I ask this question because I have recently learned that my fourth great-grandfather was born aboard the HMS Thunderer during the Dardanelles Operation of 1807. I wondered - why would his mother have been aboard the ship, especially during a combat operation? His father appears to have been a carpenter, which may explain his presence (though I do not know for certain if he was aboard), but I don't see why he should have brought his wife with him.
Enough about my family history: I am not asking specifically for insight about that. It merely got me thinking more generally about why women may have been aboard these ships during this period, and what roles they might have served on them. That is what I am asking about now.
It was a common, albeit unofficial practice, for warrant officers to be permitted to bring their wives with them. The carpenter was a warrant office and one if the standing officers appointed to a ship rather than moving for promotion as the commissioned officers did. The women were not fed from ship’s stores but often made themselves useful with such things as laundry (where possible) or sick nursing. At the battle of the Nile, one woman was killed while helping to serve one of the guns, although it is possible she was a wife of one of the soldiers shipped out to take part in the campaign.
Female Tars: Women Aboard Ship in the Age of Sail by SJ Stark (Constable, 1996)