EEI Colloquium Seminars | Female shipowners and the transition from sail to steam

The Centre for Water Cultures Seminar Series presents:

When the entrepreneurial women of seafaring disappeared - Female shipowners and the transition from sail to steam by Nils Valdersdorf Jensen

This seminar from Nils Valdersdorf Jensen examines how the technological transition from sail to steam in shipping affected women's roles and conditions in maritime societies. The focus is on the role and conditions of women as shipowners and business managers in the prominent Danish maritime communities on South Funen from 1850-1930.

Female shipowners have not been the subject of independent research, but preliminary studies indicate that the female shipowners disappeared in the transition from sail to steam and from family shipping companies to joint-stock companies.

In 1873, there were 44 female shipowners in Denmark. Although most are listed as widows, some were listed under their own names. Especially in the significant sailing ship communities in Marstal and Svendborg, female shipowners were prominent – like Anna Kirstine Jensen in the above image.

International research has shown that active female shipowners and partner shipowners are not just a Danish phenomenon. In England, the world's leading shipping nation at the time, up to 13 of the ship's shares in 1865 were owned by women, while for Arendal in Norway in the year 1874 it was only about 4. This changed with the transition from sail to steam. In 1920, there were no female shipowners in both the Danish steamship companies and the remaining sailing ship companies.

The seminar examines the reasons for the disappearance of female shipowners in the light of the introduction of steamships and the industrialization of shipping in the period 1850-1930. It draws on the history of gender and maritime cultural ethnography to explain how maritime communities differed from agrarian communities in regard to female ownership and entrepreneurship.

About Nils Valdersdorf Jensen

Nils is a senior curator at Svendborg Museum and a postdoc researcher at the University of Southern Denmark.

He was awarded a PhD in maritime history in 2021 from the University of Southern Denmark for a dissertation entitled Morality on the Verge: State and Smuggling in the South Funen Archipelago 1850-2000, which examined the history of Danish smuggling using the South Funen Archipelago as a case study.

His research focuses on maritime history, especially maritime crime, education and technological transitions.