A man who spent his life as a seafarer drifted somewhere between the woman he had waiting at home and the sea stretching out vast before him.
The woman who married such a man spread her identity somewhere between a single mother, independent and responsible for everything in his absence, and the doting, loving homemaker who made his time ashore as comfortable as possible.
Considering the heavy, feminine expectations Victorian-era society placed upon women, a seafarer’s wife would have blurred these lines. In her husband’s absence, she had to be head of the house, the caretaker, the house cleaner, the mother, and when he came home, she still had to be a wife. Her independence and self-reliance had to be given up to him for a short time, handing over the head of the house role to her husband while he was home, as societal expectations dictated at the time.
In Hanna Hagmark-Cooper’s 2012 book, she interviewed and discussed stories of sailor’s wives from Åland, an island in the Baltic Sea belonging to Finland. While interviewing sailors for another project, Cooper describes how she ended one interview only for the sailor’s wife to pull her aside. She recalled the woman’s words:
“It’s us you should interview. It was us that were left to cope with everything on our own while he was away for long, long periods. We took care of everything and then, when he came home, we were just supposed to let go and let him take over. He was used to being in command at sea, so he wanted to be in command at home as well.”
After their marriage on May 29, 1915, Frederick and Theresa Bull settled into 385 Barking Road, Plaistow, London. According to their marriage certificate, the couple lived together prior to the wedding. No doubt there was little time before he returned to sea, though. At 24-years-old, Theresa began a cycle of living as a single woman and having her new husband home for short periods. As she began having kids, it would become a dual life of single motherhood and handing over control of the household to Frederick when he returned from sea.
(385 Barking Road, via Google)
Cooper writes how the women she spoke to described a duality in the life of a seafarer’s wife. Sailor’s wives, Cooper discussed, felt as though they lived two lives. One, when her husband was gone, and the other, when he was home. One wife told Cooper:
“He’s got two completely different lives, one aboard and one at home, but so have I. One life with him, a man in the house, and another one when I have to take care of everything on my own, and those lives are totally different. Life is much easier when he’s at home, but it is difficult not to stick my nose in it, which you have to do when you’re alone. He wants to be in charge, naturally, and it’s not always easy to give in all the time.”
(Image by Shima Abedinzade from Pixabay)
While most women Cooper talked to appeared happy with their lives, adjusting to the duality, other women experienced some sort of identity crisis when stuck between the two worlds. One described her relationship as “painful and tiring”. She didn’t know which one of her worlds was the real one between “the never-ending switching from single life to couple life,” saying it “erases the boundaries for who I am.”
Others described how, despite the farewell being heartbreaking each time, they looked forward to their husbands returning to sea, since the time he was away meant a return to what she and her children knew as “normal.” They enjoyed having their husbands home, but these women also became accustomed to a certain freedom when he was gone, their own routines and plans and a house that wasn’t as messy in his absence.
“My feelings when he leaves are mixed, but since I’ve always lived like this - and want to live like this – it feels quite good. I know he’ll be home again after four weeks, but it sometimes feels like dying a bit each time he leaves,” another woman told Cooper.
There’s little to go on in regards to how Theresa may have felt about her new role as a seafarer’s wife, whether she regarded Frederick’s constant absences as freedom or loneliness, or how she adjusted over time. Nor do I know how frequently or for how long Frederick was gone when he left. Her life became a cycle of preparing for his departures, having him leave, the period in which she lived without him, and then his return and subsequent time at home.
Their first child, a son named Frederick George Bull (Fred, as he was known), was born April 8, 1916. Theresa’s life changed rapidly, becoming both a sailor’s wife, and then a mother, within a year or two. Motherhood would have been a drastic change she carried mostly on her own, caring for both a home and a new baby while Frederick was at sea.
A daughter, Theresa Agnes Bull, was born Jan. 19, 1918. Annie E. Bull followed on Oct. 24, 1919, and their fourth and final child, Veronica Govia Bull, was born on April 18, 1921. Their mother had four children by the time she turned 30.
The few family stories that exist depict Frederick as a loving father who was happily married to Theresa. One cousin told me how the younger Fred got his job on the docks when he was of age because Frederick was so highly thought of. Details on how Theresa viewed her marriage are non-existent. No one knows whether she was as happy as her other half in this marriage.
The 1921 Census lists Frederick as 41-years-old, and Theresa as 30. Frederick at the time worked on the docks for the New Zealand Shipping Company. No employment is listed for Theresa. Veronica isn’t present, so presumably, Theresa was likely pregnant at the time the census was taken. Fred, at five years old, was attending board school. By this time, the family lived at 19 Norman Road in East Ham, London.
(1921 Census)
A quick look at Wikipedia tells me that the New Zealand Shipping Company ran passenger and cargo ships between New Zealand and Great Britain from 1873 to 1973, after which it was absorbed into another company.
The route from New Zealand to Great Britain and vice versa would have been a long one, yet Frederick worked on the docks as per the census, which means he was closer to home and not gone for long periods anymore. It isn’t clear when he changed jobs between 1915 and 1921.
However, the Spanish Flu pandemic had devastated London between 1918 and 1919. The Historic UK website describes a brutal sickness for those infected:
“Onset was devastatingly quick. Those fine and healthy at breakfast could be dead by tea-time. Within hours of feeling the first symptoms of fatigue, fever and headache, some victims would rapidly develop pneumonia and start turning blue, signalling a shortage of oxygen. They would then struggle for air until they suffocated to death.”
Over 50 million people died of the Spanish Flu worldwide. In Britain alone, the death toll surmounted to 228,000.
“More people died of influenza in that single year than in the four years of the Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351,” says the Historic UK website.
As we are seeing with the current COVID-19 pandemic, the aftermath on everyday life was difficult. By the mid-1920s, unemployment in Britain hit 2 million, rising to 70% in some places, according to the Historic UK website. UK exports were expensive and interest rates were rising. Great Britain was importing more coal than it was mining and there was little investment in new mass-production techniques. The post-war prosperity didn’t last long in the aftermaths of a gruesome virus. The country hit a post-pandemic depression.
According to a 1923 article discussing his disappearance, Frederick also suffered “an accident which incapacitated him, for some months” on July 20, 1918. No other details were given about this accident.
“He resumed work for some time, but had to give it up again”, the article continues, stating he received compensation but his job was filled, leaving him unemployed with a wife and four kids at home to provide for.
Frederick’s life as a sailor, it seems, was over. A plaguing injury. A faltering economy. The number of jobs shrinking before his eyes. What did this mean for his future, as a family man in his forties?
Theresa’s life as she knew it also became frighteningly unstable. If she had been unhappy as a seafarer’s wife before, she was now staring down the possibility of losing everything and being unable to provide for her children. If she had enjoyed the freedom that accompanied her husband’s profession, she faced the potential of losing that. Money would have been tight alongside that disappearing freedom.
With their life together stalled, what did they do from there? Did Frederick become disposable to Theresa, with his injury and unemployment, or was his mysterious death to come a tragic result of that injury?
This, I’ll explore in the next post. Thanks for coming along.
Sources
Pandemic
Britain in the 1920s
Ancestry records
The 1921 Great Britain Census