Eliza Spencer Brock (1810-99)
Eliza Spencer Brock, wife of Captain Peter C. Brock (1805-78), kept a journal aboard the whaleship Lexington during a voyage from May 21, 1853, to June 25, 1856. The journey took her to the Azores, Cape Verde Islands, New Zealand, Hawaii, and throughout the South Pacific. In her journal, Brock expressed the isolation she felt at sea, noting poignantly, ". . . if it was not for hope the heart would break." When Captain Brock's Lexington, with Eliza aboard, spoke Captain Morey's Phoenix, with Elizabeth Morey aboard, on July 24, 1855, it may be that Betsey and Eliza had an opportunity to gam — the whalers' custom when their vessels met. Brock included some eighty-five poems and snippets of verse in her journal, some of which she wrote and some from other sources, like the "Nantucket Girls Song," which includes the lines:

Then I'll haste to wed a sailor, and send him off to sea,
For a life of independence, is the pleasant life for me,
But every now and then I shall like to see his face,
For it always seems to me to beam with manly grace,
With his brow so nobly open, and his dark and kindly eye,
Oh my heart beats fondly towards him whenever he is nigh,
But when he says, "Goodbye my love, I'm off across the sea,"
First I cry for his departure, then laugh because I'm free. . . .

Eliza Brock lived at 5 Step Lane.

The embroidered narrative contains excerpts from a passage in Eliza Brock's journal that reads, "A wanderer upon the wide ocean, far away from friends and sweet home."