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On April 1, 1873, the SS Atlantic, due to a navigational error, a White Star Line passenger steamship ran aground just off Prospect, just south of Halifax. Over the next several hours, rescuers pulled 429 traumatized survivors out of the wreckage. But 535 people didn’t survive, including Bill, a sailor who during the subsequent autopsy, was discovered to be female.
According to one newspaper account, the body of one of the crew members was discovered to be that of a woman. "She was about twenty or twenty-five years old and had served as a common sailor for three voyages, and her sex was never known until the body was washed ashore and prepared for burial. She is described as having been a great favourite with all her shipmates, and one of the crew, speaking of her, remarked: 'I didn't know Bill was a woman. He used to take his grog as regular as any of us, and was always begging or stealing tobacco. He was a good fellow, though, and I am sorry he was a woman."
Terence Bay artist LynetteRichards was inspired by this story, and over four years, gathered details of this story from a range of historic newspapers from all over the world, and created the graphic novel, Call Me Bill which was published in 2022.
Richards imagines a remarkable life story of a tenacious adventurer who took huge risks to live an authentic life that others would have had difficulty imagining. Set against the backdrop of the worst maritime disaster before the Titanic, this story is an exploration of identity and radical imagination that echoes across generations.
Swapping out their dress for a pair of pants, Bill had run away from New Jersey in search of adventure, anonymity, and a place in the world. When they were hired to work on a cargo steamer, everything seemed to fall into place—but it didn’t take long for Bill to realize they were really just searching for a place where they could be themselves.
SS Atlantic historian KathyKaulbach? reminds us that we have no information about whether this person identified as trans, gay, lesbian; any labels we add are ones that we imagine.
The book launch was on October 6, 2022 at the BusStopTheatre
The book is available