Liberty on the Waterfront. Paul A. Gilje
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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.
6. These sketches of matronly women with mopcaps found on the inside cover of the journal by William Henry Allen suggest the maternal images that many sailors took with them to sea. William Henry Allen, Journal of the George Washington (1800). Huntington Library.
For most sailors the ideal of the sacred mother, symbolizing hearth and kin, was an important part of their view of women. Young men new to the sea often pined for their mothers and wished “themselfes to home with their mamys.”23 Midshipman William Henry Allen was so homesick on his first voyage that he drew two pictures of a matronly woman wearing a mopcap—probably his dead mother—in the front of his journal.24 Even the most hardened sailor retained a tender place in his heart for his mother. Samuel Dalton, a salt who had spent years away from home in the navy and merchant marine and who was impressed in British service against his will, saw his mother as representing all that he had lost by his seafaring life. He wrote her in 1809 describing himself as “but a wanderer in the world.” He lamented, “As the day comes it is spent in thoughts that Distract my soul to pieces & wishes for to once more behold my beloved Mother.”25 Joseph Valpey, captured by the British during the War of 1812, extended his sympathies to all older women while emphasizing their maternal role in household service. He wrote a poem extolling the virtues of elderly women—motherlike figures—who nursed the sick and were willing to do work that younger women would not.26
The relationship between the sailor and his mother became an important component of the sentimentalized nineteenth-century literature concerning seamen. The vision of the woman is not sexual, but domestic and maternal. The poem “The Sailor Boy's Mother” appeared in 1822 and recited the tragedy of a widow parting with her son and keeping him in her thoughts, even on a deathbed made more lonely by the sailor boy's absence. The lyrics focus on the mother resigning herself to God's will, laying in bed thinking of “her own darling son, Who wand'ring, had roamed far away on the billow.” She felt great sorrow, “For she thought how her child all wrapped in his shroud, / Might sleep in the waves ere the dawn of to-morrow!” Her mind turned to the youth's happy childhood and how his activity comforted her “As she mourned for the husband who sunk in the ocean!” Then, after thinking of how the boy departed to go to sea,
Twas thus the poor widow then prayed for her child—
Oh! may heaven preserve him far on the billow;
Then gently she sighed and most sweetly she smiled,
As she thought of her orphan—and died on her pillow!27
Recollections of other female relatives could also symbolize sentiments of domesticity—the loving sister and dependent daughter. The image of the sweet and absent sister evoked a domestic ideal of protective and almost maternal role. G. Bayley's poem in a letter to his sister Lavina, penned amid the scurrying of huge cockroaches on a prison ship in Jamaica and interrupted by an overgrown rat jumping onto the table where he was writing, highlights this relationship. “In every season of the varied year / Ive known a sister's love, a sister's care.” Bayley continues with descriptions of peaceful rural scenes, emphasizing their bucolic nature and the presence of his beloved sister.
No birds now meet me with an early song
Lavina—was wont to share
A brother's pleasures and a brother's care
No more thy hand administers relief
Nor soothes my woes nor mitigates my grief.
Bayley sought strength and solace thinking of his sister “seated near some cool transparent brook,” reading, gathering hazelnuts, or in simple conversation with “Her wit engaging and her heart sincere.”28
In contrast, daughters appeared vulnerable and needing protection. One tale of shipwreck, a favorite form of literature among sailors, featured the two beautiful daughters of a ship captain. The daughters are both brave and helpless and are last seen seated with the father, waiting for the sinking ship to break up. Perhaps the father could have made it to safety, as several crew members manage to scamper to shore. Knowing that his daughters could not be saved, he did not even try. Instead, as one witness described it, he braced himself for the end, fighting back “the parental tear which then burst into his eye.”29 This sentimentalized portrait of a father unable to save his daughters