Adultery, miscegenation and lies in a naval family: black sailor John Webb 1785.

Black sailor, detail from The Death Of Nelson by Daniel Maclise.

Black sailor John Webb became the third party in the most public and virulent naval divorce story ever, in 1784-87.

   This is the first time in over two centuries that his reported experiences  have been examined.
  However, the couple for whom he worked  have been discussed in Margarette Lincoln’s Naval Wives and Mistresses, pp114-118.

--

 

In racialized London and the Medway towns John Webb’s endlessly contradictory tales about whether or not he had had sex with a naval captain’s wife – and how willingly – involved him in great trauma in the Ecclesiastical Court and Doctor’s Commons.

  The impugned wife, Ann Inglefield, fought to prove she never had such an avid connection with the black servant.

   John Webb was usually referred to as the Black Slave, the Negro, the Black servant, the Boy, or the Black. People took to him for his open, free and innocent way of talking.

   Illiterate, he signed his name with an X. No-one drew a picture of him, or of Ann.
   Born around 1767 his origin is unknown. In one of the courts he was referred to as 'the Ethiopian', for no clear reason.  

Black RN cook: RMG 127866

   John was said to have been ‘taken’ (captured) from a Flag-of-Truce Spanish ship by Captain Affleck (which could have been Edmund or his brother Philip, both of whom served in the Caribbean, which is where they could have met Webb)

   As a captive John Webb had then been given work in a naval vessel. It wasn’t unusual. Non-British men were as much as ten per cent of some crews at that time. Hands were needed and black hands were acceptable for domestic work.

 
Then, redundant in May 1783, Webb was found domestic work with Captain John Nicholson Inglefield (1748-1828), Commander of the guard ship Scipio at Chatham. (Pictured).

   John was paid as if he was part of the crew. Unwaged, he also worked in the Inglefield home in Singlewell, Gravesend. 

  The mistress was Ann Smith, later Inglefield (1754-1834), a Greenwich woman who’d married Inglefield ten years earlier. Their children were Mary Ann, Lucretia, Miss, and Samuel.



John Webb’s trouble

The Inglefield’s legal case focused on John Inglefield’s allegations that, over a year, Ann had been soliciting ‘indecent familiarities’ with a Black servant, and even committed adultery with him on the Scipio, thus bringing shame onto Inglewood.

  The claims and counter-claims in pamphlets and newspapers varied. And the recorded court proceedings are very confusing, not least because some evidence was not brought into court.     
   There was never a real resolution:
~ The alleged cuckolder John Webb said that he hadn’t done it, but also that Inglefield had told him to do it because he, Inglefield, wanted to watch through a spyhole. Webb claimed he hadn’t wanted Ann Inglefield’s advances, but he also boasted about what they’d done together, to another servant.
~ Ann said she’d never done anything. Her servants said so too. They swore that ‘the Black had always treated her with Respect’. There had been no ‘joking and laughing with the Black, and not any nodding and bidding him not be familiar with his Mistress.’ By contrast John Inglefield said he had proof. The servants saw their master as jealous, a blusterer and a bully.
~ John Inglefield claimed at one point he’d found Webb and Ann in bed, though most of the discussion mentioned only a kiss. He also referred to an anonymous tip-off letter, but it never appeared in court. It was proven he lied, and yet he was given custody of the children.

Pressures on every side

The court cases went on for two years. Ann sought to clear her name. Her husband fought hard to shame her, justify himself, and, seemingly get away from a marriage that wasn’t financially rewarding enough.

   In that time John Webb was under two lots of pressure. 

~ Initially this was in Chatham in the naval world. Inglefield beat him much and allegedly made him so frightened that he gave false testimony about his relations with Ann, to please his master. Naval men who worked for Inglefield corroborated the adultery story.

~ Secondly, Ann’s civilian friends and mother in Blue Stile, Greenwich worked to bring Webb to London and get him to make a true statement. They even convinced him that Inglewood would trepan him.

Greenwich, where John Webb feared he
might be trepanned by Inglewood

Recanting

   Eventually Webb recanted his first claim, saying he hadn’t before realised the meaning of a legal oath. 

   He refused to give more evidence against Ann. ‘I do on my oath declare, declare that the said accusations are false, and that the said Ann Inglewood always behaved to me with the utmost decorum, nor were ever the least indecent familiarities between us.’

   In London Webb later declared ‘that the Reason he swore his Mistress ever took improper Liberties with him, or he with her, was because Captain Inglefield challenged him in the most severe Manner, and told him he had had an improper Correspondence with his Wife, and said, he had seen him kiss her, which the Deponant repeatedly denied.’

   However ‘the Captain persisted that he had seen him, damned him, and stamped with his Foot at him [Webb] in a Passion, which so alarmed him that he was frightened into a false Confession.’

   John Webb later explained ‘that he wished to ease his Conscience of the Perjury he had been guilty of, by disavowing, in a public Court, what he had before said, and thereby make every Reparation in his Power, for the Injury he had done his Mistress’.
It’s not clear whether Ann forgave him.

 
The aftermath
The case collapsed because, among other reasons:

• John Inglewood could not supply any other evidence of Ann’s infidelity, and he proved to be a liar
• John Webb contradicted himself so much that it was impossible to ascertain what had happened  

 Both Ann and John lived on for over half a century, apart.  Their son Samuel founded a naval dynasty, including Arctic explorer Admiral Sir Edward Augustus Inglefield (pictured). 
John Webb’s next steps are not known.

John Webb’s problems and pleasures

It appears that racist attitudes towards John’s colour meant that the adultery could be painted as all the more reprehensible. 

   Even Ann’s own counsel, Dr Harris, thought the adultery claim was ‘improbable to the last degree’ on the grounds that Ann wouldn’t stoop so low. He said: ‘I won’t put myself to the pain of contrasting a poor black Slave to him [Inglewood, as a paragon of gentlemanly values].’ 

   In reality, it appears that the people who know John Webb were quite happy to ignore colour. Miss, the youngest Inglefield daughter, felt very affectionate towards him.

    And he was having a regular relationship with at least one of the servants, Elizabeth Wells, and with someone called Nanny, which may have Elizabeth's other name.
 Other shipmates and servants did not shun him on racial grounds (or certainly that’s not recorded). In other words, he was integrated when among his peers.

Black sailors were routinely included in shipboard life,
as the personable John Webb would have been.

Implications

This sorry, vitriolic saga reveals, accidentally, the life of one black male sailor. Who knows how typical it is of black servants in naval households. Certainly no other case like this has come to light.

   This particular young man seemed to be someone who operated either cannily or confusedly. He was not always honest: he’d stolen and sold off Inglewood’s coat.

    What’s interesting is that the alleged offence was only once blamed on his being black. A barrister thought that being black meant someone from a country where people had hot (passionate) constitutions.

    I hope someone does a thesis or book on John and the Inglewoods. It's ideal for a study of naval family life, and of race in the Navy.

Learning more

The full stories in participants' own words can be read on line via the British Library.

Ann Inglefield:
‘The arguments of counsel in the Ecclesiastical Court, in the cause of Inglefield: with the speech of Doctor Calvert, on the twenty-second of July, 1786, at giving judgement’, London, 1787.

‘Mrs. Inglefield's Justification, containing the proceedings in the Ecclesiastical Court ... 1785, taken in short hand by W. Blanchard; with a preface and notes by Mrs. A. I.’  J. Sewell, London, 1787.

John Inglefield:
(et al) including Webb’s testimony: ‘New annals of gallantry : containing, complete collection of all the genuine letters which have passed between Captain Inglefield, and Mrs. Inglefield ; Signed with their respective Names, relative to a Charge brought by the Former against the Latter, for Partiality to her Black Servant. To Which Are Added, The Black's Affidavits, pro and con, and Mrs. Inglefield's also, upon this extraordinary Business. Likewise, The Letters of Mr. Mills, Man-Midwife, of Greenwich, relative to his Conduct since the Suspicion of this Strange Connection.’ R Randall, London, 1787.


‘Captain Inglefield's Vindication of his conduct: or, a reply to ... “Mrs. Inglefield's Justification.”  J. Murray, London, 1787.

Sarah West: power, sex and sensible attitudes towards gender

This weekend one pioneering woman's new relationship (and that's "relationship" with a question mark after it, nothing's proven) has gone viral.
Or rather it's gone as viral-ish as is possible given that her employers have issued only three sentences about it.
A Royal Navy spokesperson said of Commander Sarah West, the first woman commander of any major Royal Navy battleship: "We are aware of an allegation of a breach of the code of social conduct on board HMS Portland, which we are treating seriously.
"Anyone who is found to fall short of the Royal Navy's high standards can expect to face appropriate action. It would be inappropriate to comment further."
Commander West, 42, from Isleworth, has had to leave her vessel, a Type 23 frigate, because it's been claimed she's had an affair with someone else on board.

Officers are allowed to have relationships if:
~ they don't undermine 'trust and cohesion'
~ They don't damage operational effectiveness

What now?
The next step will be for her superiors to discern whether this has happened: a kind of inquiry.
If 'found guilty' Commander West will face a range of moves including:
~ formal warning
~ reassignment to other duties
~ the end of her service
Implicitly media speculation is "Will she lose her job with ignominy and scandal?"

The point is rather what does this event and its coverage say about gendered attitudes towards women? Specifically, what does it reveal about attitudes towards women newly in power within institutions that for centuries have been male both in culture and in complement?

Once (shore) women were seen be a force that could distract seafarers from their duty and career.


Taken to be symptomatic?
The problem is that any publicity about this gives fuel to reactionary arguments along the lines of "See. We told you. Putting women on ships can only lead to one thing. Illicit sex. Even women at the top succumb. Keep 'em ashore."
Merchant navy women have been becoming deck officers since the 1970s, against the odds. In interviewing them for my current book they repeatedly talk about the strain of knowing that if they make a slip - indeed, if they do almost anything - then ALL women in their position are judged by that.
When women seafarers - who are now 13 per cent of the merchant navy - do something not quite right it's never seen as simply an individual's one-off action, as it would be if a man had done it. No-one says "See! That proves all men of 35 with grey eyes and a mole on their left shoulder shouldn't work at sea at all." Instead people would just shrug:"Oh, Geoff's slipped up on this one."
By contrast, a woman's action is still taken as irrefutable proof of one gender's intrinsic unsuitability for sea work. Ever. And as for someone in command being fallible...!
Women seafarers - and most pioneers doing "men's" jobs - find they are critiqued earlier, and for far more minor infringements, then men. Critics lurk, waiting for failure, so that they can argue that the old gender imbalance (men in charge/women in support) needs restoring.
Can it be rivalry and deep insecurities about gender that motivate people who grass up a shipmate? What are they doing causing trouble in that tiny space where solidarity is so crucial - and so tricky?

An old objection
Sarah West's situation, as represented, is not only typical of attitudes towards women working on ships in general.
The story of sexual activity as a hot issue on royal and merchant navy ships is hundreds of years old. For centuries it's been argued that having women aboard brings trouble, including rivalry about who has sexual access to whom.

In fact, it is gendered attitudes towards women and towards sex that are the problem. It's not a problem that women per se are on board.

The royal navy dealt with it by, at times, only allowing women (variously 'good' wives and 'bad' sex industry workers) on board a ship if it was in port, not sailing. Or turning a blind eye to women's existence.
And sexual activity on RN ships was always controversial. Nineteenth century opponents argued on the hand that the Admiralty was allowing the navy to be "brothelized". But permissive commanders contended that if you didn't allow press-ganged men their 'recreation' they'd mutiny.
Nobody's sure how much homosexual sex really occurred and if it really did sap morals.

Clearly sex on ships is a subject that needs thorough, wise, and un-bigoted airing.

The merchant navy's past attitudes towards sex on ships has included only employing mature and motherly-looking women, preferably wives of men already employed aboard. Some shipping line personnel officers deliberately rostered camp gay males as cabin stewards, on the grounds that then women passengers wouldn't be bothered by heterosexual advances from crew.
People keep relationships secret, certainly from head offices ashore. When found out, it was usually the case that the woman, not the man, was moved to another ship. She was quietly seen as the more culpable one.
Women today on merchant ships often deliberately chose not to have relationships with shipmates because it's too difficult. It's too gossiped-about; the team tensions it can cause are tedious, especially if you break up in mid-voyage; and if you then take up with another partner on that same voyage you can be branded as slag and traitor.

When women were allowed to sail in RN ships from 1990, some naval wives protested that adultery would inevitably ensue. Ex-Wrens told me most heatedly that of course there would be trouble: in a tin box full of testosterone-fuelled young men, rampant sex must be the outcome.
The women sailors themselves replied 'Eh? Why? We've already got our own partners already, ashore, actually.' And among the 3,150 in today's navy (9 per cent) a number of women on ships have relationships with each other.
Cartoonist Smiles(the late Charles Smiles) made the implicit point (see cartoon below)that when women sailors were revealed to have agency and be actively desirous it changed the position of male sailors as the more powerful, knowing gender on the ship.

CAPTION: "They have to go through your [the women's] messdeck and they might see the pinups!" Cartoon by Smiles, Navy News, Nov 1990

As part of the preparation for writing my next book, on women and the Royal Navy, I've been collecting newspaper cuttings on cases of women sailors who've come up against male shipmates' sexualised and discriminatory attitudes.
Given the RN's impressive record of struggling to be a truly equal opportunities employer it would be invidious to list these. I'll just say that included in that picture are cases of rape (which are dealt with very firmly), but also a very noticeable decline in stories about sexist behaviour these days. Even tabloids can't find stories of the 'HMS Lusty' kind.
The RN's record of good gender discrimination policies - and policies firmly enforced - is much better than the MN's. And women officers appear to be well-respected. I don't believe this picture is just a matter of better silencing of accounts of discrimination. It's real.
But old attitudes towards women and their sexual activity take much uprooting.

So...
It's no fluke that in the weekend newspapers there's another gender-related story along with Sarah West's: the Archbishop of Canterbury's letter to the Pope acknowledging that the recent vote supporting the ordination of women bishops is a problem (but urging that it not be).

Religious life is simply another key area where we see that major, male-led, institutions are troubled by the idea of women having power - and behaving differently. Gender divisions are still a problem. But decades of solid evidence proves that gender does not have to be an obstacle on ships.

As male masters in both navies repeatedly agree after they've had real experience of women working on board, most women are assets to be prized for their diligence, creative problem-solving and team-bonding skills.
Once-sceptical WW2 officers enthusiastically asked for more Wrens, not fewer, when they'd seen the usefulness of the Real McCoy.
Post-1970s MN masters repeatedly say that women can be even better seafarers than men.
They are a precious resource and that was recognised by the RN in 1997 when it first employed women commanders for ships, to some shock.
See Smiles' cartoon below, Navy News, March 1998:
"Hey Chief! There's a lady in the skipper's cabin!" "You're right on both counts, my flower!"

So what if some people sometimes have on-board affairs.
In both navies attitudes towards on-board relationships may yet take a few more decades to sort out. But why waste good personnel over trivial matters?
And when ever did a male commander get ditched because he loved unwisely?
I can think of two appropriate adages.
1. Let good people get on with doing their jobs.
2. And judge everyone on their own merits, not on supposed gender characteristics. This matter must not lead to the Navy hesitating over appointing more women to positions of command.

Sex and the sea exhibited: Rotterdam

I’ve just been to the Netherlands to see the new Sex & The Sea exhibition (http://en.rotterdam.info/visitors/events/21652/sex-the-sea16/) at Rotterdam’s Maritime Museum and talk with the people who organised it.
It’s fascinating and very successful in discussing sex in a straightforward, thoughtful and stimulating way.
This is the world’s first exhibition to be absolutely about sex and blue water seafarers (though there has been related ones in Vancouver and Oostduinkerke). So it’s bravely pioneering.
And it’s an important model that many maritime museums – knowing that sex sells – are watching before they follow suit or not.
One huge exhibition hall shows a range of material, from the literal (nineteenth-century stuffed mermaids) to the highly aesthetic: projected images on three canvas screens ten foot high, accompanied by music.
Conceptually central to it all is a series of ten filmed interviews with eight Dutch seafarers or ex-seafarers of varied sexual orientation, a port medicine and a barmaid. They are shown against an ever-changing backdrop of sea and sex-related images, devised by internationally-acclaimed film-maker Peter Greenaway and Dutch multimedia director Saskia Boddeke.


GENDER
As this blog is about gender I’m going to comment here on two gender aspects of the exhibition. You can read more generalised discussions in my forthcoming review articles in the International Journal of Maritime History and the Journal of Transport History among others.
First, the principle nexus shown here is that women – that’s poor and pimped land-based women - are the providers of heterosexual sex. Mobile men are the buyers.
They can be affectionate, to be sure. But nevertheless they are ones with most power in a transaction that for women is a negative equity situation. If her customer doesn’t act responsibly he’ll sail away and she’ll remain, with a disease that stops her earning for weeks if not months, possibly proving fatal, and even an unwanted child.
So for me the most poignant sound in the exhibition was the (recorded) cries of a baby, which underlined seafarer Dirk Tang’s story about a child sleeping near their bed as his prostitute does her job.
Equally the most poignant sights were the blown-up snaps showing sad eyes of the women standing by to service the partying seamen in a Thai brothel.


WOMENS STORY?
Second, the interpretive element of the exhibition feels to me to be a man’s story about men. Only one of the ten seafarers interviewed is a woman; the other woman is a bar worker in the maritime area of Rotterdam, Katendrecht.
That’s an excellent ratio, given that women are less than two percent of the world’s seafaring population. But these women don’t talk much about their own sexuality, only that of the men Monique, a second mate, for example heaves them out of brothels to get them back to the ship. But where did she herself go for sex, or why didn’t she?


CONCLUDING...
So I came away feeling that there was a lot more that could have been said. But to do so a museum needs the impossible: a big budget that would enable it to interview not only seafarers, but workers in port sex industries and ‘steady’ partners back home, and to give each interviewee days – not minutes – to explore how to create the most profound version they can.
Rotterdam Maritime Museum have created something rather romanticised and charmingly domestic, but also surprisingly touching. Endlessly thought-provoking, it will be valuable as a model for other museums of work or transport which, in our sexualised times, will be mounting exhibitions about the subject too.

IF YOU CAN’T GO
If you’re interested in seafaring life and subjectivities this is a must. For those who can’t get to Rotterdam before December 2014 there is an affordable ‘catalogue’, a special edition of the museum’s magazine Brave Hendrik. museum’s magazine Brave Hendrik. It’s illustrated but in Dutch. You can download it for free from the website: http://media.maritiemmuseum.nl/downloads/PDF/brave_hendrik_scherm.pdf
The museum has also created a Whores’ Trail (again only in Dutch) for use on smartphones. De Hoerenloper is full of (non-titillating) photographs and includes a walker’s map of 29 historic locations in the city, particularly near the waterfront bars that seafarers used.
Sex & The Sea, Maritiem Museum, Rotterdam, Leuvehaven 1, 3011 EA Rotterdam,The Netherlands. Tel: +31(0)10 413 2680. www.maritiemmuseum.nl. On until 19 December 2014, from 10 to 17.00 hours daily (except Sunday 11-17). www.maritiemmuseum.nl. An on-line summary in English can also be seen at http://en.rotterdam.info/visitors/events/21652/sex-the-sea16

Sex, race, drugs – and some liberation – in Limehouse’s 1920s sailortown

Sailortowns and port areas of cities have long been seen in popular culture and maritime history as sites of sexual and racial difficulty. Cruikshank’s cartoons early showed that no decent woman would go there. Anyone foolish enough to do so would lose her virginity or her reputation, usually both.
The problem by the early twentieth century was perceived to be not only seafarers but ‘aliens’. Foreign seamen, therefore, were a double danger. Miscegenation was a looming disaster.
In her new book, Modern Women on Trial: Sexual transgression in the age of the flapper, historian Lucy Bland devotes a chapter to representations of the British women in the early 1920s who became wives, lovers and allegedly ‘doped victims’ of Chinese seamen and Chinese settlers in London.

LIMEHOUSE AS THE EXOTIC EAST
She reminds us that Limehouse, in London’s East End, stood as the epitome of a sinful location. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century equivalent of the red-top press Limehouse was othered as a place of opium dealing and gambling associated with the ‘yellow peril’ that threatened ‘English womanhood’ and all that entire trope symbolised, including imperial identity.
Bland found that some young white working-class ‘women were lured to/by a metaphorical East … whether or not the spatial East (End) figured.’ That is, going to the East End and mixing with Chinese men was a way of metaphorically traveling to the exotic Orient, a sort of ersatz mobility at a time when most women could not afford real voyages.
Racism was mixed with anxiety about sexual morality and criminality, especially gambling – in fact with any unruly modern practices that could not be policed. Within Bland’s chapter “Butterfly women, ‘Chinamen’, dope fiends and metropolitan allure” is a discussion of the way popular culture imagined effeminate, unclean and possibly sadistic Chinese men luring thrill-seeking young white women into debauchery.
This scandalised version of gullible females being drawn into Limehouse degradation contributed, she argues, ‘to a discussion of the modern woman across class, her questionable morality, and her unsuitability, indeed non-eligibility, for full citizenship.’ She was too feckless to be allowed the vote. (Of course, only well-off women over 39 had won the vote in 1918; full suffrage for women was not granted until 1928.)

MODERNITY FEMININITY ON TRIAL
Indeed the whole book is about the sensationalised legal trials of modern women, 1981-24, be they young flappers or matrons on a troubling path. It’s about women who were accused of being surplus, promiscuous, sterile, sensation-seeking, addicted to cocktails and dope, too easily duped, insufficiently compliant, lesbian, liars, prone to acting with sexual agency, so disrespectful of their husbands that they tried to murder them, and above all pleasure-seeking. The typical flapper’s hair was too short, as was her skirt; her chest was too flat; her waistline was too dropped; her general look far too boyish to be tolerable.
‘The trials in effect became vehicles not simply for the passing of judgement on an individual, or on a particular type of women,’ argues Bland. The reporting of court testimony ‘also entailed the castigation of women more broadly, particularly their pursuit of independence, consumption and sensation.’

SAILORTOWN AS FREEDOM SITE?
The representation of this particular version of a sailortown was thus not just more of the usual stuff, the familiar moral disapproval and othering of sailortowns.
It also, for the first time, linked what we might call women’s liberation with waterfront areas, those physical and social borderlands that allow new possibilities. And this book is the first time anyone has made that connection clear.
Lucy Bland does not discuss any trial of women associated with Chinese seafarers, as such. Presumably there were none. Instead she reports on that of trafficker May Roberts who lived with a Chinese man and of other women associated with opium circles, who “rashly chose to overlook the fundamental incompatibility of ‘East’ and ‘West’”.

‘ALIENS’, GENDER AND TRANSGRESSION
People interested in maritime and port history know that the post-war presence of ‘aliens’, including seamen, brought huge white anxiety about jobs being ‘stolen.’ This was most strongly expressed in the 1919 anti-race riots in ports such as London, Glasgow, Liverpool, Cardiff, Salford, Hull, South Shields, Newport, and Barry. A strong focus was on South Asian, African, Afro-Caribbean, Chinese and Arab seamen, some of whom accepted lower wages. For more details see http://www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/makingbritain/content/1919-race-riots
But this book is the first to discuss how anxiety about changing times was expressed and produced by women’s trials and the accompanying narratives about ‘modern femininity’.
In passing, Modern Women on Trial is a help in the new process of understanding women’s positions in this othered world of seafarers. Through it we can see this London sailortown as a socially liminal place where mixed-race liaisons were possible.

It helps us begin to imagine the extent to which those who enjoyed such relationships and felt them to be not transgressive, such as 'Chinatown's happy wives', did so in the face of xenophobic hysteria about miscegenation.
Seafarers’ liaisons across the divide are a subject in urgent need of an oral history study now, while the people of the climate described in this book are still alive to tell its many hidden stories.

Queer voyages to the Falklands/Malvinas war

Today I've just written a piece for Pink News (http://www.pinknews.co.uk) about gay merchant seafarers' voyages to and from Falklands/Malvinas war, thirty years ago this Spring.

Read the article for more on these topics:
Steward Roy 'Wendy' Gibson on the ferry Norland (see pic) kept up morale with his piano and became the most famous out gay man of the Falklands/Malvinas War, as well as an honorary Paratrooper.

GBT men have been omitted from Falklands/Malvinas War history because it’s inconvenient news for stereotype-lovers that gay men can be brave. But as Wendy said ‘I may be a Mary but I’m as hard as the next, we gays had to be.... We’re still men.’

Lots of sex with virile young soldiers is only the stereotype but....

These merchant seamen don’t think of themselves as Falklands/Malvinas War heroes. ‘No, I was just ironing the captain’s shirts’ joked Norland steward Frankie.

Their unsung contributions not only include treating Argentinean prisoners like human beings and keeping mum about being gay-bashed and insulted by sissyphobic troops.

In Frankie’s case when their ship was being bombed ‘I went into my Peggy Mitchell mode, screamed ... it was my way of coping… it gave men the chance to express their fears too. Maybe us gays were better off than some of the straight people, because when we was frightened we could say “I’m frightened”… we could let it out.’

Daily living changed homophobia. As Para Ken Lukowiak wrote in his memoirs ‘it is true to say that he [Wendy] now gets more of a mention than the likes of Colonel Jones, VC... And no longer is Wendy referred to as …an arse-bandit … “Gay boy” is about the worst you will hear and it’s always … said with affection. You see, we do live – and we can learn.’

As for the veteran seafarers, in ports throughout Britain they'll be celebrating the June 14 end of the war, some in gay-friendly dockside bars. They're just glad they're back in one piece, even if their nerves are still frayed. So what, they say, if the record is silent on their contribution: 'We know what we did.'

I myself just want them to be properly recognised.

Images of transgressive sailors

When I was at the Edward Burra exhibition in Chichester last month (it's still on) I thought some of the very curvaceous and transgressive images of seafarers looked familiar in style. He definitely knew about trannies, but was he the first to visually comment on seafarers' sexuality?

I thought not, and now I've come across some paintings of mariners that seem to precede his. Try this 1929 painting by Austrian artist Marcel Ronay (lower image), 'Sailor and Girl'.(I found the image at http://bjws.blogspot.com/2011/04/new-western-woman-of-1920s.html. Thank you, Barbara).

Surfing for more info about Ronay led to me another site where you will find many Weimar artists' images of 'sailors', of the kind not usually seen in maritime museums, for example Charles Demuth's 1918 'Sailors dancing' (centre). http://weimarart.blogspot.com/2010/08/pleasures-of-mariners.html

Their sexualisation in these images is quite startling. It's easy to see the connections with Tom of Finland (see top picture, Seen Magazine, 'Tom arrives home') and his masculine gay men. Real name Touko Laaksonen, the late Tom's internationally acclaimed exhibition at Turku just closed 4 days ago. It was one of the official events in Turku's European Capital of Culture programme.

However the Wäinö Aaltonen Museum of Art and the Åbo Akademi Library want to gather permanent collections of his work). http://www.turku2011.fi/en/news/tom-of-finland-collections-gathered-turku_en-0).

There is certainly room in the world for a maritime museum to show this very different angle on rugged Sailor Jack.

Gorch Foch: women sea cadets harassed to death?

Harassment, humiliation - and now suicide, seemingly!

OK, ships have their bizarre initiation rituals. Though most of us wouldn't like to undergo them, some rituals may not be harmful.

But German navy sailing ship, the Gorch Fock, is undergoing a mutiny investigation because it's all gone too far. It's just emerged that after Nov 2010 some recruits refused to obey orders after a woman cadet fell to her death from the rigging.

Sarah Lena Seele (25) was bullied into climbing the 27 metre mast in a training exercise, say her colleagues. Insult was added to injury when the ship's crew held a raucous party just three days after the woman had died, reports Helen Pidd in a Guardian article: German Navy hit by sex, drink and bullying scandal. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/25/german-navy-sexual-harassment-claims.

Another women cadet, Jenny Böken (18) has also died in mysterious circumstances. She drowned in 2008 and her parents believe she was sexually harassed in the run-up to her death. They have demanded a full investigation.

“I think it is absolutely possible that Jenny was harassed and went overboard during a quarrel,” father Uwe Böken told Bild. “An accident simply doesn’t make sense. From the beginning I’ve thought that sexual coercion was the scenario.”

There have been many complaints about sexual harassment and bullying on this ship. Not only are women the targets, but also young men. Pidd writes: 'In the leaked report... [the parliamentary ombudsman for the armed forces, Hellmut Königshaus] and his team report tales of massive alcohol consumption on board. Drunken officers forced their underlings to scrub their vomit from the deck, it is claimed, and threatened to kill cadets while intoxicated.

'One male cadet complained of sexual harassment in the ship's showers. "It was like being in jail on the ship," he reportedly told investigators. "Every new recruit had to offer up his arse." The cadet said crew members were always throwing his shampoo bottle on the floor so that he had to bend down to pick it up.

'Over the weekend a female cadet told the tabloid Bild that she and other women were frequently propositioned by men on board.

'According to another report in Spiegel Online, one recruit told investigators that crew members told him they were members of the Aryan Brotherhood. [This is]the racist group which is responsible for murders, extortion and drug trafficking in US prisons.

Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, the German defence minister, has sacked Captain Norbert Schatz. Once the pride of the German navy and called the country's "floating ambassador" the Gorch Fock,is now being dubbed "Germany's biggest floating brothel."'

Königshaus wants to install an equal opportunities officer on board.

This entirely misses the point that harassment and bullying are cultural problems, to be tackled at the root. Any one who has been at sea will know this can't be just a one-off situation. The case of cadet Akhona Geveza (see my blog July 25 2010) makes that clear.

Respect has to be taught and learnt and learnt, not least in the isolated and pressurised spaces of a ship at sea where people are so vulnerable to bullying.

See more at the Safety4sea site: http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.safety4sea.com/admin/images/media/2010.11.09_GORCH_FOCK

Sexual harrassment at sea - & Akhona's tragedy

The more I think about cadet Akhona Geveza's death at sea and the alleged sexual harrassment it's exposed, the more I feel appalled.

Latest news is that there's no news - and that no-one has asked for a second autopsy on her, to clarify whether she was murdered or killed herself.

The United Filipino Seafarers website (http://www.ufs.ph/2009-10/node/3879) has added this: The SA Transport and Allied Workers' Union (Satawu), which said it was horrified by Geveza's death, sent its "heartfelt condolences" to her family.

"Akhona’s death should signal to our government the importance of developing our own ship’s register, where South African seafarers can work on ships owned and registered in South Africa, and therefore be protected by South African laws, including labour laws," the union said.

Satawu would seek a high level meeting with Transnet to discuss measures that must be taken to protect trainees from further abuse.

Several cadets in the maritime studies programme, speaking to the Sunday Times on condition of anonymity, said there was systematic abuse of power by senior officers, who threatened cadets’ careers if they did not perform sexual acts. The sex abuse allegations include claims that :

* Two male cadets were raped by senior officials while at sea;
* A female cadet terminated two pregnancies that followed her rape at sea;
* Three female trainees were pregnant at the end of their 12-month training stint;
* A male cadet was sent home a month before finishing his programme because he refused to have sex with a senior official; and
* A female cadet has a child with a married South African Maritime Safety Agency executive after he forced himself on her and threatened to cancel her contract if she told anyone.

Said a former female cadet: “When we arrived on the vessel, there were 10 women, and we were told that the captain is our god; he can marry you, baptise you and even bury you without anybody’s permission. We were told that the sea is no man’s land and that what happens at sea, stays at sea.”

Said another former female cadet: “It was like we were dumped in the middle of a game park.”

Cadet Geveza's death exposes shipboard sexual harrassment

This week South African media are reporting the tragic death of Akhona Geveza, a nineteen-year-old South African woman cadet on a cargo ship.

Clever, beautiful and set for a career at sea, she disappeared from the British-registered Safmarine Kariba on June 24. Her poor body was found drifting in the sea off the Croatian coast three days later.

Was she killed by shipmates? Did she kill herself?

Either way,the key seems to be that the day she died a fellow cadet reported (on Akhona's behalf, and against her wishes) that a senior officer, had repeatedly raped her.

Cadet Nokulunga Cele stated that Geveza had said that the Ukrainian officer first tried to kiss her while he was teaching her to swim early in May. Later he apologised to her and called her to his room. But there he allegedly raped her.

Cele said Geveza was not willing to report the matter to the shipmaster because she feared that nobody would believe her. What a lonely, terrible, situation. What an indictment of the shipboard regime.

There is no way that people trying to do their job should ever, ever, be allowed to be abused. It is especially outrageous when the victim is young and at sea because of economic need. (Akhona's father John Geveza, said the career of his only child had represented hope for her unemployed parents in the Eastern Cape).

It is even worse again when their abuser has additional social power over them - such as the ability to enable promotion, or even just daily wellbeing.

Akhona Geveza was a cadet on the Transnet National Port Authority’s maritime studies programme. It was set up as part of a campaign to encourage young women to become seafarers.

But the few stories leaking out so far suggest just how much the merchant shipping industry still has to learn about respecting and supporting vulnerable women - and young men - at sea. More than encouragement is needed. A decent working situation, free from violence, is crucial.

Geveza’s fellow cadets subsequently revealed that there was systematic abuse of power by senior officers at sea “who threatened cadets’ careers if they did not perform sexual acts” reported the South Africa Sunday Times. A woman had to have two abortions, after being raped at sea. Two male cadets were raped by senior officials.

At 10am on June 24 Shipmaster Klaudiusz Kolodziejczyk heard about the rape. He says he immediately confronted the officer and convened a conference with him and Geveza for 11am.

When she failed to arrive for the meeting,he organised a search. Kolodziejczyk, alerted by some pills and a bottle of thinners found on the forecastle of the ship, sounded the alarm and called Sea Rescue at Rijeka.

Captain Kolodziejczyk was no doubt well-intentioned in organising the three-way conference But really! It's insane to subject a victim to that, especially when she was to work with that officer for a long period in an enclosed institution far out at sea. Doesn't Kolodziejczyk know how bullying and social pressure work?

Not only would the rest of her voyage be torture. It's also wrong to treat a rape as a personal dispute between two parties. Rape is a crime. Doesn't officer training include basic procedural advice about how to support the victim? Even the newest police officer ashore knows how traumatising a confrontation could be.

The very least that should be done by Transnet is ensure that this can never again happen on any ship. Akhona's death should alert all masters and shipowners to the very drastic need for training. All ships should be respectful workplaces, where, if there are any such crimes, they are dealt with appropriately.

Queer spaces

Spaces and places reflect and reproduce the hegemonic heterosexuality of the world we live in. But among the many people exploring challenges to this dominance of 'Straight rules' (Not Ok.) are the Space, Sexualities and Queer Research Group of the Royal Geographical Society.
See their site at http://ssqwg.blogspot.com.

I am particularly interested in the sea as an exceptional space, and big ships as highly sexualised places where people feel free to transcend their usual sexual orientation.

'Why is it so different to land?' That's my preoccupation.

And it's one of the reasons why I'm on the SSQRG's committee. Next week (Fri 26 Feb 2010) the group is meeting to plan a new future, now that it is a Research Group, not just a Working Group, of the RGS.

There are at least two other interesting websites on queer geography:
http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/3683.queer_geography
and
http://www.queergeography.blogspot.com

And as for good books, try:
- Queer Space: Architecture and Same-Sex Desire by Aaron Betsky
- Geographies of Sexualities by Kath Browne, Jason Lim, and Gavin Brown
- A Queer Geography by Frank Browning
- Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the making of the gay male world by George Chauncey
- Txt, Space as a Key word by David Harvey
- Space of Hope by David Harvey
- Queer Sites – gay urban histories since 1600 by David Higgs
-Space, Place, and Sex: Geographies of Sexualities (Why of Where) by Lynda Johnston & Robyn Longhurst
…. And the forthcoming Queer Spiritual Spaces by Kath Browne, Sally R Munt and Andrew KT Yip.

Sailors: sex, race at San Diego conference

Sex is not exactly a topic much discussed in the maritime historiography world. Gender, yes - recently and to some extent. Instead sexual activity on ships is what gets talked about in the bar outside of formal proceedings. For example, 'twas in an Oslo beer tent after a maritime conference that a colleague first recited to me the ribald 'Good Ship Venus' with its references to friggin' in the riggin' etc.

But Sailors, Sex and the Sea was the topic of the special panel innovatively organised by Prof Lisa Norling at the American Historical Association conference, in San Diego, Jan 9 2010: Oceans, Islands, Continents. The papers in our panel were:

• "I Fell in with a Woman, Who I Thought Was All Virtue": Sex and Violence in Antebellum Seafarers' Confessions, by Matthew T. Raffety, University of Redlands

• "Sister Sailors" and Sexuality on American Ships, 1820–80, byLisa Norling, University of Minnesota

• Camping across the Oceans: The Ship at Sea as Queer Space, by Jo Stanley, Lancaster University

You can read the summaaries at http://aha.confex.com/aha/2010/webprogram/Session3489.html

Sitting in that grand marble palace, the Hyatt, we had a fascinating session comparing the different ways sexuality was handled in these different worlds.

As always, some of the most enjoyable moments were networking on the side. So it was fascinating to sit in a seafront restaurant overlooking the bay and talk with Lisa, Matthew, and Jeff Bolster, whose work, including Black Jacks, on race and seafarers is so important a counterpart to our work on gender.

Sent ashore for keeping sexual score book

Sent ashore for keeping sexual score book.

It seems like the kind of behaviour that should have gone out with the dinosaurs. Certainly such offensive laddishness was supposed to have vanished in the 1970s but.... On July 5 it was confirmed that four male sailors from Royal Australian Navy Ship HMAS Success were sent back home to Oz from Singapore in May.

They had been having a competition to sleep with the most women on board. The men kept an account book recording the number of female crew they had had sex with. "The ledger" had dollar amounts written next to each woman's name Officers and lesbian women won a man an extra point.

The book was found after women aboard complained. Since then there's been much
lurid joking on the internet - and some creditable official assertions of women's rights. Women's Forum Australia spokesperson Melinda Tankard-Reist points out:"When you consider that women constitute 40 per cent of the Navy, they have a right to feel safe in their place of work and not to be treated as potential notches on a sailor's belt. Obviously things have gone backwards, I thought the defence forces had moved on from this sort of pack-animal behaviour.... I don't believe these men should be able to serve at sea anymore because they're not reliable, they can't be trusted, they don't respect women and these are not the kind of men that we need defending us."

Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard (above, right) told Network Ten"We don't want to see anything that precludes women from having a good career in our armed forces if that is what they choose to do with their lives....we need our defence hierarchy to get on with the job of investigating these claims and taking appropriate action."

Chief of Navy, Vice Admiral Russ Crane said the matter is being referred to the independent Australian Defence Force Investigative Service (ADFIS), which will decide on disciplinary or administrative action.

HMAS Success is not a warship but a replenishment oiler (a naval auxiliary ship with fuel tanks and dry cargo holds, which can replenish other ships while underway in the high seas)