the northern whaling grounds of the Okhotsk
Sea. But, where at home being poor was embarrassing, in Honolulu it was
intolerable. She could have passed the time pleasantly, as she resentfully wrote,
‘were my expenses less, and my circumstances different.’ Because Edwin had
given her so little to live on, she was forced to move out to the Nuuana Valley
― past the notorious stench of the town slaughter-yards ― to board in a
wood-and-canvas house belonging to John Paty, a retired shipmaster. She would
have loved to visit the missionaries and the other captains’ wives ― her
whaling ‘sisters’ ― who were spending the whaling season in Honolulu but, as
she wrote reproachfully to Edwin, ‘it is a grate effort for me to get down
town. I have been down three times in the hard cart, once of a week day, and twice
to church, and have been near sick each time.’
A week later, her emotions boiled over — ‘My Husband left me in one of the most unpleasent
situation a Lady can be left in, without her husband, and among strangers, with
the request that I would do my washing myself ― a thing wich no other American
Lady does, not even the mision Ladies … You also requested that I would not buy
any thing but what I positively needed … Oh, Oh, Oh, that I was rich, but that
can never be. But I beg of you, my love, that you will never place me as I am
agane, for I feel evry day almost that I reieve slights because I cannot dress
in silks and nice cloths. Before Mrs. Gray [wife of the captain of the
whaleship Jefferson] came I felt alone. Now I feel that in her I have a
true friend, although she far exceeds me in dress and show.’
Sarah Gray of Liberty Hill, Connecticut, was a seasoned whaling
wife whose husband had done so well that he could afford to be indulgent. As
Martha enviously noted, when Captain Slumon Gray had sailed, he had told his
wife ‘to try to take comfort and enjoy herself, and as far as money and credit
would go, not to scrimp herself. She,’ Martha added with emphasis, ‘is not in
circumstances.’ Mrs. Gray proved a true friend — unlike the missionaries. ‘Have receive very
little attention from them but do not wish to complain,’ Martha wrote, going on
to draw a rather surprising picture of the social lives of the mission people. ‘They
know their own affairs best, and they know also that I do not attend balls and
parties, neither do I wish to draw my amusement from such a source.’
Sarah Gray felt quite differently. On 10 August, Martha
helped her sew ‘a very handsome evening dress,’ which Sarah was to wear ‘to the
King’s levee. She is very dressy,’ Martha added; ‘goes out a good deal and
seems to enjoy herself, while I stay mopeing at home.’ In one of her bursts of
depression, she went on to wonder if her husband ‘did not love me well enough
to buy me dresses and the [means] to appear as well as she does.’
Martha’s major worry was how she would cope with childbirth,
which was now imminent ― ‘Must I be confined without my husband or one that I
can call my friend,’ she agonized on 20 August. According to the custom of the
time, not only did she need a woman friend to deliver the baby, but other
friends to provide nursing care for the next fourteen days, as it was
considered dangerous for the new mother to get out of bed and exert herself.
In the event, Sarah Gray provided all the support she
needed. ‘The boy is one month old today …’ Martha wrote on 27 September: ‘Mrs.
Grey was with me dureing my confinement and did for me and my child, as an own
sister would have done. She staid with [me] nearly two weeks. I dressed him the
day he was two weeks old … and I have a very good native woman who assists me
about taking care of my child. Does my chamber work and my washing, for which I
pay her 11 shilings per week … When oh when will you come, my love?’
The boy was two months old before Edwin arrived, and it was time to sail for home. Still mutinous at the treatment she had received, Martha wrote in the ship’s logbook, ‘Adieu to Whale-grounds and now for home and right
glad am I. And now my Dear, alow me to inform you that this is the last time
you are to leave, or visit these waters which to you have become familiar,
according to your own assertions. Martha.’ (March 28, 1849 entry)
Of course he did not obey her. He went to sea again, though
in a merchant ship, but to his fury she flatly refused to sail with him. This was completely against Edwin’s view of a
‘proper’ woman. In the back of the 1847
log of the Lucy Ann he had written, ‘There are many qualifycations in
A woman's character which renders them objects of love & admiration,’ of
which the first was ‘to make him happy by exerciseing A meek & quiet
disposition.’ That Martha was not exercising a ‘meek & quiet disposition’
was infuriating. In July 1853 he visited a friend in San Francisco, and wrote
to Martha, ‘I think he has got A real fine wife. She is modest & resurved
& perfectly submissive to his will, in fact she has no will of her own, his
will is hers, & tis her greatest pleasure to gratify him in all his
desires.’
Martha remained obdurate. Hard-working and self-reliant, she took in boarders, making an income so successfully that when Edwin arrived home he put another level on the house. Thus, he was able to retire, being described in the 1880 census as a farmer.
Captain Brown died in 1892, just a few days
after his 79th birthday. His instructions to his wife and family
were unusual, because of what he wanted engraved on his tombstone:
Who four times sailed the world around
363 days one voyage was made
And not once was the anchor laid
Along with sketches of a fouled anchor, a lance and a
harpoon.
His widow (for Martha outlived him by 19 years) paid not a mite of attention to this eccentricity. Instead, the gravestone carries
the simple, dignified inscription, ‘Capt. Edwin P. Brown, born March 8, 1813,
died Marcch 31, 1892.’ Martha had remained rebellious to the last.
The entire Brown archive is held at the Oysterponds Historical Society, Orient, Long Island, New York.
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