Celebrating LGBT history and the sea at the National Maritime Museum

On Saturday (20 Feb) the UK’s National Maritime Museum at Greenwich marked LGBT history month. It’s the first time for this museum, which already had a strong staff LGBT network.

A bright rainbow flag flew from the historic Cutty Sark sailing ship. London’s Gay men’s Choir sang joyous songs like You Bring Me Sunshine.

It was a happy day with a warm sense on inclusion – at last for queer people who have had a marginalised history.

Fashion historian and expert on Nautical Chic Amanda Butchart talked about sailors as butch icons.
And a team from the National History Museum explained how very very queer the undersea world is: hermaphrodite fish and penguins being accused of criminal necrophilia (when really the poor things' amoral receptors were just responding to a partner’s proffering position).

Greenwich’s Lord Mayor Norman Adams opened the proceedings with a very gay-positive and moving speech. Children delightedly coloured in rainbows at the workshop.
And female pirate Katherine Hart was doing a roaming show in the foyer (pictured below, with me trying to outmatch her splendid swashbuckling. Does my cutlass envy look too big in that skirt?)

My talk

I myself gave everyone a new PowerPoint talk I’ve just put together: A quick cruise round 400 years of queer history at sea, which featured some of the NMM's newly revealed artefacts like these pictures of a cross-dressed stage seawoman and RN sailors saucily playing at families, in their time off.

It covered people in the Merchant and Royal Navies.
Ranging from the captains who were hanged for buggary of minors in the 1800s, to the Royal Navy’s impressive status now as no 10 in Stonewall’s top 100 of gay friendly employers, the story was of exclusion, scandal, agents provocateurs, homosociality … and of the 1990s successful challenges to homophobia and heteronormativity.

RN history really contrasts with the frisky campery of the post-war ‘gay heavens’ of passenger ship stewards. These MN men thought they were ‘liberated already’ and enjoyed the extraordinary solidarity of that life at sea decades before the gay rights movement began. (You can read about this in the book Paul Baker and I created, Hello Sailor! The Hidden history of Gay Life at Sea) www.routledge.com/9780582772144

~
Oh, time constraints! There was the usual problem that in 40 mins I couldn’t include as much as I’d like to. So we had to do without a discussion of the significant absences from the record of women who were lesbian and bisexual. Omitted, too, were men who transitioned - some of whom found going to sea absolutely transformative, not least after seeing lady boys in Bangkok.

Is this summary of history really the pattern of queer life at sea?

For me, creating this talk at home on the computer was a mind-blowing experience.(You should see the cutting room floor. Knee-deep in all the info I couldn’t fit in!)

Partly it was just staggeringly hard work to put together four centuries and two very disparate organisations (MN and RN) with their very different attitudes towards discipline and national interest. (The RN worried about spies and cold-war blackmail. By contrast, state security didn’t have concern operators of tankers or of ships full of low-risk corned beef or Ten Pound Poms or Prohibition-evading booze-cruisers).

But also, in creating a coherent summary a writer produces a narrative that reveals old patterns and also creates a new over-arching pattern.
Was I right in saying x sits next to y and makes z? I think so. But I hope people will challenge and tweak my idea too .

I come away from mentally organising this summary thinking that one of the hidden stories of the queer past at sea is that maybe, for many people at sea, same-sex sex and love was a non-story.
Maybe, as George Melly (pictured) said of his 1945 time in the RN's Dido, men having sex with men was just unremarkable and ordinary, like mutual masturbation in all-male situations such as public schools.

My other realisation is that the role of testosterone really can’t be over-related. Men had sex with men (whether or not they thought of themselves as ‘homosexual’) because hormones impelled them to release that energy.
Testosterone production is greater if you’re young, not a parent, in a competitive situation (e.g. making war), and in other men’s company. A battleship provided ideal conditions for biochemical-impelled behaviour.

Queer seas: a complex history

But it’s also a very complex story. In it are many factors including:

# religious anxiety about ‘unmanly unclean-ness’
# the major problem of shipboard bullying
# naval compromises made because of a need for personnel
# agonising human loneliness
# the deep comradeship (see pic below) that goes when people are dependent on each other for their very lives.


How the audience responded

At least two former seafarers who were there said they will give help me go on to create a fuller picture of queer life at sea, beyond the pirouettes and feather boas of MN amateur shows by crew.

I really hope RN men will be in touch too. Their story urgently needs to be told in a properly-funded oral history project.

And people seemed to be really engrossed as they listened. It was a lovely responsive audience. I look forward to being as well-received on future occasions.
It feels like a talk that could be given to many audiences. In fact, it feels like the stuff of a two-day course. There’s so much to be said.

So many people, it seems, want to know this hidden history – as those who couldn’t attend are already telling me.

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

Lesbians aboard in US navy. Secrecy is undermining, so repeal DADT

Former Lieutenant Junior Grade Jenny Kopfstein, a US Navy Surface Warfare Officer, has just written a public letter to President Obama as part of the current campaign to repeal the controversial law affecting LGBT people in the services. She was on the combatant cruiser USS SHILOH - and a lesbian.

She writes '“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) made it difficult to have normal conversations with my shipmates. If I said I had a dog, someone might ask, “Who takes care of him when you’re at sea?” Answering the simplest questions can get you kicked out.

The crew of my ship was my extended family. Keeping parts of my life secret and separate from them is an unnecessary burden, and no American sailor or soldier should be forced to bear it.

Feeling deeply conflicted between the requirements of DADT and the Navy’s Core Values, I wrote my Captain and told him I was a lesbian. I was being forced to lie on a daily basis by DADT. I did not want to get out of the Navy, and I said so in my letter. I wanted to stay and serve honorably, and to maintain my integrity by not lying about who I was.'

Jenny continued not only to work, but to work very effectively. And she continued not only to be accepted, but popular, and even represent the ship. Her commanding officers did not want her to go to.


'I qualified as Officer of the Deck, and was chosen to be the Officer of the Deck during General Quarters — a great honor.
I also earned my Surface Warfare Officer pin. During my pinning ceremony, the Captain removed his own pin — off the chest of his uniform — and pinned it on mine. That was one of my proudest moments.

Mr. President, help Congress repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” now. We cannot afford any delay.'

With respect, Former Lieutenant Junior Grade Jenny Kopfstein, US Navy.
http://gayrights.change.org/blog/view/dont_ask_dont_tell_violates_the_navys_core_values


Her point is so important. On a ship you're in a team. Witholding a key thing about yourself undermines your happiness, and it undermines the trust that's so crucial aboard. Of course LGBT people should be able to tell - and continue to do their job.

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.

Hello Sailor exhibition opens in Glasgow

Hello Sailor! Gay Life on the Ocean Wave, opened in style in Glasgow.

Over 70 were at the launch party at the Tall Ship in Glasgow Harbour, on Friday 4 September 2009 - the biggest number to ever attend an opening night there. I got to cut a pink satin ribbon to declare the exhibition open, which was great fun (that's me, to the right of Lisa Gaston, education officer).

The staff had made a big effort. The hospitality staff had dressed specially in pink, and served rose wine and cranberry. One said 'I've been up and down all Dumbarton Road looking for pink serviettes too.' Never mind, it went off well.

Gay submariners

Up in Scotland last week I heard many story about (but none from, unfortunately) male submariners who formed sexual relationships in submarines. The classic phrase, apparently, is '140 men went down and 70 couples came back up.'

That was said with some homophobia - as in 'I wouldn't work on submarines because this happens.' But the point is that if men are submerged for three months at a time, then of course they are going to get together. And of course the captain is going to turn a blind eye. Indeed, some captains themselves had affairs.

Homosexuality at sea has had a hidden history. But even more hidden is the history of gay US submariners, particularly those working at Holy Loch on nuclear subs. From 1961 and 1992 Holy Loch was the home base of US Submarine Squadron 14, and used for refit and crew turnover. It would so useful if someone could retriev this 'other' history.

Incidentally, for all that subs were so slow to allow women crew, there was at least one in the early days: NASA astronout Dr Laurel Blair Salton Clark (1961-2003) worked at Holy Loch around 1989-92, dived with Navy divers and SEALs, and made many medical evacuations from US submarines. She was a Naval Submarine Medical Officer and Diving Medical Officer. See her wikipedia entry.

Hello sailor moves to Glasgow this autumn

From Sat 5 Sept to Sun 29 Nov 2009, you can see my travelling exhibition: ‘Hello Sailor! Gay Life on the Ocean Wave’, at the Tall Ship at Glasgow Harbour, G3 8QQ.
0141 222 2513. http://www.thetallship.com

Hello Sailor exhibition keeps travelling

Hello Sailor! Gay life on the ocean wave, will return to Merseyside Maritime Museum from 16 May to 23 Aug 2009. The Times listed it as the number one exhibition, in Jan 2009.

After that the lively 12-panel exhibition - complete with a cabin set and audio visual exhibits - will tour to Glasgow. It is at The Tall Ship, the independent maritime museum in Glasgow, from 4 Sept to 29 Nov 2009 (see pic left). For access details go to http://www.glenlee.co.uk/newsite/

At its new Scottish temporary home, the exhibition is expected to have additional information about Glasgow's gay seafarers and the gay life enjoyed by sailors whose ships docked there. A number of the seafaring men interviewed for the book that preceded the exhibition were from Scotland. Indeed, one of the most beautiful gay seafarers of the twentieth century is Scottish. Amber, a P&O steward, looked like Judy Garland and Liz Taylor (see pic, right; Amber on the Andes).

Was he gay? Posterity won't know.

During the last two weeks I've come across a lot of information about three gay men's deaths. And the manner of their memorialisation troubles me. All three have a sea connection. Two were seafarers. One was a well-known maritime historian and leading museum worker. They are part of queer seafaring history, and deserve to be on the record.

But in two cases, nowhere in the newspapes obituaries was there a reference to the person being gay, even though all his colleagues and friends knew he was homosexual. And I too feel I shouldn't out the people here in this public place, so I won't name names. This is how queer history gets lost - and it's sad. And I don't know what to do about it - because I do believe peoples' wishes to keep homosexuality a secret should be respected.


In the third case, Geoffrey's funeral excluded all his gay colleagues. The gay steward's sister announced that she wanted no queers at the event, even though the gay community had been his real family far more than his blood family had been. However, a caring ex-shipmate dealt with this loss by arranging that there should be a small ceremony aboard the QE2. It was Geoffrey's old ship, which happened to be in port at that time.
The picture shows crew and officers - who didn't know Geoffrey - respectfully taking part in this 'alternative funeral.' It's great that it happened, but what a tragedy that there couldn't be more integration between these gay men's lives and their post-death commemoration .

Flamboyant send-off for seafarer

Bon viveur Franco Fantini died on January 6 2009, aged 71. Born in Milan, Franco worked on a number of cruise ships in the heyday of campery, including on 'the world's queerest ship', the Andes. Retiring from the sea in 1973, he founded the Cabin Crew cafe, which later became the fabled La Margherita restaurant on Southampton's Town Quay.

On 15.1.2009 the much-loved restauranteur was seen off in style in a hearse drawn by white horses with pale pink plumes . His Italian imported walnut coffin was pulled by a white Victorian carriage and covered in a blanket of roses.

At St Edmund's Church, Southampton, the music was Italian grand opera, and Elton John's Candle in the Wind, which was played at Princess Diana's funeral. Shirley Bassey was an important icon for post-war show-loving gay seafarers and also dined at La Margherita. Her song, Hey Big Spender, boomed out as Franco's coffin was carried into the crematorium, and then I am what I am. Afterwards at the party many former stewards were happily reunited. Donations went to Marie Curie Cancer Care and the Terrence Higgins Trust.

During his last illness Franco was looked after by La Contessa, an ex-stewardess, also from Italy. She tells me her dream is to open a retirement home for gay seafarers where they can cross-dress, wear makeup and be themselves without fear of homophobia.

You can access the Southampton Echo obituary and funeral reports, including a video, on http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/. Look for Jan 6, Jan 9, and Jan 16.

There's something about a sailor? Beefcake

Poor Admiral West. Key figure in the Government's 2000 decision to repeal the ban against homosexuality in the armed forces, the ex-head of the Navy probably didn't bank on becoming a pink pin-up.
But the sartorially-acclaimed, happily married Minister put himself on Facebook, just to make friends. He included a photo of himself in that irrestible white uniform that seems to cause so many frissons in female and male landlubbers.
And now he has been so inundated by suggestive messages from gay men that he has closed his account.
Under the heading 'Hello Sailor! Facebook flirts hit on Minister,' The Sunday Times (Sun 8 2009) has more details.
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/personal_tech/article5683542.ece
You can see a great photo of him in a pirate eyepatch, partying with the saucy-looking Kathy Lette, at
http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/12_03/alanwestDM1812_468x511.jpg

Sweden's Gay Seafarers

You can get a virtual tour of Sweden's sister exhibition on gay seafarers, Safe Haven, by going to
http://www.sjohistoriska.se/sitecore/content/Sjohistoriska%20museet/InEnglish/Exhibitions/Tour.aspx see .

Or you can even go and see the real thing in two weeks time. The Maritime Museum & Aquarium in Gothenburg is showing Safe Haven from February 18 - August 23 2009. http://www.sjofartsmuseum.goteborg.se/

The exhibition is based on Arne Nilsson’s book 'Såna' på Amerikabåtarna ('Those Ones' on the American Boats), Normal förlag, 2006.

Hello Sailor opens in Newcastle

The Hello Sailor exhibition opened in Tyne & Wear's Discovery Museum on Jan 27 . It looked great, because it had more space than has been available in other places, and because local material was added.

(see pictures below and right, courtesy of DD)

Ex-seafarer John Wodehouse and Paul Mann, as well as Greta La More (who worked in pubs used by seafarers) gave objects and stories. Museum workers Christine Hutchinson and Sarah Cotton included them in the exhibition: new panels, audio extracts, a uniform, a discharge book and souvenirs, such as John's precious Queen Mary glass goblet.

My favorite bit was after all the punters had gone home. The bunk in

the cabin set had been made up incorrectly. Blankets are customarily

folded and laid on top of the mattress, not tucked in, so that the occupant can make a quick escape if the ship starts sinking. John got into his old role and sorted out the bedding properly, as our photos by Mary Hesling show.

Analysing gay seafarers' representation in museums

Pam Meecham has written an interesting analyis of the Hello Sailor! exhibition. In particular she brings out the difficulties I certainly felt in representing - in a popular site - what might be seen as parodic lifestyles and men adopting anti-feminist 'feminity.' She puts her finger on the problems I never satisfactorily sorted out in helping create that exhibition.
See 'Reconfiguring the shipping news: maritime's hidden histories and the politics of gender display' appeared in Sex Education: Sexuality, Society and Learning, 1472-0825, Volume 8, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 371 – 380.

Making history accessible

LGBT people's history at sea is fascinating. A ship is such an exceptional space that enables human beings to behave very differently to the way they behave ashore. Queer things do indeed happen at sea. They are not only worth recording - in depth, and ideally multi-dimensionally eg through sounds and images, not just text. Such records also need to widely available.

In the last three weeks I've been reminded of the importance of this at two conferences: the UK Maritime Heritage Forum on Dec 3, and Curioser and Curioser, the LGBT History and Archives conference on Dec 6. After Sir Neil Cosson's inspiring speech at the former, it seemed to me that those of us working in maritime heritage can give a key gift to posterity. We can proudly explain that some ships were spaces where diversity of sexual orientation was accepted, even welcomed, by passengers and crew. And this important social phenomenon occured far more readily than in any other 20th century space, even the theatre.

It was not an unproblematic acceptance. But it was a telling and inspiring proof that human beings can be extraordinarily tolerant of different ways of loving and living life. It's a proof that we humans can transcend our deepest prejudices and embrace the Othered - oddly easily. My view is that the sea and its ships are thus wondrous spaces. And we historians have the privelege of being able to assist people in the important process of wondering at them.

The Curioser conference implicitly demonstrated how remarkable the phenomenon of queer seafarers is. It also impressively showed how many lively projects are being created in the UK to ensure that the on-land history is being recorded and made accessible before it's too late. There's energy and funding - and that's heartening.