Novel views of sea, sex and gender: latest fiction

Creative thinking about gender and the sea is burgeoning this year.  Bayous, aquaria in shopping malls, English fishing villages: water and its denizens are central. 

These books are ideal booty for Xmas stockings because they're such a holiday from the maritime industry as we know it.   

In these novels, water is not just wet stuff; sea routes are not a sort of autostrada.  Water's a metaphor for our deep and puzzling places.

 Mermaids are nothing like Disneyesque hetereosexual cuties. Fishermen are not cosy Cap'n Birdseyes in sensible-bloke waders. 

Deep emotions - including longing and quests for identity and love - surface oddly and stir currents

Two of the latest of several new novels about sea  life - mixed with gender and sexuality - have just won national prizes.  In late November Julia Armfield was awarded the Polari overall prize for LGBTQ+ books for her novel Our Wives Under the Sea. 

The quotes immediately below are from the Guardian,“Our Wives Under the Sea tells the story of Leah, who unexpectedly returns from a disastrous deep-sea dive, and her wife, Miri, who grapples with the ways Leah changed while under water. ... Judge Joelle Taylor, said 'It is a strange, speculative, poetic and thrilling novel – a heart turner as much as a page turner.'"

In the same Polari prize competition, Jon Ransom’s The Whale Tattoo gained the first book award. 

The plot summarised: “Protagonist Joe Gunner navigates difficult memories as he returns to his Norfolk fishing town and renegotiates his relationships with those he left. 'It’s suffused with salt air and gay longing,' declared judge Adam Zmith."

Other  ‘queer’ maritime/ marine novels in 2023 include 

Chlorine by Jade Song. Compulsive swimmer Ren Yu grew up on stories of creatures of the deep ... She's always longed to become a mermaid. She will do anything she can to make a life for herself where she can be free. No matter the pain... No matter how much blood she has to spill. A powerful, relevant tale of immigration, sapphic longing, and fierce, defiant becoming” says Waterstones. 

The Immeasurable Depth of You , by Maria Ingrande Mora. "A queer supernatural coming-of-age story for young adults." Fifteen-year-old Brynn is lonely, staying with her father on a houseboat in the Florida mangroves. Horrors! There is no digital connection to her online friends. Then she meets "sultry, athletic, and confident Skylar. Brynn resolves to free her new crush from the dark waters of the bayou, even if it means confronting all of her worst fears."

Sea Change by Gina Chung. This novel's about Ro, a bereaved aquarium worker who’s drinking too many non-medicinal sharktinis. She loves Dolores, a  horny giant Pacific octopus,  Ro's last remaining link to her father. A marine biologist, he disappeared while on an expedition. This is about loss, healing, an Asian-American family, and tenderness. 

Surfacing in 2024

Feb 2024. In the Shallows  (also called The Mermaid of Black Rock) by Tanya Byrne

Young adult novel in which two girls fall in love during their attempt to understand a mystery: Nicoletta, a teenager, was hauled out of the ocean, after which her rescuing fishermen die. "Had Nicoletta lured them to their deaths―their lives in exchange for hers?" She becomes a legend and then meets Mara, who desires her, futilely. “Could there be a reason [why Nico has] locked everything behind a door? And once she's brave enough to open it, what will happen to her? To them?”

You can still catch ...

 2021:  The Mermaid of Black Conch, by Monique Roffey. Mermaid meets landsman. Their Caribbean community handles conflicts about masculinity and more.

Queer Navy: seeing the documents, hearing the stories. Seth Stein LeJacq

I’m delighted that Dr Seth Stein LeJacq, my friend and colleague in queer maritime historiography, is bringing out his new book and giving a free zoom talk. 

Seth is an expert on the Royal Navy’s GBTQ+ history pre1900. By contrast, I know about the merchant service, from 1900. We dovetail well. I constantly learn from his findings - including Jane Austen's brother's role in judging a midshipman's alleged  heterosexual assault of a girl. 

If you want to see a collection of important records of 'gay' naval history, as evidenced by “the unnatural and detestable sin of buggery’ and how the Royal Navy handled 'homosexuality' – and more – then explore these transcripts. They reveal:

• trials that erupted into public scandals
• cases that offer a vivid window into naval sexual cultures
• implicitly, varying attitudes towards diversity, human rights and inclusion that contrast with today's social climate 

Seth, an Assistant Professor at New York Institute of Technology, accompanies this verbatim material with invaluable editorial commentary. Together such material opens up an obscured past that is usually only accessible to those able to spend months in London archives reading handwritten ledgers. 

From November 9 2023: Pre-order a discount copy of Seth’s edited collection: Sexual and Gender Difference in the British Navy, 1690-1900, Routledge, London. ISBN 9781032409900. https://www.routledge.com/Sexual-and-Gender-Difference-in-the-British-Navy-1690-1900/LeJacq/p/book/9781032409900

January 30, 2024: Catch his free online talk ‘Recovering the Queer History of Britain’s Navy in the Age of Sail’. From 5.15pm to 6.30pm, by Zoom only, from the National Maritime Museum, London, UK . There is no need to book. Just before 5.15pm on the day simply click. For more information please go to https://www.rmg.co.uk/whats-on/online/recovering-queer-history-britains-navy-age-sail

Seth finds gender and sexual diversity on naval ships, and a surprising amount of tolerance for that diversity. The talk will ‘investigate sexual cultures at sea, discipline and military justice, including the 1698 trial of Captain Edward Rigby. See pic.

Seth will tackle some FAQs about GBT+ maritime history:

• What is the queer history of the Royal Navy in the age of sail? 

• How did seafaring men break their society’s rules about sex and gender? 

• To what extent did men enter into same-sex relationships, how and why? 

• ‘Queer’ can mean non-conforming, especially in social relationships. So in what other ways did that these men also act in other ways that men ‘weren’t supposed to’? 

• What were the consequences of their diversity?

• How can we learn more about these seafarers’ lives?

• Why is it so important to know about LGBT+ lives?

Learning more

Going deeper, sooner: get instant free online access to both lite and academic pieces in the writing section of his website https://www.sethlejacq.com/our-team

Going wider, in terms of periods and navies:  see my online timeline of Queer seafaring history in both Royal and Merchant navies in the UK, up to the present day: https://www.academia.edu/101174182/Timeline_LGBT_maritime_history_A_draft_you_can_add_to_Please_do_.   (Please feel free to add to it. Doing history is a cumulative ongoing process and you can enrich it.)

Celebrating the first ever Pride in Maritime Day on Mon 28 Feb 28, 2022.

Celebrating the first ever Pride in Maritime Day on Feb 28, 2022. https://www.maritimeuk.org/events/events/pride-maritime-day/ 

Let's join with all the LGBTQ+ seafarers and their allies ashore and afloat to mark this fine day. Maritime UK is leading the initiative. 

 

Grabbing a quick taster

I'm proud to have been part of revealing the brave and tragic history. If you want a quick taster about the challenging gay maritime past that led to this now-proud present, try: 

# Seeing my zoomed whirlwind tour talk about this history, step by step, 1600-2000 at bit.ly/queermarhist. It includes cross-dressed women whose relationships may have been non-heterosexual, like shipwright Mary Lacey (pictured below). 
 

# Browsing my reading list of books and articles about queer seas, at  www.academia.edu/37107492/Queer_Seas_bibliography_doc

# Reading my (lite, illustrated) introduction to the subject at http://www.jostanley.biz/the_sea_and_lgbtqi.html 

Exploring further 

I'm celebrating 20 years of researching, writing and explaining about this subject. This period was prefaced by me thinking for over two decades before that, 'Somebody's got to write up this history. But it should be written by a gay seafaring man, not me.' 

Finally I went ahead. You can see what I've written up by looking at: 

# my articles: get links via http://www.jostanley.biz/the_sea_and_lgbtqi.html 

# the "Hello Sailor" exhibition that Merseyside Maritime Museum mounted, then toured. See the Youtube tour of it at bit.ly/HomotopiaHello 

#  the seminal book Paul Baker and I wrote:  "Hello Sailor, https://www.proquest.com/docview/2132054178/$N" 

# my blog on gender and the sea: https://genderedseas.blogspot.com/

You can help by joining in

Do you want to take part in a rainbow seas history network, exploring the diverse maritime past? 

A few of us in maritime museums throughout Europe are thinking of getting together for this purpose. 

If you want to talk about joining in please contact me privately via my website, www.jostanley.biz

LGBTQI history book affects seafarers' futures

I don't usually write about personal matters on this blog. But an email I've just had prompts this. 

Nearly twenty years ago Paul Baker and I wrote a history of the UK Merchant Navy: Hello Sailor: The Hidden History of Gay Life at Sea  (Routledge 2003).

I thought we were recording and sharing an account of an important past culture - an extraordinary, and very enabling lifestyle for those lucky enough to be on gay-friendly ships in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.  

We  interviewed ex-seafarers who were in their 60s, 70s and 80s. They were speaking about a time before Gay Pride, when homosexual acts at sea were illegal. The past!

But now an email from Captain Lee Clarke, AFRIN, a much younger person still working in maritime today, illuminates the way that the book had another use today: it has helped LGBTQI+ people in modern times feel better. Lee (pictured here) has permitted me tell that surprising story: 

 "When I was a cadet in the early 2000’s,and certainly a junior navigating officer in the Merchant Navy, I struggled to come to terms with my sexuality. I started to hear stories from crew members onboard the RMS St Helena, that serviced Union Castle Lines. 

They talked of times when gay seafarers had their own language and culture onboard, as well as meeting in their own places all across the globe. This drew me towards Hello Sailor and I felt I connected more to the men in those pages than I did with other LGBTQ+ movements circulating at the time.

"I had honestly felt at that time that I had no heritage or understanding of the rich history that came with being a gay seafarer.  

"I came across Hello Sailor in 2015 and just could not put the book down. I connected to a history I was so proud of, but also connected to the pain on land of hiding my sexuality, and the importance of being able to escape to sea.

 "My ultimate favourite part of the book was learning about Polari and how people used it to communicate discreetly. I found this amazing. 

"I posted on LinkedIn about in 2016: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/gay-being-sailor-lee-clarke-vorstit er/?trackingId=NjgP5%2BkqSVyQsQJCliJfzA%3D%3D

"During my time as a cadet manager from 2015 to 2019,  when LGBTQ+ cadets approached me feeling disconnected about their sexuality and wondering how they would fit into the merchant navy, my first recommendation was to read Hello Sailor. 

They did, and it made them proud to be in the merchant navy and to be LGBTQ+. "

I'd like to thank all the people who told us about gay life at sea, and thus enabled this story to be told, and to continue to have its effects.

Alex Beecroft: fictionalising queer seafarers in the age of sail

Alex Beecroft: author.

Could maritime novelist Patrick O’Brian ever have expected that he would accidentally generate a new sub-genre: M/M (meaning male/ male) romances about the sea in the Age of Sail?
Ms Alex Beecroft’s five M/M novels show what can happens when men are on ships together. Homosocial situations turn to homoerotic ones. Men fall in love, and carry on sailing. And how much more enjoyable a voyage is for that!
Of course, queer seafaring in reality is still an occluded subject. There's only a handful of history books, and several paragraphs - all mainly based on criminal proceedings and hostile witnesses' accounts. See my bibliography at https://www.academia.edu/19982031/Queer_Seas_bibliography
Alex's fiction is part of the re-writing of history that corrects the false assumption that everyone was heterosexual. Joanna Chambers has similarly written M/M historical military romances, such as Unnatural. Jasper Barry created The Second Footman, about a 19C bisexual male servant.

M/M Age of Sail romances
Alex, who describes herself in an unlikely way as a stay-at-home mum from a Cambridgeshire village, has written five such books, and short stories. Mainly ebooks, they are:
Captain's Surrender, Linden Bay romance 2007, second edition by Samhain Publishing, 2010 (her first novel)
False Colors, Perseus (Running Press), 2009 (named among the top 100 gay books of the 21st Century)
His Heart's Obsession, Carina Press, 2009.
Blessed Isle, Riptide Publishing, 2012 (Voted “Best GBLT historical of 2012” by The Romance Reviews
By Honor Betrayed, Carina Press, 2011
Link: alexbeecroft.com

INTERVIEW
I find Alex’s novels about this world deeply enjoyable and satisfying. And I’m intrigued that they are written by woman who isn’t even a boatie; read by metropolitan men who certainly didn’t sail in the 18C; and relished by straight landswomen.
The bizarre nature of this phenomenon is why I have just interviewed Alex by email. Here are the replies she kindly sent:

Q. Why did you start writing queer Age of Sail books? Did you feel something should be explored about the hidden potential sexual extent of those close on-board relationships in history books and in novels such as those by Patrick O'Brian?

A. I started writing queer Age of Sail (AoS) books as a direct result of watching Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl. There's a moment in the film, right at the start, where HMS Dauntless glides out of the fog with all her timbers and sails creaking.
It hit me right in the heart.
I fell in love instantly with the magic of tall ships. As a result of this new love for 18th century weapons of mass destruction, I started reading up on the 18th century Royal Navy, both in non-fiction and fiction.
I discovered Patrick O'Brian. O'Brian gave me another of those "OMG, how did I live before this moment?" feelings. He instantly went to the top of my favourite authors list.
I have recently discovered asexuality and realized that I was asexual. But all of this took place before that realization, during the time when I didn't know what I was.
I knew I wasn't a gay man, but I had been struggling with my gender all my life (I now identify as agender or non-binary). Certainly I did know that I wasn't very good at being straight.
As a result, I'd always identified with queer characters without really knowing why. I identified with that sense of being a misfit/outcast because of something you were born with and could do nothing to change. I identified with that disconnect from the surrounding society.
And thinking back on it, I don't think I've ever really written heterosexual main characters. My Main Characters, such as Captain John Cavendish on HMS Meteor in 1762 (False Colours), have always either been totally disinterested in sex and romance or they've been queer in some way - gay or bisexual or trans.
It was never really a question for me. Queer people have always existed. Queer people were who I wrote about. Why on earth wouldn't I have queer Main Characters?

Q. What sorts of market has there proved to be? Would your readers tend to be maritime or queer, or what combination of both?

A. As far as the market goes, I only really have anecdotal evidence to go on. My experience has been that I've had more fan mail from men.
Most of it is the 'OMG, I never thought I would see this kind of book with a protagonist like me. Thank you!' sort.
But in egroups and book groups the people who talk about the book tend to be women. My impression was that gay men tend to find False Colors in book shops. They don't necessarily know the m/m romance genre is out there.
By contrast, women of whatever orientation tend to be online more. I have had False Colors and Blessed Isle added to a couple of maritime fiction reading lists. But my feeling is that more people are looking at them as queer books about the Age of Sail than are looking at them as Age of Sail book with queer characters.
In the early years of the M/M romance community, when False Colors came out, the received wisdom tended to be that the readers were predominantly straight women. False Colors and its running mates were marketed as ‘By straight women for straight women’.
Such a description ignored the fact that the authors were in fact two bisexual women – Erastes and Lee Rowan, plus Donald Hardy, a gay man, and me (a person who didn’t yet realize at that point that they were an agender asexual).
This precipitated a real upheaval of the community. Readers started to speak up and say “No. Actually we’re queer, and we’re fed up of being spoken about as though we’re imaginary even in a genre that purports to be about us.”
Ever since then, I’ve tended to assume most of my readers were MOGAI (Marginalized Orientations, Gender Alignments and Intersex)in one way or another. Even if – like me in those days – they haven’t yet worked out exactly how.
Lee Rowan was publishing gay Age of Sail fiction well before I did. Her Ransom series was really the trailblazer for queer naval historicals. I owe my start in publishing to her suggestion that I should submit the manuscript of Captain’s Surrender to her publishers. http://www.historicnavalfiction.com/related-authors/1713-lee-rowan

Q. What pleasure was there in it for you? Are you sort of one of those queer sailor boys manqué?

A. I do love my war machines! I love stories that take place in small, tight knit military communities. I love military science fiction.
A story about the 18th century Age of Sail is like Star Trek, boldly going where no (Western) man has gone before. And it has the added charm of gorgeous clothes and an interesting and intriguingly weird world view.
I found the culture/power structure in the 18th century Royal Navy tremendously interesting. And it was a small enough subject that I could become reasonably well versed in it in a short time.
The expansion of knowledge in the Age of Enlightenment gave, I felt, a glorious, optimistic world view. And the queer subculture of the time was stirringly vocal and unashamed and good to be around.
For example, there is a transcript of the trial at which possible trans man/possible gay drag queen Princess Seraphina took a man who had robbed her to court. She was supported by her female friends and neighbours from whom she used to borrow clothes. (http://rictornorton.co.uk/eighteen/seraphin.htm)
Also I love learning. The opportunity to find out what all the masts were called, and how you clewed off a lee shore, or navigated by knots and bits of wax stuck on the end of a plumb line was fascinating.
I don't want to be a queer sailor. I'm a queer writer. What I enjoy is to find out new things and then tell stories about them.
I feel you'd have to have very little romance (with a big R) in your soul not to be a little captivated by the lure of a tall ship and a star to steer her by.

Q. Why did you stop producing these books six years ago, and move onto other subjects?

A. Because I enjoy finding out new things. I got to the point where I felt if I wrote one more Age of Sail story, I would end up repeating things I'd already done.
I started to feel so familiar with the life on board ship that it stopped seeming strange and wondrous. It started to seem ordinary. I wanted to try something new.
There are many other things in history which are equally interesting which I fancy exploring -- such as the ancient Minoans, who I've been reading up on recently. What a fascinating world they lived in!
Also, by nature I've always been more of a fantasy and science fiction fan. Producing the Age of Sail books was a thoroughly enjoyable temporary blip. I may come back to it later. Or I may not.
Margaret Atwood popularised the adage “The proper study of Mankind is Everything” I quite agree. And if I'm going to write about everything I find interesting, I can't stay on any one thing too long.

Why do women write M/M fiction?
Alex’s discussion, ‘Why do women write m/m fiction? Answers for the men’, can be found at http://alex-beecroft.livejournal.com/72155.html.
She remarks ’Bear in mind that it’s a snapshot of what the debate was like in the m/m romance world in 2009. Both the debate and the community have moved on a lot since then.
‘For up to date discussion of the issues surrounding queer romance and literature, try subscribing to Riptide Publishing’s Tumblr http://riptidepublishing.tumblr.com. It’s a good jumping off point from which to listen in to the discussion as it is still going on.’