Who says it don't requite them.10
If sailors objectified women and saw them largely as fit for serving the man's needs ashore—be they carnal or domestic—they saw themselves as users. Men came ashore, and whether it was to see a sweetheart or a harlot, they assumed that women would eagerly do their bidding. Only occasionally did sailors express any remorse over this attitude. The author of “The Husband's Complaint” declares that once he had a “loving Wife,” but that he was not content and “led her an unhappy life.” He came to appreciate her only after he lost her and soon remarried a woman who “turns out a drunken sot” and tells him, “I'll pay off your first wifes scores,” constantly fighting and berating him.11 In one version of “The Maid I Left Behind Me” the sailor goes off to sea after promising his love that he will return. Opportunity knocks elsewhere and he marries for money, forgetting the girl at home and his parents. The song ends with a lament as the sailor's past haunts his dreams.
My father is in his winding-sheet, my mother too appears,
The girl I love stands by their side to wipe away their tears;
They all died broken-hearted, and now it's too late, I find
That God has seen my cruelty to the girl I left behind.12
This attitude, although surfacing occasionally in popular song, is buried under a weight of evidence in which the sailor believes he has the right to take from the woman.
If the handsome sailor was the ideal ashore, and if that image had such a strong sexual component, what about the handsome sailor's sexuality at sea? Did the fact the sailors often cooked, sewed, and served—ostensibly female work—affect their sense of themselves as men?13 Did the view of themselves as users transfer to sexual activity with other men at sea? Only a handful of comments about male sexual activity at sea exist in the many songs, diaries, reminiscences, ship's logs, court records, and other sources.
Herman Melville toyed with the sexual attractiveness of the ideal sailor for males. He described Billy Budd as “the Handsome Sailor,” with both feminine and masculine characteristics. Thus Billy has a “smooth face all but feminine in purity of natural complexion.” Melville characterized him as a “rustic beauty” competing with high-born dames. While asserting that “our Handsome Sailor had as much of masculine beauty as one can expect anywhere to see,” Melville in the next instant compared him to “the beautiful woman in one of Hawthorne's minor tales.”14 He avoided more explicit discussion of homoerotic behavior with obscure references to “wooden-walled Gommorrahs of the deep.” In Moby Dick, Ishmael shares a bed with Queequeg: “in our hearts’ honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg—a cosy, loving pair.”15
Such intimacy was no longer a private matter if authorities became aware of it. Buggery was one of the most frequent crimes punished with execution in the British navy from 1700 to 1861. It was less frequently punished in the American navy.16 Inthe record of punishments aboard the Congress for 1845 to 1848, three cases may have represented homosexual activity. In December 1845 and again in February 1846, adult seamen and individuals rated as boys were punished for “scandalous conduct.” The exact nature of that conduct is not delineated, yet given the host of other offenses listed, including insubordination, fighting, smuggling liquor, and drunkenness, the reader is left to suspect some sexual act.17Josiah Cobb provides a similar oblique reference to homosexual behavior in Dartmoor Prison during the War of 1812 when he says that the “unpardonable sin had been committed.” Again, considering the litany of other crimes explicitly mentioned—fighting, gambling, drinking, stealing—the unmentioned crime was probably sodomy. Cobb comments further that “This [the ‘unpardonable sin’—sodomy] was but seldom done;—howsoever depraved were the Rough Alleys [the criminal element among sailor prisoners of war held in Dartmoor] in other respects, there had been but two or three instances of this heinous sin being committed, on account of the serious penalty immediately following the conviction of the offender.”18
A survey of more than one thousand whaleship logs in the nineteenth century turned up only three clear references to homosexual activity aboard ship. These cases all involved unwanted advances of one man upon another. In each, the reaction was much the same. The culprit was identified and removed from the ship. The captain often was matter of fact and responding to the wishes of his crew. Hiram Baily, for example, wrote to his owners explaining that the “green boys” (hands new to sailing) had complained that the steward had gone down to the forecastle in the night and “got into there berths when the lights were out and took there inexpressibles in to his mouth.” While the green hands apparently objected, the captain did not take any action until three men had reported “that they waked up and found him in that Position,” while another awoke and found the steward “fooling around him to do proberly the same thing.” Baily intended to dismiss the steward in part as a result of these disclosures. His entire letter was written tongue in cheek and showed much good humor. He continued his description of the steward to the owners focusing not on his sodomy but on his incompetence as a steward. Moreover, Baily informed the owners that the steward had lied when he signed aboard the ship because he had incurred debts ashore that his advance could pay.19 Although this case and others show general condemnation for unwanted homosexual activity, it leaves us wondering about acts between two consenting individuals out of sight—which was no easy task on any vessel—of the prying eyes of the crew.20
The one American source that comments extensively on sexual activity between males aboard ship is the diary of Philip C. Van Buskirk. According to B. R. Burg, when Van Buskirk joined the marines in 1846 as a drummer he entered a world peopled by working-class men who did not view this type of sexual activity as unusual, perverse, or even morally wrong. Mutual masturbation, riding the “chicken” with one another, and reveling in sodomy all fit into a continuum of the bisexual activity that occurred in brothels along the waterfront. Although most of Van Buskirk's love affairs went unconsummated, his descriptions are so explicit, and he is so consumed with the attractions of one boy after another, that he leaves the impression that it was almost impossible to walk across the crowded decks of an American warship without tripping over a pair of male lovers in each other's clasp. No doubt Van Buskirk participated in some homosexual activity; however, given his own penchant for exploring his mental universe to the exclusion of events and conditions surrounding him, he may have been a bit too preoccupied with his own particular sexual orientation.21 Homosexuality existed at sea, as indicated by the buggery trials in the British navy, the “scandalous conduct” aboard the Congress, the “unpardonable sin” that occurred in Dartmoor, the few incidents noted on whaling ships, and even the homoerotic references in Melville—but it was not a rampant practice.22
The seafaring male's sense of masculinity revolved less around his bonds with men than around his relationships with women. While other sailors admired him because of his seamanship, stoicism, and hard work, the handsome sailor was handsome to women. It was as if the threat of the sea to unman the man—through separation from women, immersion in a homosocial if not homoerotic world, and the need to do some work that might be defined as feminine—created an overly developed sense of manhood. If maritime culture emphasized one type of manhood, it allowed for and indeed demanded many different types of womanhood.
Jack Tar's many images of women fulfilled some fantasy—domestic or sexual—for the sailor and reflected the peculiar nature of his liberty. In some instances attachments to women ashore could inhibit the sailor's liberty. In others men could take liberties with women ashore, or obtain liberty from women by going to sea. The sailors’ images of women emphasizing domesticity reflected the attraction of home life to men whose work took them away from the family circle. Focusing on these images reminded them of what they lost when they abdicated control of their lives by going to sea. While too great a concern with the domestic sphere might bring ridicule, the manly sailor was expected to retain some sentimentality for the women who represented the homestead.
