I wore overalls all my life on board the ship. Father kept me dressed as a boy in fairness to the crew and for my protection. He did everything in his power to keep them and me from becoming conscious of my sex. When I was big enough to wear them Father bought me regular men’s size overalls. They buttoned in front and I was very proud that even in my clothing I resembled the sailors.
The first time I wore a dress after I left the ship I didn’t know how to walk in it. The skirt got tangled up in my legs and kept me from taking long sea strides. I had to wear underclothes with a dress and they seemed to stifle my body that was used to salt soaked overalls next to a bare skin. It was a tragic day for me when Father informed me that with a dress I had to wear shoes and stockings. The shoes hurt my feet and the cotton stockings itched—but more of the impediments of civilization later.
To go back to my babyhood—When a young lady is big enough to walk, able to say “goddamned wind” and to occupy the attention of three tailors, it is obviously time to begin thinking about her education. Father and Stitches consulted gravely.
“The fust thing she’s gotter learn, Cap’n,” argued Stitches, “is to keep from fallin’ overboard.”
“All right,” agreed Father, “every time you catch her near the rail, paddle her bottom.”
Stitches nodded in partial approval.
“That’s all right, too, Cap’n, but kids is natcha’lly ornery and their sterns gits calloused, awful fast.”
Father saw the point.
“We’ll tie her up,” he said.
So they put me at the end of a fifteen foot rope tied to the wheelbox on the poop deck. That was fine for a few days until in a sudden blow I got the rope around the steersman’s feet, with the result that my head and his stern nearly broke the deck and the ship got off her course.