She Captains: Heroines and Hellions of the Sea

I liked this book, even though it was less about pirates than I had hoped for, and way less about female captains. Still. I remember when the first PotC movie came out and me and my (female) friends became obsessed with the pirate life, saying we wanted to set sail and start slitting throats. A male friend was kind enough to mansplain it to me: "you know that all the women on pirate ships were raped, right?". I wish I could slap him with this book. It's not a big book, it wouldn't hurt him much, but maybe he'd get an infected papercut and be forever deformed.

What I didn't like about this book was the times it didn't really talk about women at sea, but rather women whose husband were at sea and they stayed home. It wasn't really what I show more wanted. Also, the use of the word "female" as a noun and the casual use of "transvestite" to describe a lot of the women who cross-dressed kinda put me off. But the stories were interesting, and the snide-ish comment by the author were funny, so mostly I enjoyed it. show less

The book goes way back in time to ancient times like 500BC.

I personally, found the more modern chapters the most interesting. And by more modern, I mean 1800s onwards.

It's the kind of book where you can read whichever chapters you like.

I found the book to be well-researched - there are a tonne of references at the back if you want to know more about a particular type of 'she captain' like priates, widows, etc.

If you are interested in social history, it's worth a read.