Cornelia Schmid - She sailed along as the captain's wife

About Cornelia Schmid

• Occupation: As the wife of the captain, she sailed for two and a half years aboard the two-masted schooner Poseidon, a cargo ship that sailed the Baltic Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, and to the Americas.
• Lived: 1843–1902
• Employer: unknown
• In which maritime sector did she work? unknown

What kind of work did she do?

unknown

What else can be said about her maritime life?

She married Evert Deddes (1836–1920) in early 1865. “She was [then] 22 years old and I was 28, and of course we set off on our journey together. Life on board was completely different; and very soon I could no longer imagine how I had ever managed to spend my time alone,” Deddes recalled. The couple had nine children. From the time of their marriage until the fall of 1867 (and thus also after the birth of their eldest son Jan Hendrik (Henry) in January 1866—for which she had temporarily gone ashore)—she sailed the world with him. “But oh, how that boy was spoiled! Everyone considered themselves his nanny; and it was lovely to see the patience with which the sailors looked after him,” wrote Deddes about the period when both his wife and his son were sailing along on board. The Poseidon was shipwrecked in the Gulf of Mexico in the fall of 1867, causing the family to lose the ship and undertake the long journey back to the Netherlands via the U.S. By the spring of 1868, they were back in Rotterdam. From that point on, Cornelia Schmid lived in Rotterdam, though she did occasionally travel with some of the children on the steamship Trieste, where Deddes had become captain (and which sailed the Mediterranean). “But eventually it became too difficult with two little children, and especially as the number kept growing,” Deddes later sighed. Schmid took care of the household and the children while her husband continued to sail. Later, he worked ashore, first as a merchant and later as director of the Seamen’s Home in Rotterdam. The couple was reasonably well-off, as evidenced by the presence of several servants in the house. There are no signs that Schmid remained connected to the maritime world, though she did christen one of the first two ships of the N.A.S.M., the Maas, in 1872.

*In the exhibition