In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

| 185 Conclusion rebecca wanted to be remembered in her community as a proper victorian wife, a grieving and devoted widow, and a maritime heroine who failed to save her husband but who saved the lives of more than thirty crewmen from certain peril as she navigated the Challenger to valparaiso in 1856. She succeeded in making both Sandwich and Bourne embrace her story as part of their collective town histories. She also succeeded in getting the academic community to portray her as an important maritime figure, and as a heroine who fought to save her husband and the ship the Challenger. She helped to create these memories by defining herself as the central actor in the maritime drama that took place in 1856. She also carefully constructed a persona as the grieving victorian captain’s widow who remained faithful to her husband as she navigated his ship and throughout the rest of her life. rebecca’s story is remarkable for many reasons. First, the actual events of her life—from her adventures aboard the Whirlwind and the Challenger to the return of her Bible in 1864, suggest that her experiences were perfectly matched to the community’s need to remember its maritime past. Second, her lived experience in Sandwich and Bourne show the ways in which industrialization , immigration, and political change fundamentally altered her community, making her maritime legacy even more appealing in the face of dramatic nineteenth-century change. That rebecca knowingly created her own persona through her journals and public appearances indicates that individuals have the ability to construct their own legacies, manipulating their own public personas to create the identity that they want the public to remember. rebecca’s presentation and preservation of her own legacy begs an important question, however: is the rebecca we remember today authentic? indeed, the authenticity of self-presentation and memory is always the overriding question in autobiography and journal keeping. rebecca’s prose reveals an awareness of her audience and a self-conscious, deliberate manipulation of her image. Her story suggests the importance of the interplay between con- 186 | Conclusion temporary depictions of past events, the historical memory of events, and how legends are born. rebecca’s life suggests the importance of individuals in the creation and maintenance of their own identities and lived experiences. Because we have no extant records describing rebecca except for newspaper society pages, people tend to take her narratives at face value. But that rebecca never mentioned her financial dealings in her journals, nor donated her financial accounts to the historical society, points to the careful deliberation she took in casting herself in her journals. in fact, that we have no evidence besides rebecca’s later recollections about her having “saved the ship,” but we do have evidence to the contrary that a chronometer is not essential for navigation , should make us wonder about the veracity of her famous tale. Moreover, rebecca did not address several extremely personal family issues in her journals, or else she cut out those pages that dealt with sensitive subjects. She never mentions why no children resulted from her relationship with William . She also never questions family issues like her sister moving to California to follow a husband who had failed at several business ventures before finally succeeding after the move to Fresno. Through the journals, we see a woman who loved adventure on the sea, who retained and relied on her faith in God through all her trials, and who remained devoted to her dead husband for more than sixty years after his death aboard the Challenger. Through her actions and writings, we see the perfect model of a victorian sea captain’s wife. By donating her journals to the historical society, rebecca understood that future scholars would have access to them. Today all her journals are public. rebecca took great care to cut certain pages out of her journals, and that, too, suggests that these journals were meant to be read by a greater public . i do not believe, however, that rebecca’s carefully crafted identity detracts from the overall remarkable situation of her life and her attempts to create historical legacy. in fact, it reveals her determination to be remembered as a genteel sea captain’s wife, the link to a time long gone in Sandwich and Bourne by the twentieth century. rebecca was not unlike thousands of victorian middle-class women. Like many captain’s wives, she followed her husband to sea. Like many educated women, she...

Share