Mother Carey is a supernatural figure personifying the cruel and threatening sea in the imagination of 18th- and 19th-century English-speaking sailors.

[3] John Masefield described her in the poem "Mother Carey (as told me by the bo'sun)" in his collection Salt Water Ballads (1902).

[5] Storm petrels, thought by sailors to be the souls of dead seamen, are called Mother Carey's chickens.

[3] In The Seaman's Manual (1790), by Lt. Robert Wilson (RN), the term Mother Carey's children is defined as "a name given by English sailors to birds which they suppose are fore-runners of a storm.

they are always flying in thy wake; birds of good omen, too, but not to all;- look here, they burn; but thou- thou liv’st among them without a scorch.” “Because I am scorched all over, Captain Ahab,” answered Perth, resting for a moment on his hammer; “I am past scorching-, not easily can’st thou scorch a scar.”