Women Sailors & Sailors' Women by David Cordingly

her travels. She once again assumed male clothes and took the stagecoach to Newport. Traveling with her were a midshipman, a sea captain, a venerable old gentleman, and a seventeen-year-old girl. They stopped to dine at an inn where the captain and the midshipman got drunk. They insulted the girl with rude jokes and obscene language until Lucy rebuked them. The midshipman was enraged. He had a dirk dangling at his side and hinted that with this little weapon he had withstood and overcome formidable foes upon the ocean. Lucy challenged him to a duel, but the midshipman’s courage deserted him when faced with the sight of a cocked pistol. He was forced to apologize to the girl, and when they arrived at Newport, he beat a hasty retreat. Lucy traveled on to New York, where she met the young lady she had defended. Her name was Miss West and she was accompanied by her brother. They were from a wealthy New York family, and Lucy spent some time with them before traveling back to Boston. Dressed as a military officer, she revisited her old haunts on Negro Hill and even called on the madam who ran the brothel where she had been taught her first lessons in vice. The old woman was completely fooled by her disguise. Satisfied with her recent adventures, Lucy returned once again to the peaceful home of her fond parents.
    In May 1816, the third part of Lucy’s story appeared under the title
The Awful Beacon, to the Rising Generation of Both Sexes.
This time the author was given on the title page as “Mrs. Lucy West (Late Miss Lucy Brewer).” This volume described how Charles West, the handsome brother of Miss West, had read Lucy Brewer’s autobiography and discovered the identity of the young man who had defended his sister’s honor. He wrote to Lucy from New York to say he would like to see her again, and some time later he arrived at her parents’ farm in a carriage. After some further adventures, they were married, and Lucy concluded her book with some moralizing stories and reflections.
    This was not the end of the saga, however, because in the summer of 1816, Mrs. Rachel Sperry, the madam of the brothel where Lucy had worked for three years, published her side of the story. In a pamphlet entitled
A Brief Reply to the Late Writings of Louisa Baker
(
alias Lucy Brewer
), she revealed that the real name of the author of the three publications was Eliza Bowen. She pointed out that, far from being a reluctant innocent who had been corrupted by an old bawd, Miss Bowen had made such rapid strides in the arts of harlotry that she had decoyed countless youths with her feminine wiles, and had been an enthusiastic participant in the midnight revels at the dancing halls. Mrs. Sperry justified her own career by recounting how her husband had drowned in a boating accident near Boston lighthouse in the spring of 1806, leaving her to support three small children. The starving condition of her family had prompted her to open a lodging house on the Hill. She had made sure that her female boarders were quiet and well behaved when they had company in the evenings, and was grateful for their assistance with her sewing work in the daytime. She provided examples of Miss Bowen’s disgraceful behavior and refused to believe that she had sincerely repented of her past life. She concluded her pamphlet with the words “I therefore now furnish the public with a true statement of the whole affair—let the candid examine and judge for themselves.”
    We do not know for certain what the public made of Lucy Brewer’s adventures, but we do know that her story proved so popular that the various parts were combined in a single volume entitled
The Female Marine
and that nine editions of this were published between 1816 and 1818. (This was in addition to the six editions of
The Adventures of Louisa Baker
and the three editions of
The Adventures of Lucy Brewer.
) Many of the readers seem to have been young women who were