Mother Carey

Mother Carey is a supernatural figure who personifies the cruel and threatening sea in the imagination of 18th- and 19th-century English-speaking sailors. Sailors believed that she was a harbinger of storms and that she lived near the North Pole. She was said to be a fearsome creature, but she also had a kind side and was said to help old sailors return to the sea. One of the most famous depictions of Mother Carey is in Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies. In this story, she is a fairy who helps Tom find the Other-end-of-Nowhere. She is also shown in one of Jessie Willcox Smith's illustrations for the book. Storm petrels, thought by sailors to be the souls of dead seamen, are called Mother Carey's Chickens. Giant petrels are known as Mother Carey's Geese.