How women could be paid for shipboard work

Were the women and girls aboard paid?

Sometimes through private payments or accounting arrangements, but there was no straightforward rule applying to everyone.

Women were not normally supposed to appear on the ship's books, which complicates any simple answer about pay. Sailors and officers could pay directly for work such as mending clothes. A captain might also use creative accounting to arrange payment through the ship. Social position mattered: wives and daughters of senior officers probably would not be paid in the same way and might not need that income.