Sea, Maritime Trade, and Ports

Women were active participants in early modern maritime and littoral worlds, despite the frequent presentation of these spaces as overwhelmingly masculine. Women traveled the seas as monarchs, exiles, and wives; they were integral to port life as shipowners, traders, and naval contractors, and were the lovers and wives of seamen. Whilst often appearing as stereotypes or idealized figures in male-authored drama and ballads, women themselves also wrote about the sea and left traces of their lives and experiences in a breadth of documents ranging from literary texts to accounts, petitions, and official records.