Liberty on the Waterfront. Paul A. Gilje
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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 put my hand around her waist
And snatched a kiss from her lips in haste.
Then a great big Dutchman rammed my bow,
And said, “Young man, dis bin mein frow.”
Then take a warning, boys, from me,
With other men's wives don't get too free.48
Scrimshaw representations of this more sordid side of gender relationships are not as numerous. The Nantucket Historical Association has one piece that has a properly dressed woman on one side and a partially clad woman on a couch and in the arms of a man on the other. The woman in the more risqué engraving is succumbing to the man as the verse attached makes clear:
An easy yielding maid,
By trusting is undone;
Our sex is oft betrayed,
By granting love too soon.
If you desire to gain me,
Your sufferings to redress;
She said, o kiss me longer,
Before you shall possess.
But his kiss was so sweet, and so closely prest
That I languish'd and pin'd till I granted the rest.49
Seamen's journals sometimes contain interesting depictions of shore life, including dancing girls.50 Alfred Terry decorated the front of his log with an alluring picture of a Mrs. N. H. Chamberlin, with “27 South Hudson Street” scrawled below the naked torso. Although the exact date and circumstances of the drawing are unknown, Terry was deeply smitten with her charms.51 And throughout the period under study here, a few books contain Hogarthian scenes of women with ample breasts bulging from low-cut bodices in close proximity to Jack Tars.52
Sailors may have approached the subject of loose women with a certain degree of equanimity, but they could also view women as evil, out to take Jack for everything he was worth. Joseph G. Clark explained that the waterfront was rife with women seeking to lead a sailor astray for his money. “Degraded and unprincipled females, by feigned smiles and hypocritical and special graces” attracted the favor of a seaman, “extorting from him valuable presents, or otherwise making large draughts upon his funds.” These women used men up, “relinquishing their victim only when the last dollar is transferred to their hands.” At that point, they dumped the sailor “without even an apology or its equivalent.”53 This type of woman enticed young Horace Lane into a life of dissipation.
Although the image of the woman as exploiter appears in the eighteenth century, it may have become more poignant in the nineteenth century with greater urbanization and a perception that cities harbored many opportunities for sin. Stuart Frank, for example, argues that most eighteenth-century sailor ballads placed the seaman ashore in the midst of bucolic splendor courting a milkmaid or some other rural lass. In the nineteenth century, however, increasingly Jack Tar appeared in cities enticed by women aiming to take advantage of the sailor.54
The sailor's attitude toward his exploitation by women was mixed. Whaler Ezra Goodnough repeatedly described how at Mahe in the Indian Ocean he and his shipmates went “to see the ladies and it was a great time among the women.” He referred to the prostitutes as “our sweethearts” and his own special girl as “my wife.” His expectations of this relationship were pragmatic. He explained that he had to get his girl a new dress when he returned to Mahe because “if I do not get her a new dress she will not remember me.” Although the women in Mahe had to be paid to remember, “that is more than the girls at home do” since “they will not think of a poor Devil either for love or money.” From this perspective Goodnough asserted, “there is plenty of girls i can get that are not particular wether they are married or not” and concluded “them are the ones for me[.] they are the comforts of life.”55 Goodnough was not alone in this approach to women. In the song “Sailor's Money” the tar willingly allows his landlady and her daughter to take his last penny—suggesting that the money was nowhere near as important to him as the pleasures it purchased.56 Songs like “New York Girls” and “Charming Jane Louisa” are “played for laughs, with self-deprecating, first-person humor” in which the sailor mocks his own gullibility.57 Horace Lane actually fell in love with one of the girls he met in French Johnny's. When he returned to port some time later, he discovered that “she learned to drink and swear and died wretched in Philadelphia.”58 In the song “Jack's Revenge” the sailor outsmarts the woman concerned only with profit. The sailor returns to his Kitty, pretending to be broke and down on his luck. Kitty tells him, “Begone from my sight, now you've spent all your money.” The sailor, of course, shows her his bag full of money and leaves, despite her cries that she really loves him.59
8. Alfred Terry must have been captivated by the charms of Mrs. N. H. Chamberlin when in New York. The opening page of Terry's journal kept in the South Pacific contains this drawing. Interestingly, there is almost a Polynesian look to the depiction of this New York woman. “Mrs. N. H. Chamberlin.” Alfred Terry, Journal from the whaleship Vesper, 1842–1848. Mystic Seaport.
The odd combination of images that may have played in the sailor's mind is suggested by the frequent reference to the madam of a bordello with the word “mother.”60 Of course this practice was not limited to the waterfront, and no doubt was in part based on the fact that such women were usually older than the employees rendering sexual favors. The irony was not lost upon waterfront customers. Moreover, the mobile maritime population sought out women who could provide services and fulfill some functions of being a mother, offering comfort and a bed, even if that included