On one of the cotton trading voyages of the Robert H. Dixey from Mobile, Ala., to Europe, the ships captain's niece, Sarah Jane Girdler, was aboard as a nanny for the captain's small daughter. Sarah Jane, then 17, kept a diary of her journey. This diary, with the captain's log and other family correspondence, provides an unusually detailed look at life aboard a dipper ship, the antebellum cotton trade, and the business of ocean transport of that era.
