LGBT+ History Month 2026: seafarers in Bristol and other ports

 As LGBT+ History Month comes to an end I’d like to say how much I enjoyed publicising to the story of Mick Belsten. 

He was a P&O seafarer who became a key media activist in the Gay Liberation Front and in the new queer publications starting up in London in the 1970s.

 I spoke about him to OutStories Bristol on Valentine’s Day.

It was a delight to know that over 80 Bristolians were there at MShed, including members of Mick’s Shirehampton family (who generously helped me with the research).

The queer history of the port of Avonmouth (where Mick's dad was a foreman on the docks) is less visible than that of Antwerp, Marseille, Southampton, Liverpool and London. That of New York is just starting to emerge via South Street Maritime Museum.   

Mick’s world was swinging London, but it seems that, remotely, he had a role in  Bristol’s 1977 Gay Festival (pictured). It was a fundraiser for Gay News, where Mick worked and whose finances had been hit by the 1976 Dennis Lemon blasphemy trial. 

Anyone who can help add a regional story of a seafarer, however fragmentary, will be important in helping build up a picure of how much the the 1960s culture of 'floating gay heavens' contributed to later Proud maritime culture on land.

For Mick's story see https://genderedseas.blogspot.com/2021/01/from-ships-steward-to-lgbt-media.html