he could trust—his mother. The old woman (William Widger was thirty-two) asked the sailor if he was going home to see his wife. Widger responded that he “was dam'd if ever I desired to See hir a Gain.” The maternal strings began to tug on Widger as his mother sought to ease his anger. She argued for the biologically impossible, asserting that “the Child was a honest begotten Child and it was Got before” Widger went to sea and that it was his. Widger was not to be moved, and repeated that it was impossible since he had been out to sea for two years and more. Widger continued “I was a dam'd foule to Coum home” and that he could leave in the brig he had arrived in. The debate went back and forth; the mother almost succeeded in convincing Widger to return home and see his wife and baby. Widger continued to remonstrate and swear, and, as he reports, “before I was don talking With hur a bout it I awaked.”1
William Widger's dream highlights the contradictory meanings of liberty that shoreside attachments held for the sailor. Whether detained as a captive, or merely forced from home by his service at sea, the mariner could be both attracted to women ashore and repelled by them. Liberty on the waterfront allowed the sailor to engage in a variety of long- and short-term heterosexual relationships. Liberty at sea released the sailor, at least temporarily, from those relationships and compelled him to live in an all-male society where his imagination could run wild. He might long for absent loved ones, or he might relish the freedom of the fraternity of the forecastle. Most likely, he did both.
The many meanings of liberty for the sailor—personal independence, carousing, and freedom to choose where he worked among them—were intricately intertwined with his relationships with women and his fellow sailors and with his sense of masculinity. At sea (or as prisoners of war) men lived in a homosocial, not a homosexual, world. Life aboard ship presented challenges to male sexuality. Separation from women and close quarters in the forecastle created the potential for sexual activity with other men. Even the nature of the work could suggest a less masculine identity. Although the true mariner had to be prepared for the most arduous labor, he also often had to be proficient at tasks like mending and washing that could be considered feminine. Regardless of the possibilities, the image of Jack Tar was an idealized heterosexual man. Everyone aboard ship may not always have lived up to that ideal, but its persistence was fundamental to maritime culture and sailors’ notion of liberty.
Widger's dream also suggests a conflicted understanding of women. On the one hand is the woman who gave him birth, a woman whom he trusted almost enough to believe that he was not cuckolded. Contrasted with this mother was the wife who could not be trusted. She was the temptress and betrayer, who while he was away had slept with another man, gotten pregnant, and delivered of a baby boy. These two images—which suggest the Madonna and Eve—represent extremes in the mind of the sailor. Yet somehow they became blended. After all, the mother stood in alliance with the wife, arguing with her son that he should still return to his family and claim the infant as his. Within the dream Widger is torn. On one level, he is still drawn to the fireside and his wife. On another, he continues to rant and assert a vague desire to return to the safety and camaraderie of the forecastle. Within the real world, there is no resolution. Rather than settling the debate, Widger, who corresponded with his wife while in Old Mill Prison, merely awakes. Most sailors had an even more complex view of women including the sacred mother, beloved sister, innocent daughter, loyal sweetheart or wife, playful Mol, exploitive harlot, and exotic native. The boundaries between some of these remained vague and the categories often overlapped.
We should not confuse popular images of womanhood with reality. Women's experiences and their relationships with sailors were varied. Whether she was in an ephemeral or long-term relationship with a sailor, or whether she exploited or was exploited, Jack Tar's liberty exacted a high cost on a woman on the waterfront. These women's lives were therefore often hard. Women labored mainly as seamstresses, or in boardinghouses and taverns and in the commercial sex industry. Although they formed strong bonds with each other, theirs was not a separate sphere. Women interacted with men beyond their own family on a daily basis. Some of these women fulfilled the various fantasies of the sailor—including a sentimentalized domestic ideal—while he was ashore. Others did not.2
Personal relationships ashore could pull on or push upon Jack Tar affecting his notions of liberty. To better understand this aspect of the sailor's life, I will examine concepts of gender identity at sea, the many images of women for the male waterfront worker, and some details of the lives of the women on the waterfront.3
Any understanding of masculine identity on the waterfront must begin with how men viewed themselves. The forecastle created a peculiar environment that had the potential to threaten the heterosexual identity of sailors. Isolated from women for long periods of time, compelled to live and work in a confined space literally on top of each other, and at times forced to labor at work land based society deemed feminine, sailors could have created a more homoerotic identity. They did not. Instead, they developed a notion of manhood that reflected both working-class and youth culture that emphasized proficiency at skilled labor and heterosexual prowess.4 For Richard Henry Dana, Jr., the ideal sailor fulfilled all the qualities of manliness. He complimented the mate on the Pilgrim by describing him as being every inch a man. Likewise, each crew member knew that “he must be a man, and show himself smart when at his duty.” For Dana, “an overstrained sense of manliness is the characteristic of seafaring men.” The manly sailor must confront the world with stoicism, ignore danger, minimize an injury, and avoid expression of feelings.5 In 1836 “A Brother Cruiser” looked at a picture of “The Boatswain's Mate” and proclaimed, “such a picture as that, I love to look upon a real man-of-war's man—a hearty, able bodied, American seaman.” His very look expressed “a love of enterprise, firmness of purpose, and a reckless daring.” Such a sailor never forgot his birthright, “he is never a fawning, cringing, sycophantic creature, but always a man!” Yet this ideal sailor understood the military necessity of discipline and always tipped his hat to his superior officers.6 From this perspective the manly sailor was independent and hardworking and knew both his duty and his place. There was something straightforward and honest in this portrait of the sailor that emphasized hard work and diligence rather than intelligence. J. Ross Browne, for instance, described one old salt, whom he greatly admired, as combining “all the noble generosity and daring of a real sailor—all those blunt, manly qualities which characterize the genuine son of Neptune—with the credulity and simplicity of a child.”7 Popular song reiterated these themes countless times. “Bonny Ben” in one song “was to each jolly messmate a brother.” Perhaps even more important, “He was manly, and honest, good-natured and free.”8
Ashore, all of these masculine characteristics became embodied in the manly sailor adorned in his best sailor garb, with a ready wit, generosity, and love of life. Understandably irresistible to any woman on the waterfront, the sailor possessed a strong libido that needed to be satisfied.
I took my love by the middle so small and gently lay'd her down
Those words to me she thus did say as we lay on the broom [heather]
Do what you will kind sir said she it's equal unto me
But little do my Mammy know I am in the broom with thee.9
At times the sailor could remain loyal to his sweetheart and he might eagerly promise to marry his love. Although such pledges of fidelity were sometimes serious, they often were expressions of the passion of the moment. A manly sailor could just as easily take or leave a woman.
If round the world poor sailors roam,
And bravely do their duty,
When danger's past they find a home
With each his fav'rite beauty
For Nan, and Sue, and Moll, and Bess
And fifty more delight them,
And
