Ruth Fish Jenkins defied New England’s mid-19th-century conventions when she went to sea with her husband.
Women were supposed to stay at home, take care of the children and set an example of moral purity for their husbands. They should avoid too much intellectual stimulation because it might harm their delicate nature.
Ruth sailed around the world and immersed herself in the cultures of many countries. She learned to record latitude and longitude, sewed garments for the crew and served
as ship’s cook when necessary.
Ruth Fish Jenkins in the 1860s
In journals and letters written between 1863 and 1868, Ruth revealed the everyday moments of a woman whose formal education ended at 12 years old. The documents were discovered in 2016 on the back porch of the family home of Ruth’s great-great-grandsons, Robert and Charles Elder. They sorted through a lifetime of memorabilia after the death of their parents. The documents had been saved for generations along with letters and ship’s logs from their great-great-grandfather, Capt. James Hamblin Jenkins.
Ruth’s elegant handwriting breathes life into the innermost thoughts of a brave, adventurous woman who pushed against the boundaries of her time.
Ruth Fish Jenkins, Global Citizen
The daughter of a ship’s captain, Ruth Fish knew all too well the fate that awaited the wife of a sailor: the man forever raced toward new horizons; the woman remained anchored to home and family. She watched her mother juggle their unpredictable finances while her father was gone and then cede authority to him when he returned.
Like her mother, Ruth married a sailor: James Jenkins of West Barnstable, Mass. He went to sea at 13 and became captain of a merchant ship by the age of 24. But Ruth chose a different course than her mother. She did not stay home.
James Jenkins
Ruth joined a small but growing circle of women in the 1860s who accompanied their husbands on great wooden ships during the final chapter of the Age of Sail. She sailed through some of the most perilous waters on earth as they transported commodities like bird guano, tea, lumber and coal. At a time when many women didn’t travel more than a hundred miles from their hometowns, Ruth learned about the cultures of many countries as well as the intricacies of sailing.
Every new voyage brought Ruth and James a painful choice: Should she stay or should she go? The choice was not always theirs to make. In his early years as a captain, James was subject to the whims of boat owners, many of whom refused to let a captain’s wife or children come aboard. Complicating matters further was the risk of enduring childbirth and raising a child aboard a ship that crossed oceans. To round Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope meant facing down gales, pirates and warships along the way.
Outward Bound
Ruth left her daughter Minnie with her mother in West Barnstable when the child was 2 years old. She and James boarded the 177-foot, three-masted barque, the Hoogly. Together, they navigated the globe for more than a year, transporting goods in the China and East Indies trade with a crew of about 20 men.
With her daughter Minnie growing farther away, every mile they sailed, Ruth wrote her mother in 1864 from her cabin in the Hoogly.
The Hoodly
James & the mate and stewards are laughing at me every day and call me “old sailor.” I was a little sick for a few hours, but don’t think I was so bad off as James was…
I woke up and felt the motion… I did not begin to feel sick till I had been up about half an hour. I could not eat any breakfast, and James gave me some lavender and sugar, but that did not do me much good… The steward brought me some strong ginger tea, and I vomited it up.
About 12 o’clock James came down and says, come Ruth, if you want to get the last look of Cape Cod. I started up and ran to the window as well as I could, for I had not got my sea legs on then, and all I could see of Cape Cod was a little bit of land, a few rocks and a light house. But your face, and Minnie’s, Georgie’s, Father, Eliza’s and Aunt Zelia’s, all flashed across my vision, and for the first time since I made up my mind to try the sea, I felt like having a good cry.
James was expecting it (and he almost blubbered too) but he tried to turn it off, and he says, Come Ruth, have some brandy and water and I guess that will cure you, and I guess it did for I have been as smart as a cricket ever since and have the greatest appetite you ever heard of.
Sandy Neck Lighhouse in the 1870s
Life Aboard the Hoogly
Ruth refused to let homesickness or sea sickness lay her low. Her first experience in a heavy gale with ferocious winds left her confident that she would develop into a good sailor.
I expected I should be frightened, but it was not half so bad as I thought it was going to be, and James said we should not have a harder one he didn’t think, going round the horn. The next day the wind had died away but there was a monstrous sea. It would come right over the side, and I laughed twenty times to see the men get a ducking.
Ruth lost three children conceived aboard the Hoogly. A daughter died within weeks of her birth and twin boys lived only a single day. Other losses came to her through letters received months after the fact. Her father died. So did her younger brother, Josiah Fish, who fought in the Civil War and perished at 22 at Rappahannock Station, Va..
Ruth’s final voyage on the Hoogly, together with James and 4-year-old Minnie, lasted nearly two years. They sailed to Liverpool, Burma (now known as Myanmar), Germany and San Francisco before returning home to Boston. This was the Hoogly’s last voyage. At that moment, steamships were rapidly replacing wooden sailing ships as masters of the sea.
A Historic Day
Ruth Fish Jenkins did not accompany her husband on a voyage that coincided with the end of the Civil War. She woke the morning of Monday, April 10, 1865 to the sound of bells in the town of Salem, Mass. Her little daughter snuggled next to her. It was Ruth’s 26th birthday. She reflected on this historic day in her journal.
The ringing of bells and the noise of cannons awoke me at four o’clock this morning, and for a little time I was in a daze. My little Minnie was sleeping sweetly beside me entirely unconscious of the tumult without. It was so like night; dark and cloudy, no light streaks in the east proclaiming the dawn of day, that although the clock told me it was morning I could hardly believe it. And now what in the world could be the matter? It could not be fire for there was no shouting in the streets. Had the rebels come? But the bells gave forth such joyful peals that I could not contain the thoughts of such a direful misfortune happening to us.
The mystery was soon solved. General Robert E. Lee and his Confederate army had laid down their arms.
Oh what news. We were all wound up to the highest pitch of excitement and Helen, Cad, and I cut round the room in our night gowns shouting hurrah and acting as though we were crazy. And to cap the climax, in rushed Henry and danced a jig in the middle of the floor. Well, we can be excused for all extravagant expressions or demonstration of joy at such glorious news. Minnie awoke at this extra noise, and I suppose remembered that I had told her the night before when I put her to bed that tomorrow would be my birthday. The moment she opened her eyes, she said, “What is it, Mother? Is it your buff day? And does it make the bell ring?
Ruth Fish Jenkins, Home at Last
Ruth and James returned to West Barnstable, where James took up the farmer’s life and Ruth bore two more healthy daughters.
House identified as “The James Jenkins House on the West Barnstable Road”
Minnie went on to marry and have children who would hear of her adventures at sea. They included meeting the King of Siam and scrambling to the top of the mizzen mast. Ruth Fish Jenkins died at the age of 50. James never remarried.
James Jenkins later in life
Ruth’s words, so long tucked away and forgotten, remind us that women heard the song of the sea just as clearly as men. But she never lost her love for home, as she expressed upon returning after more than a year at sea.
Oh! Home sweet home. No one but sailors can experience the exquisite delight of entering his home port. It is all delightful, the little delays, and the thumping of a body’s heart, and the pleasant anticipation, all mixed together. It is beyond description. No person could make a pen put on paper the least thing that would begin to create such a delight. Words are entirely useless to express such a tumult of feelings.
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Cynthia Elder is the wife of Robert Elder, a great-great-grandson of Ruth and James Jenkins. She is author of the historical novels, The Journey Begins and The Drumbeats of War, the two books in the Tales of the Sea series, released in May 2025 (Holand Press). The novels are based on the complete collection of letters, ship’s logs and journals from Ruth and James Jenkins and Ruth’s brother, Josiah Fish.
