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Abstract
Historians have long seen the navy as isolated from major developments in the history of homosexuality during the long eighteenth century. Indeed, some have argued that there was little discussion of the topic in naval circles altogether. This article shows that there was in fact deep engagement with, and a great deal of naval discourse about, contemporary thought regarding homoerotic practices and the men who engaged in them. It focuses on three sites in order to explore the dynamics of the circulation of sexual knowledge between naval and non-naval spaces. The naval courtroom reveals that men were conversant with stereotypes about sodomites and ideas that men could have homoerotic ‘inclinations’ or ‘propensities’. The navy's ongoing commitment to prosecuting men for such sexual contact, meanwhile, required its legal actors to develop a robust body of knowledge and discourse about this topic, and connected them to the broader world of legal thought and practice regarding sodomy. Finally, the periodical press not only represented naval sodomy to readers and acted as a virtual witness for the public, but could also enter into more complex relationships with naval justice. Analysis of these sites shows that bringing naval history and the history of homosexuality into closer conversation enriches both fields.
Acknowledgment
Earlier versions of this paper were presented at two conferences: ‘Naval expertise and the making of the modern world’ (Wolfson College, Oxford, 2013) and ‘Navy and Nation: 1688 to the Present’ (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, 2013). I have also presented portions of this research to the Gender History and Atlantic History seminars at The Johns Hopkins University. My thanks go to all of these audiences for their questions and comments. I would like to thank Mary Fissell, Marsha Libina and Hanna Roman for reading and commenting on drafts of this essay.
Funding
This work was supported by the Institute of Historical Research under a Mellon Pre-Dissertation Fellowship; the Charles Singleton Center for the Study of Pre-Modern Europe (The Johns Hopkins University) under a Graduate Student Travel Fellowship; the Council on Library and Information Resources under a Mellon Fellowship for Dissertation Research in Original Sources; and the Social Science Research Council under an International Dissertation Research Fellowship.
Notes
1. TNA, ADM 1/5296, William Slade court martial, 30 Nov. 1756, fols. 88r–93v. Quote from fol. 90v, minutes, 4. ‘Nature’ refers to semen.
2. Ibid., fols. 89r–v, 91r; minutes, 1–2, 5.
3. Ibid., fol. 90v, minutes, 4.
4. Ibid., fols. 89v, 92r; minutes, 2, 7.
5. Many scholars have written about mollies. A classic treatment is Bray, Homosexuality in renaissance England, chapter 4.
6. Following Davis, Fiction in the archives.
7. Rodger, Wooden world, 80–1.
8. Later quantitative work supports his conclusion. See, for example, Byrn, Crime and punishment, and Eder, Crime and punishment. On desertion, see Hubley, ‘Desertion, identity and the experience of authority’, 373.
9. See, for example, Wilson, Island race, and Wallace, Sexual encounters.
10. Hitchcock, English sexualities, 64–5.
11. For a recent formulation, see Trumbach, ‘Modern sodomy’, 98–9.
12. Gilbert, ‘Buggery and the British navy’, 72; Rodger, Wooden world, 80–1.
13. Burg, Boys at sea. Burg and Gilbert have produced the main work dealing with this topic. See bibliography.
14. Burg, Boys at sea, chapter 1.
15. Ibid., 59–60, 112. Burg and Trumbach do both regard the Africaine affair as more complex, uniquely revealing a sexual environment akin to what could be found in London at the same time. Burg, ‘African revisited’, 175; Trumbach, ‘Modern sodomy’, 98–9.
16. Some interpreted the law to also require ejaculation within the body for the felony. See discussion of the Parker case below.
17. 22 Geo. II c.33, art. 29, in Rodger, Articles of war, 27. There were at least 21 naval bestiality prosecutions between 1690 and 1840. For the purposes of the next paragraph I have counted bestiality trials as ‘sodomy’ cases in keeping with the law's treatment of them as associated crimes. However, my interest in this paper is in same-sex relations, and I have therefore excluded bestiality from the rest of the analysis.
18. I have generally avoided the loaded term ‘homosexual’.
19. For examples from before 1688: Capp, Cromwell's navy, 256–7.
20. This paragraph is based on my personal counts of courts martial records, mainly in TNA, ADM 1. Many fewer records survive from 1840 on, and for the 1856–1900 period I have primarily relied on press accounts and published quarterly courts martial returns in TNA, ADM 194/180–4.
21. For later periods: Conley, Jack Tar, 37–9, and ‘Admiralty's gaze’. My thanks to Mary Conley for discussing this topic and her work with me, and for sharing materials from her research.
22. My approach in this section is inspired by Cocks, ‘Trials of character’.
23. They also at times used other concepts, including ‘habit’ and ‘addiction’.
24. TNA, ADM 1/5489, George Malby and Francis Dunne court of inquiry and court martial, 11 Nov. and 2–3 Dec. 1755.
25. Ibid., Malby trial, 3 Dec. 1755.
26. TNA, ADM 1/5453, William Crutchley and George Parsons court martial, 16–19 Jan. 1816, Crutchley defence, 36–8.
27. Trumbach, ‘Male prostitution’, 188.
28. TNA, ADM 1/5307, John Halsted and William Robinson court martial, 22 Apr. 1775, fol. 86r, minutes, 5. ADM 1/5423, Joseph Moore and William Cochrane court martial, 14 Feb. 1812. Adopting women's names in this fashion was associated with molly subculture.
29. ‘Unmanly’ is found from at least the late eighteenth century. See, for instance, TNA, ADM 1/5328, Joseph Beale and John Paine court martial, 7–8 Jan. 1791, fols. 148v–149r, minutes, 34–5.
30. TNA, ADM 1/5447, William Palmer court martial, 31 Dec.–3 Jan. 1815, minutes, defence p. [12], and document 2.
31. TNA, ADM 1/5292, John Whitefoot court martial, 14 June 1748.
32. See, for instance, Land, War, nationalism, and the British sailor, chapter 4; Atkins, ‘Christian heroes’.
33. TNA, ADM 1/5454, Duncan Macdonald court martial, 7–8 May 1816.
34. TNA, ADM 1/5389, John S. Dane court martial, 26–7 Sep. 1808.
35. TNA, ADM 1/5337, Charles Sawyer court martial, 18 Oct. 1796. Many scholars have noted this case, which involved George Cockburn, Sir John Jervis (Lord St. Vincent), and Nelson. See for instance Morriss, Cockburn and the British navy, 34–6.
36. Formally designated an adult, he was also referred to as a boy at trial.
37. Dann, Nagle journal, 194, 204.
38. TNA, ADM 1/5337, Charles Sawyer court martial, defence.
39. NMM, CRK/11/79, 89–90, Jervis to Nelson, 29 Sep., 17 and 19 Oct. 1796. Nicolas, Dispatches and letters, vol. 2, 280–1; vol. 7, addenda, cxxii, cxxiv.
40. TNA, ADM 1/5418, John Powell court martial, 3 Sep. 1811.
41. TNA, ADM 1/5447, William Palmer court martial, defence, 9–[10].
42. TNA, ADM 1/5484, H.G. Ayscough court martial, 8–10 May 1838.
43. TNA, ADM 1/5484, Richard Morgan court martial, 2–4 Apr. 1838, 76. See also, Cocks, ‘Trials of character’, 39–40.
44. TNA, ADM 1/5485, Don Philip Dumaresq court martial, 28 Feb.–2 Mar. 1839.
45. TNA, ADM 1/5459, James Woolls court martial, 23 Dec. 1818, document 23. For context (though without reference to this sexual aspect), see Blake, Evangelicals, 280, and idem, Religion in the British navy, 47–9. For a similar notion, see ADM 1/2427, statement of Thomas Wayman, et al., 13 October 1815.
46. On this world, see Trumbach, ‘Male prostitution’. My approach follows Weeks, ‘Inverts, perverts, and Mary-Annes’.
47. Linkboys lit the way along city streets for customers after dark. TNA, ADM 1/5274, William Hay court martial, 24 Feb. 1740. A similar example is found in ADM 1/5300, George Newton and Thomas Finley court martial, 2 July 1761.
48. TNA, ADM 1/5447, Henry Hiatt court martial, 3–4 Jan. 1815.
49. Ibid. Hiatt used it against the boy, arguing that ‘once practiced in this vice’ he ‘would be the first to invent such a wicked story’. Hiatt won acquittal.
50. NMM, GRV/118, Thomas Graves manual, unfoliated, material dealing with Captain Henry Angel, the Stag officers, and John Palmer. NMM, GRE/7, George Grey manual, unfoliated, material dealing with Angel and the Stag officers. Liddel, Detail of the duties, 52–4, 60, 137, 139–41; Delafons, Treatise, 260–3.
51. McArthur, Treatise, xiv, 39–40. Subsequent editions in 1805, 1806, and 1813.
52. Hickman, Treatise, 47–8, 87, 107–11, 123–4, 142, 202; Thring, Treatise, 135–6, 155–7, 169–70, 271–2, 366, 371. The latter had subsequent editions in 1877, 1901, and 1912.
53. TNA, ADM 12/21, courts martial digest, 1755–1806, 205–15, 245–7, 385–6; and ADM 12/26, courts martial digest, 1755–1806, 13–71, 273–93.
54. See, for example, TNA, ADM 1/5350, George Read and Thomas Tattershall court martial, 3–4 July 1799; ADM 1/5484, Ayscough court martial. Burg notes this practice in a number of other examples, see his Boys at sea, 125–8, 150–5.
55. TNA, ADM 1/5418, James Parker court martial, 2 Sep. 1811.
56. Except where noted, the rest of this section is based upon the case materials in TNA, ADM 7/309.
57. Attention to the work of these officials can improve our understanding of naval sodomy law and particular cases. For instance, it was a later Admiralty Solicitor, Charles Jones, who heavily annotated a set of trial minutes as part of his consideration of Richard Morgan's objections to his prosecution. TNA, ADM 1/5484, Richard Morgan court martial, and ADM 1/3724, Jones to R. More O'Ferrall, 21 Dec. 1839: ‘I have marked in pencil on the minutes such part of the Evidence as I think would have been rejected in any Court of Justice’. We can therefore identify Jones as Burg's ‘mysterious scribe’ and build on his analysis of the case. Burg, Boys at sea, 167–8.
58. TNA, ADM 7/309, Croker, 10 Oct. 1811, and Eastlake to Charles Bicknell, 24 Oct 1811. Yorke's statement is in a minute dated 20 Oct.
59. MTL, Lawrence MSS collection, MS 23, Crown Cases, 1806–15, vol. 6D, 393–7 and 401–2. I would like to thank Renae Satterley at the Middle Temple Library for her help working with their collection, and Ren Pepitone for her guidance in using the library. See also Oldham, ‘Informal lawmaking’, 189, n. 35, 200.
60. TNA, PC 1/3953, Privy Council materials on Parker's case, Nov. 1811. For examples of later citations, see Alison, Principles of the criminal law, 210; Harrison, Analytical digest, vol. 1, 748; Waterman, Complete practical treatise, vol. 2, 165.
61. Benbow, Crimes of the clergy, 13.
62. My interpretation is indebted to Cocks, Nameless offences; Upchurch, Before Wilde; and Lincoln, Representing the Royal Navy.
63. Smollett, Roderick Random, chapter 35; Melville, White-Jacket, chapter 89; and Austen, Mansfield Park, chapter 6, punning on Rear and Vice Admiral, but not necessarily referring to sodomy. It is, however, worth observing that Austen's naval brothers both served on sodomy courts martial boards, some of them before the novel's publication. For instance, TNA, ADM 1/5418, John Powell court martial.
64. This order of magnitude is based on a database of printed references to naval sodomy, still a work in progress, compiled using targeted searches of digitised print databases and hand searching of selected publications.
65. On seamen and representations of sodomy in this period, see for instance Land, ‘Customs of the sea’ and idem, ‘Sinful propensities’.
66. TNA, ADM 1/5485, Dumaresq court martial.
67. TNA, ADM 1/5484, Ayscough court martial.
68. Nautical Magazine and Naval Chronicle (1838), 550. Hickman, Treatise, 220–1.
69. For instance: [Lind], Three letters, 52–3, and extracted in the London Chronicle. The portion with relevant material is in the 13–15 Jan. 1757 issue. [Hawker], Statement, 27–9.
70. Proceedings against … Rigby. For Taylor, see, for example: Naval Chronicle 23 (1810), 172–3.
71. Muston, Copies of letters; Adair, Series of letters.
72. The Times, 29 Nov., 2 Dec., and 3 Dec. 1844.
73. NMM, STK/49, Thomas Greenwood, ‘To the Editor of The Times’, 9 Dec. 1844, and response dated 10 Dec.
74. The Times, 13 May 1845; Freeman's Journal, 15 May 1845; Hull Packet and East Riding Times, 16 May 1845; Salisbury and Winchester Journal, 17 May 1845; and Blackburn Standard, 21 May 1845.
75. Hubley, ‘By the laws of this realm’.