In this book, they aren't pirates.

Sail Away Ladies, a slim volume by Jim Coogan, is a history focusing on several Cape Cod women who went to sea in the Age of Sail. But don't expect to find the likes of Anne Bonny or Grace O'Malley here; these ladies are for the most part the wives (and, occasionally, daughters) of sea captains, dutifully sailing with their husbands (or, in some cases, entire families) aboard merchant ships and whalers.

Women went to sea far more frequently than many people today realize, Coogan explains. Often, the wife and daughters of a ship's captain were the only women aboard a ship and, in the case of whaling voyages to the Pacific Ocean, they could be away from their homes, extended families and friends for several years. Consequently, the occasional interactions with other captains' wives in ports or on passing ships were a much-longed-for respite from boredom and loneliness.

To tell the tale, Coogan selects a dozen or so Cape Cod women whose stories were preserved through journals, letters home, newspaper articles and memoirs. Some of these women had perfectly pleasant excursions, enjoying their time at sea and touring exotic locations around the world. Some filled their days with sewing, knitting and reading, and when in port they enjoyed shopping and sightseeing. They recount social occasions with ladies from passing ships more often than you might expect. They describe natives from exotic locations, with unusual customs.

Other women were not so lucky, falling prey to seasickness or scurvy, weathering powerful storms, witnessing fatal encounters with whales and bad weather, suffering food and water shortages, forestalling mutinies and, in one chapter, surviving an attack by Chinese pirates (although that particular woman's husband, a merchant captain, did not survive the assault; neither did the couple's nurse, although the captain's infant daughter, who was in the nurse's care, was found later hidden and miraculously unscathed). Some women raised children, endured difficult pregnancies and gave birth aboard ship. Some women and children were swept overboard or fell prey to leaky vessels or hidden reefs.

Obviously, not all of them lived to see their homes again. A few chapters are illustrated with grainy photographs of gravestones. (When possible, Coogan also includes portraits of the women, their husbands and sometimes even the ships they sailed on.)

These are for the most part mundane anecdotes about the women's lives at sea, not riveting narratives about grand adventures. For the most part, they are fairly uneventful, and yet they are still valuable for explaining and preserving these stories that are not well known. Women played a larger role in these voyages than is commonly known, and that role deserves to be included in the larger history of the American experience at sea. Coogan did these ladies -- and his readers -- a great service.