An examination of women entrepreneurs who invested in, and often managed, non-feminine businesses such as shipping and shipbuilding in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Shows how, at a time when women were assumed to be confined to domestic roles, many women were in fact actively and effectively running businesses, including non-feminine businesses. The book investigates independent women entrepreneurs who ran shipping and shipbuilding businesses in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, often managing male workforces. Far from the genteel notion of Victorian women as milliners and haberdashers, this book shows that women could and did manage male businesses and manage men. Women invested in the expanding shipping industry throughout the late eighteenth and the nineteenth century and actively ran non feminine businesses such as shipbuilding. By setting the businesswomen firmly in the context of the industry, the book examines the business challenges from the woman's perspective. It demonstrates how a woman needed to understand the business requirements while in some cases also being a single parent. As business managers, they had to manage a male workforce, deal with large and important customers and ensure they maintained their firm's reputation and continued to win orders. Nor were these women mere caretakers for the next generation, in many cases continuing to run the business in an active manner after their son or sons were of age. This book reveals communities of independent women in England who were active entrepreneurs and investors, in a period when women were increasingly supposed to be relegated to a more domestic role. It includes brief biographies of many of these women entrepreneurs who were also conventional mothers, wives and daughters. Helen Doe is an Honorary Fellow of the Centre for Maritime Historical Studies, University of Exeter; a Council Member of the Society for Nautical Research; chair of their marketing committee; a member of the British Commission for Maritime History; on the Advisory Council of the SS Great Britain; and a Trustee of the National Maritime Museum Cornwall.

A thoroughly researched, thoughtful and stimulating analysis of an important theme in maritime history. It fill significant gaps in the historiography of maritime women and enhances our understanding of the role of women in the maritime world during this period.'

Source: Northern Mariner

[A] fabulously detailed and meticulously researched book [which] will be of interest to researchers of business, maritime or gender history and to the general reader who is interested to learn the unexpected about our country's trading heyday.'

Source: Women's History Magazine

This well researched book [...] goes far to demonstrate that in the maritime field of entrepreneurship was not the sole prerogative of men. Doe's study encompasses much and will be indispensable reading for historians with interests of many kinds.'

Source: International Journal of Maritime History