Without going into all the exposition to get to this point, suffice it to say that, once the proof is there that everything is connected with us sometimes seeing the connection or just being in the presence of a connection but either not seeing it for what it was or, for some reason, looking the other way, when it happened so it goes unseen, life becomes filled with surprises.
Like many people, even though I had taught Moby Dick in class and understood why a young Terrance Stamp played Billy Budd in the movie version of that Melville novel, I had no proof of the truth and just accepted the strong inferences and just assumed, as most do, being out to sea for months with only other men, that things happened willfully or otherwise, just for convenience during a voyage or a chance to be allowed to finally be yourself until you returned to port and had to be society’s expectation if two whalers did not go where they were not known and lived as bachelor farmers or married neighbors whose wives suspected nothing beyond a deep friendship forged between two men who had been to sea and had seen things as the reason they spent so much time together.
This changed in 2017 when I found the February 11, 1895 entry in the logbook of the Newport. Assumption gave way to fact, and this gave legitimacy to further successful research and discovery.
Although the initial intent of the Quigley Institute for Non-Heterosexual Archival Archaeology was to find any inclusion of instances of Homosexuality in the logbooks of the 18 through 20 Century American whaling ships, research has found instances of captains acting toward their cabin boys like the clergy toward altar boys but these were dealt with in court papers and not ship’s logs as they were not part of the ship’s business and were only dealt with as breaches of contract on the part of any cabin boys who were recaptured after having escaped their abusive situations, and if persisting may have escaped additional times, would be awarded some form of monetary compensation for the experience since it was determined by the courts that his choice to leave was forced not voluntary so the company owed him something, while the captain just went and got himself a new target.
What happened on the ship stayed on the ship, so whatever form their actions took, so long as crew members were not so blatant and perverse as what brought the captains to court which stayed between the captain, ship owner, and court, if not spoken of, remained apart from life in a Quaker run town whose Quaker influence was long lasting and strong, with a veil of silence. We might have to look real hard and investigate names of people we see in pictures from those days whose names may also appear on crew lists. While we look at a rare picture of two soldiers from the Civil War, obviously a couple, we might find that one or both had at one time been on a whale ship if not alone, perhaps more romantically as a couple.
Looking for those possible connections can be done now as whaling crew lists have been digitized and placed on the internet.
In the days when sex was sex, although the end game was marriage with only a few finding their real life, there were Gay whalers but they were invisible once they left the ship and the Straight men returned to the life that supplied them with their real sex partner and not one of convenience for the time being. Men on the Gay end of the Scale had to find a way to fit in, perhaps some returning to sea for that purpose alone, the freedom to be oneself.
These are the men in the shadows that need to be found.
Recently I went to a concert at the local art museum. The singer was one of my Cape Verdean neighbors and I know her as well as anyone knows a neighbor they do not see off the stage that often except to wave to each other as neighbors do or the rare occasions we pass like ships in the night at some social event.
Before the concert I met a friend for a pre-concert drink in a small bar nestled in what is now a section of the old waterfront being gentrified. The clientele is mixed and there is a vibe where, even though many patrons look like the guys who would give you a swirly in junior high, you talk normally as a Gay man without codes and euphemism and can be the person you are provided it is as it should be, a natural part of the conversation, not a spontaneous Pride Festival when all you are doing is ordering a drink.
It wasn’t a huge moment and it had no actual cosmic significance to anyone beyond myself, but it was still a good moment when a young man approached the bar where my friend and I were leaning as we talked and drank, and there was that moment where, even if it were the last thing either person wanted to do, the make up of the moments called for and got a friendly and mutual “What up?” with the up-nod which could have been the full extent of the conversation but wasn’t. From where I stood I met a tall, athletic young man with cascading curly hair, in a Greek falling-curl sort of way, deep brown eyes, and a smile that just set my GAYDAR up to the point I thought the noise was bothering the other patrons. Being realistic I was thinking this man breaks hearts and, accepting the huge age difference, and not being dead, I [prolonged my view by being appropriately friendly. It was his friend’s birthday and he had come up to the bar to purchase a party cigar for later. The friend who had been standing just outside my peripheral vision, suddenly stepped forward announcing happily that it was his birthday which they both had obviously been celebrating for a little while now. He, like the other, was in his mid-twenties and was dressed to impress with his clothes hugging his body like a coat of paint, a beard that was expertly trimmed, and a knit fisherman’s cap on top that pulled it all together.
With this announcement, the first one laughingly told us that for part his friend’s birthday celebration he was buying him the cigar and, having full faith faith and giving full credit to the strength of my GAYDAY I let the Birthday Boy know that my hope was that he would be getting more than that cigar unless that is just a symbol on a variety of levels.
It was what I expected and it was during the following conversation between my friend, the bartender, the young couple that they were, and I, that the connection was made.
This young, openly Gay man, dressed with obvious pride in his presentation, they both were, doing nothing to conceal himself by false machismo, was a local fisherman.
That whole area was, at one time, a very rough place. The building next to us had once housed one of those classic, rough and tumble waterfront bars and, until its eventual closing after decades because of gentrification, was one of the last places a Gay fisherman dressed for visibility would be safe.
I have been looking for Gay whalers hidden from the record in a somewhat brutal profession that could crush a weak man. With time, as Heterosexuality was established as the “normal”, what happened on the ship ended at the pier, and when whaling gave way to commercial fishing, that closet door was there.
The stereotypical image of a fisherman, if it isn’t the picture of that guy on the fishsticks box, is a rough and tough, burly guy wearing bulky gear and water repellent outerwear who gets drunk when the boat comes in which results in fights and extremely conservative views.
As this is the stereotype and his fellow fisherman are as real as the rest of us, even if his environment has him being careful on the boat, it is clear it is not the overriding attitude as, here he is at the waterfront where other fisherman are drinking and being his true self without fear knowing he will be seeing some of those men on the next trip out.
I just found it interesting that as I am attempting to find his industrial ancestors in the whaling industry hidden by history whether actively, as happens, or tacitly by just accepting things are the way they are according to the majority, a man walks out of nowhere and is the present day version of what I am looking for in the past.
And in contrast, he is not hidden.
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