Unruly Desires

Book excerpt: In its voracious hunger to fill its decks and spars with the bodies of strong young sailors, nineteenth century maritime culture welcomed eccentrics, criminals, freaks and misfits. Sailors were to a large extent outcasts from society, but they were outcasts into a community of the marginalized, one that held very different values and expectations than the towns and villages from which the young men fled, a community that offered these men a tentative refuge. The United States Navy and the commercial maritime industry during the Age of Sail unwittingly created an environment where men who were attracted to other men -- later to be known as homosexual or gay -- could explore their sexuality at a distance from family and friends, with a freedom and openness they had never known on land. William Benemann is the author of A Year of Mud and Gold: San Francisco in Letters and Diaries, 1849-1850; Male-Male Intimacy in Early America: Beyond Romantic Friendships; and Men in Eden: William Drummond Stewart and Same-Sex Desire in the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade.