Plays, too, often turned to the image of the female sweetheart remaining true to her absent sailor beau. In The Purse; or Benevolent Tar by J. C. Cross, the sailor's wife is pressured by a rich aristocrat, resists, and is rewarded when her husband returns to save her and her son from the clutches of the evil would-be suitor.38 Isaac Bickerstaff's Thomas and Sally: Or, The Sailor's Return follows a similar outline, but also includes some revealing images of women. Sally is first seen sitting by a spinning wheel, representing domesticity and female industry. She and Thomas pledge mutual love to one another, then he is off to sea. Later, when Sally is again engaged in female industry (she is carrying a milk bucket), a rich squire offers her money, clothes, and promises if he can have his way with her. The squire is about to force himself on her when Thomas appears and rescues Sally.39
The resolution of such difficulties followed an idealized goal, especially in the nineteenth century, of domestic bliss. The happy couple in “The Dark-Eyed Sailor” marries after Mary passes a test of her faithfulness to her William in disguise. The song concludes:
In a cottage neat by the river side
It's William and Mary they do reside
So girls prove true while your lovers are away
For a cloudy morning oft brings a pleasant day.40
Similar images of domestic tranquility appear in the carvings of whalemen on scrimshaw. Typically the husband and wife gather around a comfortable chair, surrounded by children. In the background is a window with a ship in the harbor. Sometimes the carving portrayed a parting scene. Other times it represented an ideal of an ongoing domestic arrangement in which all relished one another's company. Such images may well have been simply the musings of a husband absent for years who wanted to present his wife with a token of his affection upon his return. They also reflect one aspect of women in the mind of the sailor.41
Seafarers could celebrate the virtues of married life, especially in contrast to more ephemeral liaisons. John Baker wrote a poem in his journal declaring, “I am Marry'd and happy with wonder.” He chided “rovers and rakes…who laugh at the mention of conjugal bliss.” Baker believed that only in marriage could “permanent pleasure be found,” in contrast to “the joys of lawless connection” which were “fugitive and never secure.” Such relationships were “Oft stolen in haste or snatched by surprise” and troubled by “doubts and fears.” Men with a “mistress ye hire” were “misled by a false flattering fire” that threatens their destruction. Baker believed it was far better to be married, and he concluded his poem:
If ye ask me from whence my felicity flows
My answer is short—from a wife
Who for cheerfulness sense and good nature I Chose
Which are beauties that charm us for life
7. Scrimshaw often idealized the home and family and was likely intended as a present to a loved one when the sailor returned from his voyage. “Domestic Happiness.” Kendall Whaling Museum.
To make home the mat of perpetual delight
Every hour each studies to seize
And we find ourselves happy from morning to night
By our mutual endeavours to please.42
Sentimental attachment to domesticity and praise for marital bliss formed only one small component of the sailor's portrayal of women. Jack Tar may have regretted the loss of relationships at home while aboard ship and extolled the virtues of mother, sister, daughter, and wife. But he also relished the liberty he gained by going to sea and the liberties he took with women along the waterfront. The braggadocio with which he expressed his heterosexuality became a crucial aspect of his manhood and gender identity. What emerges out of the various chanteys and sailor songs, as well as illustrations on scrimshaw and sea journals, is a vision of women that runs the gamut from the idealized sweetheart to the lusty maid eager for some fun to the harlot willing to sleep with Jack for a little quick change.
Some songs, like “When Seated with Sal,” simply describe drinking and dancing with girlfriends and wives, having a grand time while briefly on liberty ashore. Prince Hoare's “The Sailor Boy” was written in this spirit. The sailor flirts with two girls, Poll and Nan, declaring, “Say shall we kiss and toy” while assuring them, “I goes to Sea no more.” Yet his refrain seems to say the opposite: “O I'm the Sailor Boy, A Capering a shore.”43 This theme also appeared in sailor journals. The author of the logbook of the General Wolfe copied a bawdy poem in which the sailor attempted to seduce a young woman. The girl sees through the sailor, telling him, “You have a Longing Desire to insnare a maid, for when you have had your will with Me, than from me you shall go.” The tar responded, “Don't you say so My Charming pretty Maid, for I will never leave thee, so never be afraid.” The author knew such protests were untrue.44 Frances Boardman copied a similar ditty in his journal in 1767 in which a ship carpenter seduces “Moley” with promises of marriage driven by “too lude desire.” Not only does he not keep his pledge of fidelity, but before he goes to sea again he murders the young woman.45 “Jack in His Element” emphasized the lack of fidelity on the part of the sailor and implies that women were objects of sexual gratification:
I have a spanking wife at Portsmouth gates,
A pigmy at Goree,
An orange tawney up the Straights,
A black at St. Lucie,
Thus whatever course we bend,
We lead a jovial life,
At every mess we find a friend,
At every port a wife.46
In a more bawdy vein, Timothy Conner copied several songs in his journal that focused on sexual gratification and mocked main stream morality.
When I was a prentice in my youth,
I pleased my mistress to the trouth;
I pleas'd my mistress every night,
And cuckold my master out of his sight.
Sailors no doubt enjoyed the idea of violating the marriage bed when some one else's wife was involved. They often assumed that every woman was a potential sexual target. In another song from Conner's journal, a young man arrives in town only to be met by two prostitutes, one of whom renders him her services. “The job being over he tips her the coin / She tips him the pox in the hight of his prime.” The verse shows that sailors could laugh at themselves and the price of their sexual encounters. With complete aplomb, the young man decides
Now baby being pox't he solemnly swore
He'd pox the whole village in spite of that whore
For he knew that the women would coucle [cuckold] the Men
Now dam them I'll pox all if I can.47
Taking liberties with another man's wife could also lead to trouble, as one version of the chantey “A-Roving” makes clear. The sailor describes his advances on an Amsterdam maid:
And then I took her lily-white hand
In mine as we walked down the strand.
I
