"Sue Given" (suegiven@vti.com.au) posted <snipped>: >> I didn't think that they had stewardesses on ships in the 1800s. As the captain/master and the ship was the same on both voyages is it possible that the stewardess was a relative, or did they actually exist. I thought back then men went to sea and only females on board were the wives/families. >> The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary records 1837 as the first occurrence of stewardess in the sense of a female attendant on ships. I once spent some time looking through the LDS census index to the 1861 census of people on ships and stewardesses were the only women I saw who were apparently crew. I don't know about the practice in the 1800s but later on stewardesses were sometimes widows of seamen who were given the job to support themselves and family. I think before stewardesses, ladies travelling would have a maid with them, while poor women would just look after themselves (and some had very rough passages indeed). -- Harry Dodsworth Ottawa Ontario Canada af877@freenet.carleton.ca ----------------------------------------------------------------