Author: William BenemannPublisher:
ISBN: 9781712230398
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 356
Book Description
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.
