Since the thread has been resurrected, I’ll point out that in the era of sailing ships it used to be commonplace for there to be a number of women aboard Royal Navy ships. Some were there legally as wives of particular officers and crew, and the captain and officers were expected to turn a Nelsonian blind eye to the others.
Sample cite.
Also, I’ve seen in a couple of places that a woman by the name of Madeline Blair stowed away aboard USS Arizona (the battleship unfortunately best known for the footage of it being destroyed in an explosion at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941) for about a month, from March to April of 1924. She was discovered when a chief petty officer overheard two of the crewmembers talking about her.
Seems the crewmen who knew about her and were helping hide her in return to favors (I presume she was stitching up uniforms, helping them with their taxes, feeding their pets, and other assorted neighborly things). Several of the crew ended up doing prison time over the whole affair.
Cite: “The Wreck of the Hesperus” by H. W. Longfellow
In 1801 Matthew Flinders was expressly refused permission to take his new wife on a journey to circumnavigate and map Australia. As a result, he did not see her for 9 years, after landing on a French territory and being held prisoner for nearly 7 years.
The TV movie version of The Girl, The Gold Watch and Everything had a bit of un PC karmic justice when the female villain gets thrown into a truck full of seamen. Later you see her merrily slipping on board ship wearing a crackerjack uniform.