July 23, 2014 • 34 mins
The earliest seafaring women had to disguise themselves as men just to be allowed aboard ships. In this aquatic installment of their series on exploration, Cristen and Caroline chart the incredible adventures of women on the high seas past and present.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff mob never told you. From how Supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline, or should I say Caroline ahoihoi madi
ahoi madies. Yes, we are talking about women explorers on
(00:23):
the high seas because in our summer series on women
and Exploration, we've talked about overland explorers and Antarctic explorers,
and now it's time to explore the parts of the globe.
But knit all of these excursions together the seas, that's right.
A lot of cross dressing on the ocean, that's right,
(00:46):
because women weren't allowed on big boats for a long time.
They were not women, and our lady parts were considered
bad luck for ships and sailors. That's right. Along with priests,
pigs flower and leaving harbor on a Friday. Women aboard
ships for a long time were considered unlucky, probably because
(01:09):
of the whole thing about distracting sailors who would then
think of sex instead of thinking of you know, a
sex stance, right, because men only think about sex when
women are around. Yeah, well, but you know where women
were welcome naked on the carvings of the ships that's right,
because the ocean. While the sailors shouldn't look at or
(01:29):
even think about women ever because it's bad luck and etcetera, etcetera,
the ocean itself needs to see naked women, and hence
the carvings of like topless mermaids. And I guess, I
don't know, would you say a mermaid is just naked?
I mean, I guess you couldn't wear bottoms, that's true, topless,
we would call them topless mermaids. Topless mermaids. Yeah, that's
(01:49):
why you see them so commonly on ships, because they're
sort of offerings to the seas, which all of it
doesn't make a whole ton of sense. But then again,
we're talking talking about superstitions. Um. But then early in
the seventeen hundreds, speaking of cross dressing, we start to
see some daring seafaring women like Mary Anne Talbot and
(02:13):
Bonnie and Mary Read who in various ports of call
disguised themselves as men in order to join the ship's cruise. Yeah,
and and Bonnie and Mary Read both hooked up with pirates, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I think it was was it Anne Read? One of
them ended up marrying the pirate known as Calico Jack.
(02:34):
Oh yeah, that was Anne Bonnie. Yeah. Yeah, so they're
they're a happy pirate family and until they weren't, you know,
and their their ship was caught, and then they were
in prison and the men were hanged, and there's all
sorts of legends about maybe what happened to uh Anne
and Mary, but nobody really knows for sure. Yeah. Well,
and maybe we should do an episode on women in piracy,
(02:56):
as in sea piracy, not internet internet piracy. But then
we moved into the eighteen hundreds, you start to see
more commonly the wives of say, military officers, merchants, and
whaling captains joining their husbands on board more often. Yeah,
and these actually became known as HNN frigates. Yeah. If
(03:18):
you had a ship with women on board, I think
all you needed was one woman to constitute a hen frigate. Yeah.
I feel like that's making a big deal on to nothing.
It also reminds me of how bachelorette parties in the
UK hen parties just ladies of clucking. Interesting. I wonder
if women are called hens and other capacities. I mean,
(03:38):
I guess they are, but I wonder if it's supposed
to be derogatory in the same way as Chicks Chicks,
or maybe we have. We're hitting on so many other
potential podcast topics's just stopping our research right now. But anyway, So, so,
Mary Ann Talbot and Bonnie and Mary Reid were all
pretty impressive tough women. They were obviously pretty tough to
(03:59):
dress as men hang out with these like big burly,
scary pirate people. Obviously they were tough, but they were
not as tough as the first woman who circumnavigated the Globe,
who really only recently we found out about. Yeah, we're
talking about a French woman named Jean Beret, who once
she completed the trip, it was known that she was
(04:22):
a woman, that she had done this. She actually ended
up receiving a commission from the French Navy. But it
seems like her story has only been told in more
recent years. She was sort of lost to the history books.
But her story is fascinating. Yeah, Glenny's Ridley. You just
wrote a book about her called The Discovery of Jean Beret,
And yeah, her life story is pretty incredible. So she
(04:45):
was born to peasants in France in seventeen forty and
I just as I'm reading her life story I'm picturing
the peasants from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, you know, like, oh,
I would be an impressed. Um. Anyway, she became an
herb woman, and this is basically part of a feminine
tradition surrounding the medicinal properties of plants and the emerging
(05:06):
field of taxonomy which aimed to name classify the natural world.
So basically, beret was part of this oral tradition because
it's not like they could read and they were at
the library studying all these plants. It was an oral
tradition where these families trained each other on how to
identify plants and their healing properties. Well. And it's notable
too that being an herb woman in particular was considered
(05:28):
this feminine folk loreic art, because it sort of ties
into what we were talking about in our Overland Explorers
podcasts about how a lot of the wealthier Victorian women
who went on all these explorations did so as botanists
because similar to the whole herb woman thing, you have
(05:49):
botany at the time being the one approved science for
women to be interested in because ladies love flowers, that's right.
I love flowers. I don't know what any of the
names are, but I love them anyway. So, yeah, botany
during this time was an emerging field. So basically what
does that mean, Like herb woman versus botanists, you have
(06:10):
the professionalization of the field, which means that more men
are getting into it, while women are considered like improper
through you know, it's not appropriate for them to study it.
So anyway, Beret is out out in the field one
day looking at some flowers and she ends up meeting
botanist Philibert Commerson. They they, I guess they They end
up talking quite a bit, getting to know each other
(06:32):
and talking about flowers and the birds and the bees
and whatnot, and of course, you know, they grow to
like each other quite a bit. Yeah, And at first
it seems as though Commerson takes on Jean Beret as
a student of his, but as Glenna's Ridley talks about
in her book, she thinks that it's actually likelier that
(06:55):
Commerson ended up working with Beret because she had things
to teach him about all of the herbal knowledge that
she had cultivated through this kind of folkloric medicine that
she practiced. That's right, And so basically Commerson was going
to go on this journey to identify plants and whatnot, etcetera, etcetera.
(07:19):
He needed an assistant to go with him, and who
better to go than Jean Berat. But the thing is,
she's a lady. She can't go. Yeah, she can't go
because at the time the French Royal Navy completely forbade
women on ships. And this journey took place from seventeen
sixty six to seventeen sixty nine. And so Commerceing said,
(07:42):
what are we gonna do? I love you, you know
so much about plants. I want you on the ship. Hey,
here we go. Uh, why don't we just dress you
up like a man. Put on man's clothes, bind your breast,
deepen your voice at voila right, And so she ends
up getting to accompany him in this disguise, dressed as
(08:02):
a man on this journey, which was led by French
explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainvilla. And if that sounds familiar,
it should because while they were in Brazil, they discovered
a certain type of plant, which they then named for
the explorer Bougena. Yeah, and it's thought that it was
Beret who discovered this now famous plant. Species. But then
(08:27):
the story takes a tragic turn because it's it's not
terribly surprising that on this three year jaunt, at some
point the crew started to suspect that Jean Beret was
not in fact a man, and she was found out.
And there are a lot of conflicting stories about how
her outing happens. But what Glenni's Ridley thinks happens comparing
(08:50):
all these different primary sources that she used to research
her book, she thinks that Beret was actually gang raped
by the crew after she was outed at one point,
and soon after that, bouguin Villa actually in seventeen sixty
eight leaves Beret, who was then pregnant at that point,
possibly due to the gang rape in the French colony
(09:13):
of Mauritius where she then had the baby, gave it
up for adoption, and then Philibert dies like rough time Jee,
but Jean does not give up. She certainly didn't. She
remarried and went back to France and seventeen seventy four
seventy five about she ends up receiving a pension from
the French Navy, which is pretty shocking considering the time
(09:37):
she was living in the fact that she was a
woman and she wasn't even supposed to be on that ship.
But they they ended up basically compensating her for her
time that she spent looking at plants and identifying plants
and working on this ship. Yeah, and they knew by
that point obviously that she was not a he. And
Ridley thinks that maybe this was due to an affair
(09:59):
with bouguin Vie that she received this pension. But nonetheless,
there was this prince aboard the ship at one point
he was sailing with them, and in his diary he
wrote about Jean Beret quote, she dared to confront the stress,
the dangers, and everything that happened that one could realistically
expect on such a voyage. Her adventure should, I think
(10:22):
be included in the history of famous women. So that's
what we're doing. Yeah, we're doing our part. But I
but I I love that that that somebody of his
stature would write something like that. But talk about going
to great lengths to explore I mean putting herself in
I mean direct danger. That's right now. I want to
(10:44):
see a movie about this. Yeah, that's what I want
to see next. But it would take a while for
other women to end up making and breaking records of
their own on the high seas. Yeah, we're now going
to leap for word in time to the twentieth century,
which is when we start seeing other women. I mean,
(11:06):
there have certainly been other women in the meantime who
had sailed around the globe, but once we get to
the twentieth century, that's when we have a lot of
races of women trying to go around the world on
their own or sail across specific oceans. And so you
start out in nineteen fifty two with Anne Davison, who
(11:26):
becomes the first woman to sail across the Atlantic alone. Yeah,
and her story of what really drove her was was
pretty interesting as well. In the nineteen thirties she actually
learned how to fly, which is how she met her
future husband, Frank, and after World War Two, the couple
took up sailing with plans to sail to the West
Indies to start a new life. But soon after embarking
(11:48):
in nineteen forty nine, a storm hit, the boat capsized
and Frank died. So and to sort of continue their
their goal. To reach their goal, she sets off in
May of nineteen fifty two, across the Atlantic alone. And
it was not easy. No, apparently she maintained a steady
(12:10):
diet of Ben's adrine and rum to keep on keeping
on because it was such an arduous journey. But she
made it, and she broke this record and now has
a place in the history books. And and then in
nineteen sixty nine you have a similar story actually with
Sharon Cites Adams becoming the first woman to sail the
Pacific alone, going from Japan to California because she discovered
(12:33):
sailing after the death of her husband. And in nineteen
sixty four she had already become the first woman to
sail solo from the mainland US to Hawaii. So in
a pretty short period of time she just started racking
up all of these records sailing back and forth across
the Pacific alone. Deal. And I mean, these women were
not exactly using GPS systems, you know. This is this
(12:56):
is back in the fifties and sixties. And I mean
I I imagine like the quiet and the birds and
the water sounds, and I'm like, god, that was so
nice for like two hours, that would be really nice.
And then my Scottish skin would just like turn purple
and I would turn into like leather and shrivel up
(13:17):
and just throw myself overboard. You would need a lot
of bends, a green and rum. So maybe just the rum.
It's just the rum. Maybe just the downers. But I
think it's so interesting, like these stories of perseverance through
emotional turmoil from Beret to women like Sharon sits atoms Um.
But then things start getting a little more competitive in
(13:38):
the seventies, and apparently in ninety eight women had sailing fever.
Sailing fever, that's right, in June of nineteen seventy eight,
Poland's Christina Chanalska Liskawitz, who was a shipbuilding engineer and
yachting sea captain. I hope she had a jaunty hat.
She was the first woman to single handedly circumna vigate
(14:00):
the world singlehandedly, that's the important part. She actually ended
up getting dubbed the first Lady of the Oceans and
was admitted to the very exclusive, gender exclusive Explorers Club.
But obviously that wouldn't be for another couple of years because,
as we discussed in a previous Explorer episode, it wasn't
until the Explorers Club even started letting women in. Yeah,
(14:22):
I did a little digging on that, and I think
it might have been the Polish chapter of the Explorers Club.
And I was surprised too that there wasn't more information
or celebration regarding Liskowitz and her accomplishment. She just sort
of a footnote, even though it seems like a pretty
(14:42):
huge accomplishment. And I don't know if it's simply because
she was an American so she didn't get quite as
much fanfare, But yeah, I mean you would think, because
I feel like for a lot of these women who
you know, were the first at something or or did
something the best, Uh, there's usually like an interview or
an article somewhere. Yeah, why don't we know more about
someone called the first Lady of the Oceans, Because it
(15:06):
seems like Naomi James, who completed a similar solo circumnavigation,
say that five times Fast has received more historical attention.
She was just narrowly be by list Go It's for
that title, but she actually completed her trip one d
twenty nine days faster, which is especially impressive considering that
(15:29):
James had barely two years of training on a yacht
before she was like, oh hey, I'm just gonna sail
around the world alone and for a little bit of
comparison with men's sailing, women weren't terribly behind guys and
doing these solo trips around the world. Robin Knox Johnson
had become the first man to solo circumnavigate the globe
(15:50):
in n interesting. I like hearing about people who just
kind of, whether it's smart or not, just jump into
something like this. I mean, after only two years of training.
She's like, Yeah, I'm gonna do this. It's cool. I'm
just gonna go like around the world and stuff and
do it really fast on my boat. Yeah. I don't know.
I guess I would need a lot of bends a
(16:11):
dream for that one. But more recently, in twelve, Laura
Decker became the youngest woman to sail around the world,
and she set out when she was fourteen, completing the
trip in two years. Yeah, listeners might be familiar with
her name a because there's a fantastic documentary about her
trip called Maiden Trip, because she actually took a camera
(16:32):
with her and filmed the entire thing, and it was
incredible to watch her on the boat taking care of things,
fixing things, sailing through storms, and generally just being by herself.
Can you imagine thinking back on when you were fourteen
fifteen years old, spending that much time alone. I feel
(16:55):
like there was I was in a state of constant
frenzy of wanting to be around other people and hang
out with friends and all of that kind of social stuff,
whereas she prefers that kind of solitary lifestyle. It takes
a strong person to be alone that much and too
and to buck what is normal for your social group,
(17:16):
of your age group or whatever. But her name was
also in the news before she even set sail, because
the Dutch government was so opposed to her even embarking
on this trip that they initially took her away from
her dad, who has sole custody of her, and I
think she ended up having to legally like separate emancipate
(17:41):
herself in order to do this. It was just like
a whole I mean, she was making national news the
whole time, and you see in the documentary this process
of her and her dad having to deal with all
of this unwanted media attention because genuinely, all she wanted
to do was sail around the world. She grew up
on boats, her dad worked, but all she wanted to
do all she wanted. I mean, all a girl wants
(18:03):
to do is take two years out of her life
and sail around the world. But I mean I think
I think that's a great gift. I mean, maybe not
sailing around the world, but I think that type of
independence is a great gift that a parent can give
to a daughter to let her do something on her own. Absolutely,
that kind of ambition and bravery, because I mean she
would even you know, at certain ports, get off and
(18:26):
you know, hang out on land for a while and
just explore on her own and meet people and talk
to people. I don't even know if I approaching thirty
and brave enough to do that. At sixteen, I was
just meeting from I was going by myself to Starbucks
to meet friends. Yeah, big move, big move. I'll take
a Venti frappuccino, thank you. But next up, we want
(18:48):
to dive in to the seas to talk about not
just the women who have explored the oceans by sailing
on top of them, but also the women who explored
the sea by diving into its deepest depths. And we'll
get into that when we come right back from a
quick break. So far, we've talked a lot about Yes,
(19:15):
Jeane Beret was an explorer in the literal definition of
the term. She was going out around the world doing
science and research and all that stuff. But we've talked
a lot about adventurers to people like young Laura Decker,
who became the youngest woman to sail around the world.
Now let's let's dive in, as Kristen said, to some
more of these explorer stem Field types. Yeah, the women
(19:38):
who are getting into the oceans in order to learn
about how that aquatic world works. And just for a
little bit of historical context, and this is coming from
National Geographic to understand what is leading up to these
notable women. In ninety four, we have William Baby being
(20:01):
lowered into a tethered bathosphere to over three thousand feet
into the ocean, and he and his partner Otis Barton
pioneered manned exploration of the ocean. So this is in
the mid thirties. This is when we're really starting to
get into the depths, right and in this name should
(20:22):
be familiar to you. Jacques Cousteau and his partner, engineer
Emil Ganyon, modified a demand breathing regulator to engineer the
aqua lung forever changing how people interact with the ocean.
In other words, they made scuba diving possible. Yeah, and
and so my panic attack hyperventilation when I tried to
(20:44):
go snooba diving in Mexico, which is like a combination
of scuba and snorkeling. Total panic attack because my brain
I have him to thank for it, because my brain
was like, you're underwater. Did you not know you're underwater?
You're not supposed to breathe? Panic attack. But anyway, speaking
of Custo, because we're not here to just talk about
these dudes, as impressive as they are with their aqua lung,
(21:04):
we have to talk about Custo's wife, Simone Melchior Custo.
So she and Jacques get married, and she actually sold
family jewels and furs initially to help fund the Calypso,
which was the famous ship that they sailed on. And
she became known as the first Lady of the Ocean
(21:26):
because of all of the incredible work that she did
alongside Jacques Cousteau. For instance, she became the first woman
scuba diver and played an essential role in the development
of scuba diving technology as well as basic undersea operations
because she was helping test out the equipment, get dive
(21:46):
into the ocean with it on and see what there
was to see in the sea. Yeah, yeah, and and
looking fabulously French while she with a with a little
like short haircut and striped shirt with the boat neeck.
I kind of want that to be my summer style,
the Simone chic um. Well, so in nineteen sixty three
(22:07):
she actually became the first aquannot when she visited the
con shelf to undersea habitat in the Red Sea. But
I do want to mention too that there was a
scandalous undercurrent to the Cousto's relationship because and this didn't
come out until after Simone died, but almost the entire time,
(22:28):
or at least for a good portion of their marriage,
Jacques Coustou had a secret family, and he ended up
marrying the woman that he had been, you know, having
this long term affair with and two children with while
he was married to Simone. He married this other woman
after Simone died. But I mean it just seems like,
I don't know, I wonder if she was how could
(22:50):
she not have been aware of that? And I think
she just loved the exploration in life on the Calypso
so much that perhaps that overshadowed any kind of you know,
relationship turmoils. I mean maybe maybe. I mean, after all,
her son with Custo, Jean Michelle, often said that she
(23:14):
was the real captain of the Calypso and that she
spent more time on Calypso than my father, brother, and
myself combined. Yeah, and I hate that I didn't even
know about her accomplishments because everyone knows about Jacques Gusta,
but I don't think that that many people know about
the important Simon. Yeah that she Yeah, that she was
(23:35):
just as critical to these explorations as Jacquas. But if
first Lady of the Ocean Simone's moniker isn't impressive enough,
here we go. Let's take this radnus up a notch
with Sylvia Earle known as her Deepness. Yeah. We we
mentioned Sylvia Earle in our first introductory episode and and
(23:57):
talked about how her resume is incredible. Um. In nineteen seventy,
Earl led the first team of women aquanauts, which I
love that aquanauts during the tech Type project, and she
set a record for solo diving to a depth of
one thousand meters. And now the first tech type project
(24:17):
was all men, but then she was part of a
follow up project that brought all women explorers down to
the ocean, and that tech type project in nineteen seventy
was the first NASA mission to include women, and it's
still the only all female NASA mission ever conducted, right,
And it's it's interesting too when you think about the
(24:39):
context of when this was happening. I mean, this is
this tech type to project that Earle lad was happening
during a time when women were, you know, more entering
the workforce. They were entering jobs that had traditionally been
held by men, and so it was really showing that
women scientists and explorers could do the same things that
(25:01):
men could do and had a lot to contribute to
the field as well. Yeah, And one of the engineers
and assistant scientific director on that tech type to all
female mission under the Seas, Peggy Lucas Bond said about
that uh expedition quote, one of the things is probably
(25:22):
true to any minority group. Ours was bound and determined
to do everything better than the men could do. And
she from there talked about how they completed more projects
and tried to bring back more data than other projects
had because this was the point in which they had
to prove themselves, and it actually paved the way for
(25:45):
other female aquanauts to be regularly included in future missions
and also paved the way for women's inclusion in NASA
space missions. Yeah, exactly. You're you're either floating under the
water or you're floating in space. Yeah, because this tech
type project was meant to help simulate how life in
(26:06):
space would take place. Oh and Peggy Lucas Bond also
talked about the claustrophobia aspect of living in that capsule underwater,
because it would be the same kind of thing if
you're in, say the space station, you can't leave. Nope,
no thanks brave women, No thank you, But I'm glad
(26:27):
other women did it. I just said, no desire. Well,
And I thought Sylvia Earle's career lead up to becoming
her deepness resonates a lot with the other explorers that
we've talked about because she was introduced to all of
this through guess what botany? Yeah, studying algae for her
thesis of all Things algae. Yeah, and just for another career.
(26:52):
Note this was actually before tech type two. In ninety eight,
she discovered undersea dunes off the coast the Bahamas. That
would be nice, that would be cool. I want to
go there. Um. In ninety nine she actually set the
world untethered diving record. She descended twelve hundred and fifty
(27:13):
feet beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean in one
of these special diving suits that maintain a constant interior pressure.
Because holy goodness, I cannot believe that she went so
far down, just untethered. I I with the pantic attacks,
like I'm feeling one coming on. I just I can't.
She's she's so cool. Well and for that, I think
(27:33):
she got the name her deepness because she went so
deep into the ocean. Um. And in she became the
first woman to become the chief Scientists of the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is pretty cool. And she
wrote a book called Sea Change, A Message of the Oceans,
(27:54):
which is kind of considered the silent Spring for the oceans.
And then in which seems a little too too recent
for this to be a first, but in she became
the National Geographic Society's first female explorer in residence. And
she's still working, she's still doing stuff. She's still diving
(28:18):
and learning about the ocean and conservation and spreading the
gospel thereof Yeah, I saw a picture of her with
her son. They were both in diving states. And then
I was thinking about pictures of the Custos and their family,
and I was like, can you imagine that that's your normal?
Like my parents worked for Delta Airlines and that's my normal.
(28:38):
And like other people, their parents are like teachers and
firefighters and the office people like, but no, your your
parents were just like super awesome underwater explorers. That's normal. Well,
it seems like with a lot of the seafaring women there,
there's usually a family tie of either growing up on
boats or around boats or by the water. Yeah. And
(29:01):
I one thing that I do wish as far as
inspiration is concerned, Like I do wish we knew more
about what inspired those early women like and Bonnie to
dress like men and go out on the oceans. I mean,
I know that they love these pirates and they wanted
to have adventures for themselves, but it's like, oh, I
just want to kind of get inside their brains. Yeah,
(29:22):
absolutely well, and even today, I mean, there are so
many women also in oceanography. There there are many other
women doing similar work to Sylvia Earle. There's even a website,
Women oceanographers dot Org dedicated to highlighting all of the
different career paths that water loving women have taken. In
(29:44):
its similar stem oriented jobs that they're doing. Yeah, and
I mean, in in earlier episodes we've we've hit on
this over and over again that you know, people are
asking what is left to explore, what is left to discover,
And the answer is only that it's everything you know,
people who are whether you're on top of the water
discovering things or you're underneath the surface of the water
(30:06):
discovering things. There's everything from microbes and habitats to the
plant life, the animal life, I mean everything in between. Well,
and so much of us two deals with broader issues
of climate change and its repercussions down to our day
to day lives. So while it might seem rather exotic
to you know, have a job that involves scuba diving,
(30:28):
it actually can have a trickle down impact into our
day to day cubicle bound existences, that's right. It can
make us better podcasters. That's right. Indeed, Well, this wraps
up the portion of our summer series really highlighting the
women who are professional explorers and adventurers. And next up
(30:52):
to close things out, we're going to take a look
at women who are just traveling on their own just
to see the world to day and what that's like.
So in the meantime, we want to hear from you.
Do we have any oceanographers, any marine biologists listening? Anyone
who knows Sylvia Earle her deepness? Are you listening? Let
(31:12):
us know Mom's Stuff at how Stuff works dot Com
is our email address. You can also tweet us at
mom Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook, and we have
a couple of messages to share with you right now.
So I've got a letter here from summer in response
to our episode on why a fiction. She writes as
(31:35):
a teacher in New Zealand, teaching students eighteen years old,
I try to make sure that I teach something new
with at least one of my classes every year so
that I don't get bored. I get to choose what
I teach and can sometimes arrange for class sets of
texts we purchased if I want to teach something that
we don't already have. I think the best part of
my job is seeing young people excited about literature and
(31:55):
choosing the right text for the class is so important.
You touched on the need for great diversity and fiction,
and in New Zealand this is represented by the need
to have relevant New Zealand text rather than relying on
American and British fair and specifically Maori and Polynesian stories.
My recollection of New Zealand literature when I was in
high school was not entirely positive. Either it wasn't relevant
(32:17):
to me, or I often found it boring because New
Zealand literature is characteristically dark. That's surprising, and I liked
more optimistic fare at that stage in my life. Furthermore,
as a Maori living in the suburbs of Auckland, I
was somewhat disconnected from my heritage and so called Maori
stories did not apply to me is they tended to
be set in rural communities or in violent gang lands.
(32:40):
That said, as the market grows, there are more of
our stories being told, and the students I teach are
less likely to experience cultural cringe than I did when
I was in school. My favorites include Guardian at the
Dead by Karen Healy, a supernatural thriller that contains elements
of Maori mythology, and also Rangatira by Paul Morris, which
(33:01):
is historical fiction based on real events. So thanks for
that insight, summer and fun. Fact, my brother is also
a teacher in New Zealand, so hats off to you.
I have a letter here from Melissa. She says, I
was so excited to listen to your did World War
Two really help Rosie the Riveter podcast? From my master's
(33:21):
thesis in history, I wrote about Millie Jeoffrey, who was
the first woman to have a department at the United
Auto Workers. She ran the Women's department from nineteen forty
four to nineteen forty nine. One problem she encountered during
the end of World War Two is the disregard of
women's special seniority that they accrued during the duration of
the war. When men left their auto factory jobs to
serve in the military, they continued to accrue seniority, while
(33:43):
the women who replaced them got special seniority. Women therefore
wouldn't outrank returning veterans, but they would out rank men
who had never worked in the factory. However, veterans who
were new to the auto industry were hired over women
workers who had more seniority than them. When the war ended, Unfortunately,
million or colleagues got little help from their union and
the auto companies on this matter. Oh I hate that story,
(34:06):
but I love the story and I'm glad you shared it.
So thank you me, Lissa, and thanks to everybody who
shared their stories with us. Mom stuff at how stuff
works dot com is our email address, and for links
to all of our social media outlets, blogs, videos, and
every single one of our podcast head on over to
stuff Mom Never Told You dot com for more on
(34:29):
this and thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff
works dot com.
Welcome to stuff mob never told you. From how Supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline, or should I say Caroline ahoihoi madi
ahoi madies. Yes, we are talking about women explorers on
(00:23):
the high seas because in our summer series on women
and Exploration, we've talked about overland explorers and Antarctic explorers,
and now it's time to explore the parts of the globe.
But knit all of these excursions together the seas, that's right.
A lot of cross dressing on the ocean, that's right,
(00:46):
because women weren't allowed on big boats for a long time.
They were not women, and our lady parts were considered
bad luck for ships and sailors. That's right. Along with priests,
pigs flower and leaving harbor on a Friday. Women aboard
ships for a long time were considered unlucky, probably because
(01:09):
of the whole thing about distracting sailors who would then
think of sex instead of thinking of you know, a
sex stance, right, because men only think about sex when
women are around. Yeah, well, but you know where women
were welcome naked on the carvings of the ships that's right,
because the ocean. While the sailors shouldn't look at or
(01:29):
even think about women ever because it's bad luck and etcetera, etcetera,
the ocean itself needs to see naked women, and hence
the carvings of like topless mermaids. And I guess, I
don't know, would you say a mermaid is just naked?
I mean, I guess you couldn't wear bottoms, that's true, topless,
we would call them topless mermaids. Topless mermaids. Yeah, that's
(01:49):
why you see them so commonly on ships, because they're
sort of offerings to the seas, which all of it
doesn't make a whole ton of sense. But then again,
we're talking talking about superstitions. Um. But then early in
the seventeen hundreds, speaking of cross dressing, we start to
see some daring seafaring women like Mary Anne Talbot and
(02:13):
Bonnie and Mary Read who in various ports of call
disguised themselves as men in order to join the ship's cruise. Yeah,
and and Bonnie and Mary Read both hooked up with pirates, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I think it was was it Anne Read? One of
them ended up marrying the pirate known as Calico Jack.
(02:34):
Oh yeah, that was Anne Bonnie. Yeah. Yeah, so they're
they're a happy pirate family and until they weren't, you know,
and their their ship was caught, and then they were
in prison and the men were hanged, and there's all
sorts of legends about maybe what happened to uh Anne
and Mary, but nobody really knows for sure. Yeah. Well,
and maybe we should do an episode on women in piracy,
(02:56):
as in sea piracy, not internet internet piracy. But then
we moved into the eighteen hundreds, you start to see
more commonly the wives of say, military officers, merchants, and
whaling captains joining their husbands on board more often. Yeah,
and these actually became known as HNN frigates. Yeah. If
(03:18):
you had a ship with women on board, I think
all you needed was one woman to constitute a hen frigate. Yeah.
I feel like that's making a big deal on to nothing.
It also reminds me of how bachelorette parties in the
UK hen parties just ladies of clucking. Interesting. I wonder
if women are called hens and other capacities. I mean,
(03:38):
I guess they are, but I wonder if it's supposed
to be derogatory in the same way as Chicks Chicks,
or maybe we have. We're hitting on so many other
potential podcast topics's just stopping our research right now. But anyway, So, so,
Mary Ann Talbot and Bonnie and Mary Reid were all
pretty impressive tough women. They were obviously pretty tough to
(03:59):
dress as men hang out with these like big burly,
scary pirate people. Obviously they were tough, but they were
not as tough as the first woman who circumnavigated the Globe,
who really only recently we found out about. Yeah, we're
talking about a French woman named Jean Beret, who once
she completed the trip, it was known that she was
(04:22):
a woman, that she had done this. She actually ended
up receiving a commission from the French Navy. But it
seems like her story has only been told in more
recent years. She was sort of lost to the history books.
But her story is fascinating. Yeah, Glenny's Ridley. You just
wrote a book about her called The Discovery of Jean Beret,
And yeah, her life story is pretty incredible. So she
(04:45):
was born to peasants in France in seventeen forty and
I just as I'm reading her life story I'm picturing
the peasants from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, you know, like, oh,
I would be an impressed. Um. Anyway, she became an
herb woman, and this is basically part of a feminine
tradition surrounding the medicinal properties of plants and the emerging
(05:06):
field of taxonomy which aimed to name classify the natural world.
So basically, beret was part of this oral tradition because
it's not like they could read and they were at
the library studying all these plants. It was an oral
tradition where these families trained each other on how to
identify plants and their healing properties. Well. And it's notable
too that being an herb woman in particular was considered
(05:28):
this feminine folk loreic art, because it sort of ties
into what we were talking about in our Overland Explorers
podcasts about how a lot of the wealthier Victorian women
who went on all these explorations did so as botanists
because similar to the whole herb woman thing, you have
(05:49):
botany at the time being the one approved science for
women to be interested in because ladies love flowers, that's right.
I love flowers. I don't know what any of the
names are, but I love them anyway. So, yeah, botany
during this time was an emerging field. So basically what
does that mean, Like herb woman versus botanists, you have
(06:10):
the professionalization of the field, which means that more men
are getting into it, while women are considered like improper
through you know, it's not appropriate for them to study it.
So anyway, Beret is out out in the field one
day looking at some flowers and she ends up meeting
botanist Philibert Commerson. They they, I guess they They end
up talking quite a bit, getting to know each other
(06:32):
and talking about flowers and the birds and the bees
and whatnot, and of course, you know, they grow to
like each other quite a bit. Yeah, And at first
it seems as though Commerson takes on Jean Beret as
a student of his, but as Glenna's Ridley talks about
in her book, she thinks that it's actually likelier that
(06:55):
Commerson ended up working with Beret because she had things
to teach him about all of the herbal knowledge that
she had cultivated through this kind of folkloric medicine that
she practiced. That's right, And so basically Commerson was going
to go on this journey to identify plants and whatnot, etcetera, etcetera.
(07:19):
He needed an assistant to go with him, and who
better to go than Jean Berat. But the thing is,
she's a lady. She can't go. Yeah, she can't go
because at the time the French Royal Navy completely forbade
women on ships. And this journey took place from seventeen
sixty six to seventeen sixty nine. And so Commerceing said,
(07:42):
what are we gonna do? I love you, you know
so much about plants. I want you on the ship. Hey,
here we go. Uh, why don't we just dress you
up like a man. Put on man's clothes, bind your breast,
deepen your voice at voila right, And so she ends
up getting to accompany him in this disguise, dressed as
(08:02):
a man on this journey, which was led by French
explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainvilla. And if that sounds familiar,
it should because while they were in Brazil, they discovered
a certain type of plant, which they then named for
the explorer Bougena. Yeah, and it's thought that it was
Beret who discovered this now famous plant. Species. But then
(08:27):
the story takes a tragic turn because it's it's not
terribly surprising that on this three year jaunt, at some
point the crew started to suspect that Jean Beret was
not in fact a man, and she was found out.
And there are a lot of conflicting stories about how
her outing happens. But what Glenni's Ridley thinks happens comparing
(08:50):
all these different primary sources that she used to research
her book, she thinks that Beret was actually gang raped
by the crew after she was outed at one point,
and soon after that, bouguin Villa actually in seventeen sixty
eight leaves Beret, who was then pregnant at that point,
possibly due to the gang rape in the French colony
(09:13):
of Mauritius where she then had the baby, gave it
up for adoption, and then Philibert dies like rough time Jee,
but Jean does not give up. She certainly didn't. She
remarried and went back to France and seventeen seventy four
seventy five about she ends up receiving a pension from
the French Navy, which is pretty shocking considering the time
(09:37):
she was living in the fact that she was a
woman and she wasn't even supposed to be on that ship.
But they they ended up basically compensating her for her
time that she spent looking at plants and identifying plants
and working on this ship. Yeah, and they knew by
that point obviously that she was not a he. And
Ridley thinks that maybe this was due to an affair
(09:59):
with bouguin Vie that she received this pension. But nonetheless,
there was this prince aboard the ship at one point
he was sailing with them, and in his diary he
wrote about Jean Beret quote, she dared to confront the stress,
the dangers, and everything that happened that one could realistically
expect on such a voyage. Her adventure should, I think
(10:22):
be included in the history of famous women. So that's
what we're doing. Yeah, we're doing our part. But I
but I I love that that that somebody of his
stature would write something like that. But talk about going
to great lengths to explore I mean putting herself in
I mean direct danger. That's right now. I want to
(10:44):
see a movie about this. Yeah, that's what I want
to see next. But it would take a while for
other women to end up making and breaking records of
their own on the high seas. Yeah, we're now going
to leap for word in time to the twentieth century,
which is when we start seeing other women. I mean,
(11:06):
there have certainly been other women in the meantime who
had sailed around the globe, but once we get to
the twentieth century, that's when we have a lot of
races of women trying to go around the world on
their own or sail across specific oceans. And so you
start out in nineteen fifty two with Anne Davison, who
(11:26):
becomes the first woman to sail across the Atlantic alone. Yeah,
and her story of what really drove her was was
pretty interesting as well. In the nineteen thirties she actually
learned how to fly, which is how she met her
future husband, Frank, and after World War Two, the couple
took up sailing with plans to sail to the West
Indies to start a new life. But soon after embarking
(11:48):
in nineteen forty nine, a storm hit, the boat capsized
and Frank died. So and to sort of continue their
their goal. To reach their goal, she sets off in
May of nineteen fifty two, across the Atlantic alone. And
it was not easy. No, apparently she maintained a steady
(12:10):
diet of Ben's adrine and rum to keep on keeping
on because it was such an arduous journey. But she
made it, and she broke this record and now has
a place in the history books. And and then in
nineteen sixty nine you have a similar story actually with
Sharon Cites Adams becoming the first woman to sail the
Pacific alone, going from Japan to California because she discovered
(12:33):
sailing after the death of her husband. And in nineteen
sixty four she had already become the first woman to
sail solo from the mainland US to Hawaii. So in
a pretty short period of time she just started racking
up all of these records sailing back and forth across
the Pacific alone. Deal. And I mean, these women were
not exactly using GPS systems, you know. This is this
(12:56):
is back in the fifties and sixties. And I mean
I I imagine like the quiet and the birds and
the water sounds, and I'm like, god, that was so
nice for like two hours, that would be really nice.
And then my Scottish skin would just like turn purple
and I would turn into like leather and shrivel up
(13:17):
and just throw myself overboard. You would need a lot
of bends, a green and rum. So maybe just the rum.
It's just the rum. Maybe just the downers. But I
think it's so interesting, like these stories of perseverance through
emotional turmoil from Beret to women like Sharon sits atoms Um.
But then things start getting a little more competitive in
(13:38):
the seventies, and apparently in ninety eight women had sailing fever.
Sailing fever, that's right, in June of nineteen seventy eight,
Poland's Christina Chanalska Liskawitz, who was a shipbuilding engineer and
yachting sea captain. I hope she had a jaunty hat.
She was the first woman to single handedly circumna vigate
(14:00):
the world singlehandedly, that's the important part. She actually ended
up getting dubbed the first Lady of the Oceans and
was admitted to the very exclusive, gender exclusive Explorers Club.
But obviously that wouldn't be for another couple of years because,
as we discussed in a previous Explorer episode, it wasn't
until the Explorers Club even started letting women in. Yeah,
(14:22):
I did a little digging on that, and I think
it might have been the Polish chapter of the Explorers Club.
And I was surprised too that there wasn't more information
or celebration regarding Liskowitz and her accomplishment. She just sort
of a footnote, even though it seems like a pretty
(14:42):
huge accomplishment. And I don't know if it's simply because
she was an American so she didn't get quite as
much fanfare, But yeah, I mean you would think, because
I feel like for a lot of these women who
you know, were the first at something or or did
something the best, Uh, there's usually like an interview or
an article somewhere. Yeah, why don't we know more about
someone called the first Lady of the Oceans, Because it
(15:06):
seems like Naomi James, who completed a similar solo circumnavigation,
say that five times Fast has received more historical attention.
She was just narrowly be by list Go It's for
that title, but she actually completed her trip one d
twenty nine days faster, which is especially impressive considering that
(15:29):
James had barely two years of training on a yacht
before she was like, oh hey, I'm just gonna sail
around the world alone and for a little bit of
comparison with men's sailing, women weren't terribly behind guys and
doing these solo trips around the world. Robin Knox Johnson
had become the first man to solo circumnavigate the globe
(15:50):
in n interesting. I like hearing about people who just
kind of, whether it's smart or not, just jump into
something like this. I mean, after only two years of training.
She's like, Yeah, I'm gonna do this. It's cool. I'm
just gonna go like around the world and stuff and
do it really fast on my boat. Yeah. I don't know.
I guess I would need a lot of bends a
(16:11):
dream for that one. But more recently, in twelve, Laura
Decker became the youngest woman to sail around the world,
and she set out when she was fourteen, completing the
trip in two years. Yeah, listeners might be familiar with
her name a because there's a fantastic documentary about her
trip called Maiden Trip, because she actually took a camera
(16:32):
with her and filmed the entire thing, and it was
incredible to watch her on the boat taking care of things,
fixing things, sailing through storms, and generally just being by herself.
Can you imagine thinking back on when you were fourteen
fifteen years old, spending that much time alone. I feel
(16:55):
like there was I was in a state of constant
frenzy of wanting to be around other people and hang
out with friends and all of that kind of social stuff,
whereas she prefers that kind of solitary lifestyle. It takes
a strong person to be alone that much and too
and to buck what is normal for your social group,
(17:16):
of your age group or whatever. But her name was
also in the news before she even set sail, because
the Dutch government was so opposed to her even embarking
on this trip that they initially took her away from
her dad, who has sole custody of her, and I
think she ended up having to legally like separate emancipate
(17:41):
herself in order to do this. It was just like
a whole I mean, she was making national news the
whole time, and you see in the documentary this process
of her and her dad having to deal with all
of this unwanted media attention because genuinely, all she wanted
to do was sail around the world. She grew up
on boats, her dad worked, but all she wanted to
do all she wanted. I mean, all a girl wants
(18:03):
to do is take two years out of her life
and sail around the world. But I mean I think
I think that's a great gift. I mean, maybe not
sailing around the world, but I think that type of
independence is a great gift that a parent can give
to a daughter to let her do something on her own. Absolutely,
that kind of ambition and bravery, because I mean she
would even you know, at certain ports, get off and
(18:26):
you know, hang out on land for a while and
just explore on her own and meet people and talk
to people. I don't even know if I approaching thirty
and brave enough to do that. At sixteen, I was
just meeting from I was going by myself to Starbucks
to meet friends. Yeah, big move, big move. I'll take
a Venti frappuccino, thank you. But next up, we want
(18:48):
to dive in to the seas to talk about not
just the women who have explored the oceans by sailing
on top of them, but also the women who explored
the sea by diving into its deepest depths. And we'll
get into that when we come right back from a
quick break. So far, we've talked a lot about Yes,
(19:15):
Jeane Beret was an explorer in the literal definition of
the term. She was going out around the world doing
science and research and all that stuff. But we've talked
a lot about adventurers to people like young Laura Decker,
who became the youngest woman to sail around the world.
Now let's let's dive in, as Kristen said, to some
more of these explorer stem Field types. Yeah, the women
(19:38):
who are getting into the oceans in order to learn
about how that aquatic world works. And just for a
little bit of historical context, and this is coming from
National Geographic to understand what is leading up to these
notable women. In ninety four, we have William Baby being
(20:01):
lowered into a tethered bathosphere to over three thousand feet
into the ocean, and he and his partner Otis Barton
pioneered manned exploration of the ocean. So this is in
the mid thirties. This is when we're really starting to
get into the depths, right and in this name should
(20:22):
be familiar to you. Jacques Cousteau and his partner, engineer
Emil Ganyon, modified a demand breathing regulator to engineer the
aqua lung forever changing how people interact with the ocean.
In other words, they made scuba diving possible. Yeah, and
and so my panic attack hyperventilation when I tried to
(20:44):
go snooba diving in Mexico, which is like a combination
of scuba and snorkeling. Total panic attack because my brain
I have him to thank for it, because my brain
was like, you're underwater. Did you not know you're underwater?
You're not supposed to breathe? Panic attack. But anyway, speaking
of Custo, because we're not here to just talk about
these dudes, as impressive as they are with their aqua lung,
(21:04):
we have to talk about Custo's wife, Simone Melchior Custo.
So she and Jacques get married, and she actually sold
family jewels and furs initially to help fund the Calypso,
which was the famous ship that they sailed on. And
she became known as the first Lady of the Ocean
(21:26):
because of all of the incredible work that she did
alongside Jacques Cousteau. For instance, she became the first woman
scuba diver and played an essential role in the development
of scuba diving technology as well as basic undersea operations
because she was helping test out the equipment, get dive
(21:46):
into the ocean with it on and see what there
was to see in the sea. Yeah, yeah, and and
looking fabulously French while she with a with a little
like short haircut and striped shirt with the boat neeck.
I kind of want that to be my summer style,
the Simone chic um. Well, so in nineteen sixty three
(22:07):
she actually became the first aquannot when she visited the
con shelf to undersea habitat in the Red Sea. But
I do want to mention too that there was a
scandalous undercurrent to the Cousto's relationship because and this didn't
come out until after Simone died, but almost the entire time,
(22:28):
or at least for a good portion of their marriage,
Jacques Coustou had a secret family, and he ended up
marrying the woman that he had been, you know, having
this long term affair with and two children with while
he was married to Simone. He married this other woman
after Simone died. But I mean it just seems like,
I don't know, I wonder if she was how could
(22:50):
she not have been aware of that? And I think
she just loved the exploration in life on the Calypso
so much that perhaps that overshadowed any kind of you know,
relationship turmoils. I mean maybe maybe. I mean, after all,
her son with Custo, Jean Michelle, often said that she
(23:14):
was the real captain of the Calypso and that she
spent more time on Calypso than my father, brother, and
myself combined. Yeah, and I hate that I didn't even
know about her accomplishments because everyone knows about Jacques Gusta,
but I don't think that that many people know about
the important Simon. Yeah that she Yeah, that she was
(23:35):
just as critical to these explorations as Jacquas. But if
first Lady of the Ocean Simone's moniker isn't impressive enough,
here we go. Let's take this radnus up a notch
with Sylvia Earle known as her Deepness. Yeah. We we
mentioned Sylvia Earle in our first introductory episode and and
(23:57):
talked about how her resume is incredible. Um. In nineteen seventy,
Earl led the first team of women aquanauts, which I
love that aquanauts during the tech Type project, and she
set a record for solo diving to a depth of
one thousand meters. And now the first tech type project
(24:17):
was all men, but then she was part of a
follow up project that brought all women explorers down to
the ocean, and that tech type project in nineteen seventy
was the first NASA mission to include women, and it's
still the only all female NASA mission ever conducted, right,
And it's it's interesting too when you think about the
(24:39):
context of when this was happening. I mean, this is
this tech type to project that Earle lad was happening
during a time when women were, you know, more entering
the workforce. They were entering jobs that had traditionally been
held by men, and so it was really showing that
women scientists and explorers could do the same things that
(25:01):
men could do and had a lot to contribute to
the field as well. Yeah, And one of the engineers
and assistant scientific director on that tech type to all
female mission under the Seas, Peggy Lucas Bond said about
that uh expedition quote, one of the things is probably
(25:22):
true to any minority group. Ours was bound and determined
to do everything better than the men could do. And
she from there talked about how they completed more projects
and tried to bring back more data than other projects
had because this was the point in which they had
to prove themselves, and it actually paved the way for
(25:45):
other female aquanauts to be regularly included in future missions
and also paved the way for women's inclusion in NASA
space missions. Yeah, exactly. You're you're either floating under the
water or you're floating in space. Yeah, because this tech
type project was meant to help simulate how life in
(26:06):
space would take place. Oh and Peggy Lucas Bond also
talked about the claustrophobia aspect of living in that capsule underwater,
because it would be the same kind of thing if
you're in, say the space station, you can't leave. Nope,
no thanks brave women, No thank you, But I'm glad
(26:27):
other women did it. I just said, no desire. Well,
And I thought Sylvia Earle's career lead up to becoming
her deepness resonates a lot with the other explorers that
we've talked about because she was introduced to all of
this through guess what botany? Yeah, studying algae for her
thesis of all Things algae. Yeah, and just for another career.
(26:52):
Note this was actually before tech type two. In ninety eight,
she discovered undersea dunes off the coast the Bahamas. That
would be nice, that would be cool. I want to
go there. Um. In ninety nine she actually set the
world untethered diving record. She descended twelve hundred and fifty
(27:13):
feet beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean in one
of these special diving suits that maintain a constant interior pressure.
Because holy goodness, I cannot believe that she went so
far down, just untethered. I I with the pantic attacks,
like I'm feeling one coming on. I just I can't.
She's she's so cool. Well and for that, I think
(27:33):
she got the name her deepness because she went so
deep into the ocean. Um. And in she became the
first woman to become the chief Scientists of the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is pretty cool. And she
wrote a book called Sea Change, A Message of the Oceans,
(27:54):
which is kind of considered the silent Spring for the oceans.
And then in which seems a little too too recent
for this to be a first, but in she became
the National Geographic Society's first female explorer in residence. And
she's still working, she's still doing stuff. She's still diving
(28:18):
and learning about the ocean and conservation and spreading the
gospel thereof Yeah, I saw a picture of her with
her son. They were both in diving states. And then
I was thinking about pictures of the Custos and their family,
and I was like, can you imagine that that's your normal?
Like my parents worked for Delta Airlines and that's my normal.
(28:38):
And like other people, their parents are like teachers and
firefighters and the office people like, but no, your your
parents were just like super awesome underwater explorers. That's normal. Well,
it seems like with a lot of the seafaring women there,
there's usually a family tie of either growing up on
boats or around boats or by the water. Yeah. And
(29:01):
I one thing that I do wish as far as
inspiration is concerned, Like I do wish we knew more
about what inspired those early women like and Bonnie to
dress like men and go out on the oceans. I mean,
I know that they love these pirates and they wanted
to have adventures for themselves, but it's like, oh, I
just want to kind of get inside their brains. Yeah,
(29:22):
absolutely well, and even today, I mean, there are so
many women also in oceanography. There there are many other
women doing similar work to Sylvia Earle. There's even a website,
Women oceanographers dot Org dedicated to highlighting all of the
different career paths that water loving women have taken. In
(29:44):
its similar stem oriented jobs that they're doing. Yeah, and
I mean, in in earlier episodes we've we've hit on
this over and over again that you know, people are
asking what is left to explore, what is left to discover,
And the answer is only that it's everything you know,
people who are whether you're on top of the water
discovering things or you're underneath the surface of the water
(30:06):
discovering things. There's everything from microbes and habitats to the
plant life, the animal life, I mean everything in between. Well,
and so much of us two deals with broader issues
of climate change and its repercussions down to our day
to day lives. So while it might seem rather exotic
to you know, have a job that involves scuba diving,
(30:28):
it actually can have a trickle down impact into our
day to day cubicle bound existences, that's right. It can
make us better podcasters. That's right. Indeed, Well, this wraps
up the portion of our summer series really highlighting the
women who are professional explorers and adventurers. And next up
(30:52):
to close things out, we're going to take a look
at women who are just traveling on their own just
to see the world to day and what that's like.
So in the meantime, we want to hear from you.
Do we have any oceanographers, any marine biologists listening? Anyone
who knows Sylvia Earle her deepness? Are you listening? Let
(31:12):
us know Mom's Stuff at how Stuff works dot Com
is our email address. You can also tweet us at
mom Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook, and we have
a couple of messages to share with you right now.
So I've got a letter here from summer in response
to our episode on why a fiction. She writes as
(31:35):
a teacher in New Zealand, teaching students eighteen years old,
I try to make sure that I teach something new
with at least one of my classes every year so
that I don't get bored. I get to choose what
I teach and can sometimes arrange for class sets of
texts we purchased if I want to teach something that
we don't already have. I think the best part of
my job is seeing young people excited about literature and
(31:55):
choosing the right text for the class is so important.
You touched on the need for great diversity and fiction,
and in New Zealand this is represented by the need
to have relevant New Zealand text rather than relying on
American and British fair and specifically Maori and Polynesian stories.
My recollection of New Zealand literature when I was in
high school was not entirely positive. Either it wasn't relevant
(32:17):
to me, or I often found it boring because New
Zealand literature is characteristically dark. That's surprising, and I liked
more optimistic fare at that stage in my life. Furthermore,
as a Maori living in the suburbs of Auckland, I
was somewhat disconnected from my heritage and so called Maori
stories did not apply to me is they tended to
be set in rural communities or in violent gang lands.
(32:40):
That said, as the market grows, there are more of
our stories being told, and the students I teach are
less likely to experience cultural cringe than I did when
I was in school. My favorites include Guardian at the
Dead by Karen Healy, a supernatural thriller that contains elements
of Maori mythology, and also Rangatira by Paul Morris, which
(33:01):
is historical fiction based on real events. So thanks for
that insight, summer and fun. Fact, my brother is also
a teacher in New Zealand, so hats off to you.
I have a letter here from Melissa. She says, I
was so excited to listen to your did World War
Two really help Rosie the Riveter podcast? From my master's
(33:21):
thesis in history, I wrote about Millie Jeoffrey, who was
the first woman to have a department at the United
Auto Workers. She ran the Women's department from nineteen forty
four to nineteen forty nine. One problem she encountered during
the end of World War Two is the disregard of
women's special seniority that they accrued during the duration of
the war. When men left their auto factory jobs to
serve in the military, they continued to accrue seniority, while
(33:43):
the women who replaced them got special seniority. Women therefore
wouldn't outrank returning veterans, but they would out rank men
who had never worked in the factory. However, veterans who
were new to the auto industry were hired over women
workers who had more seniority than them. When the war ended, Unfortunately,
million or colleagues got little help from their union and
the auto companies on this matter. Oh I hate that story,
(34:06):
but I love the story and I'm glad you shared it.
So thank you me, Lissa, and thanks to everybody who
shared their stories with us. Mom stuff at how stuff
works dot com is our email address, and for links
to all of our social media outlets, blogs, videos, and
every single one of our podcast head on over to
stuff Mom Never Told You dot com for more on
(34:29):
this and thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff
works dot com.
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