(I guess it is because of age and the life experience that came with it, but I have developed a strong interest in preserving history as it was, warts and all, so the future gets to see the real story without the revisions. to this end I met with the president and the chief curator of the New Bedford Whaling Museum and received a green light of sorts for the idea I proposed. This is what I proposed and that upon which the proposal was based.)
As of now, we are no longer an assumption, a possibility, a whaling Shrodinger’s Cat. We have been found and we are visible
Prior to the New Bedford Whaling Museum and other repositories of historic documents beginning to transcribe them to be digitized and placed on the internet for easy reading or, if the transcription is true and an exact version mistakes and all, easier reading, the scanned versions of documents such as ship logs appeared on various web sites.
Prefacing each scanned log book on Archive.org is information about the ship and a list of topics a person, or persons, reading the log book saw as topics of interest.
So it is that the Log Book for the whaling ship Charles Phelps has this as its cover page.
However, this, and a subsequent cover page of another log, illustrates that what is actually of importance, not being on the communal radar is omitted from the historical record, or, worse, omitted because it was filtered through someone’s personal, political and/or religious beliefs. In this case there is a simple list of unremarkable topics, almost predictable, yet in this logbook was the following entry from January 30, 1843,
Besides describing his punishment for attempting to stab an officer with a knife and trying to get the cook to put poison in the captains bread that anyone could consume, the log entry notes, the ship steward had a stricter punishment than would have been meted out except he “allso tried to hire a Portuguese [deckhand] to commit Soddomy”.
Although the general assumption is that there had to be Homosexual acts more as a release for a crew of men sailing around in a totally male environment than, perhaps, sexual orientation, even as this recording of an actual event brings the assumption into reality, it was not deemed for the above mentioned reasons to a topic of interest.
As a result, a researcher looking for such a reference would move on to the next log hoping its cover page points in the right direction while passing the direction that could have actually been pointed out.
Likewise, when transcribing the log of the Newport as it wintered a Herschel Island 1894-95.
The cover page contains the usual ship information and list of topics of interest.
Yet again, we have this entry.
““Monday Feb 11th
A light breeze from the W.N.W. Cloudy and misty Bar. 30.10. Ther. -4 Got a load of meat put the Steward (Scott) forward for Sodomy and Onanism of Bark Wanderer one of the men deserted but was overtaken and brought back.”
I have found that, when relating this entry even to educated adults, I have had to define Onanism which could be a reason this entry was not noted, because Onanism was just a word and not a clue.
Confusion comes in as runaways had also been mentioned in passing among a number of other details in earlier and later entries and, because of the lack of punctuation in the original, sentences are blended and separation comes through context which is often lacking when events are listed in order of occurrence and not by category.
And this was in the log of the Newport no he Wanderer, so, again, he was either making a house call, or was afraid of getting caught on his own ship and walked through temps below zero across frozen ice to seek release below decks on another ship or the “of the wanderer” refers to another person entirely who had run off from that ship not from the Newport as a result of getting caught, and was just another listed runaway.
Another random mention in a meticulously kept detailed log
There is no mention of catching anyone, so it is possible the steward was a very busy man and the captain put him on time out. It mentions two activities that would require a bit of gymnastics if done alone but easily performed in pairs or more. It is not clear if the runaway was the other man, implying the unmentioned catching them in the act, or, like so many other mentions, just an event that happened and was unrelated but, as there is no punctuation, would seem to be.
All we know for certain is the steward, Scott, had his recorded Homosexual act left to posterity to find. And I did.
The Wanderer’s log on the Island only kept weather conditions in the entries so there is no mention of the steward being arrested or anyone running away from the ship. They were frozen in place and the winter entries are very few, perhaps 30 pages in all from September through May.
There were many ships at Herschel Island that year and it was in cross referencing the log of the Newport with the personal journal of Captain Porter’s wife, Sophie, that a repeated ending of entries in the Newport’s log, “worked the lathe”, was the captain’s making replacement baseball bats for those broken during the many, almost daily, games weather permitting with one such game captured in a painting in the museum’s possession.
By cross referencing the Charles Phelps on the collected crew list on www.whalinghistory.org, which were supplied by NBWM transcribers, consulting the New York census from 1855-1865, I was able to find what happened to the steward of the Charles Phelps in later life and the fact that he was married with a number of children, introduces a further topic of study beyond the existence of Homosexual activity.
Whether other logs of the captains of the Newport and Charles Phelps could reveal other entries on Homosexuality has yet to be researched.
The two stewards were on their ships the whole voyage, so there could be other instances.
Along with filling in the gap about Homosexuality on whaling ships, there is a further area of study. Before Psychology became an established science, there was no clear delineation between Homosexual activity based on orientation or situation, which is common with long male/male isolation. The Straight/Gay binary is rather recent as sex was sex as long as somewhere along the line a person produced an heir and society continued smoothly. After a Homosexual act or a series of acts in a prolonged male-only confinement some go back to Straight upon return to mixed society, some find they are bisexual, some that they are actually Gay, but the act itself is not necessarily based on sexual orientation. Rather than a strict Binary of Gay/Straight, reality favors Kinsey.
Non-Binary was here before Sigmund Freud had to decide what was “normal” and what was “abnormal”, of course including anything related to himself as normal. He was a married man.
That is why the accepted assumption that there had to be homosexual activity, but not necessarily intimate, meaningful sex which would have involved emotion not just physical release, is has been replaced with fact.
What needs to be done is to collect all such references, cross reference where possible, to come to a possible delineation of situational Homosexuality and Sexual orientation based intimacy after combing the log books. Victorian vocabulary had two meanings, and, although the Quakers couldn’t care less about one’s sexual orientation because of their beliefs on equality, this changed as the 19 century did, and by the 1890s what had been tacitly allowed (tolerated) became an object of religious condemnation.
Why Williams had to offer pay is of interest. Why did he choose the Portuguese add-on crew member? What happened after his being in chains? What led up to the attempted crimes? Were the steward Scott incident and that of Smith one time occurrences or common with him and others? Were there other instances on Herschel Island that winter alone?
There are hints as theater company was formed by some of the crew of the Beluga that winter of 1894-95 that performed music and theatrical shows for the captains and their wives, and Sophie Porter refers to what seems to be the use of Drag at a social gathering.
This information, although in the logs, has, up to this point, been overlooked and not having been included in the list of topics covered in the logs has been denied to researchers.
I believe this area needs to be pursued beginning with the transcribing of the Charles Phelps log and expanding from there.
Upon sending the Newport log entry to a number of professors who deal with maritime history, this response sums them all up.
“There’s quite a lot written about homosexuality and pirates. However, I don’t know of anything published about this subject in the whaling industry.”
We are at a point where this has changed.
What we were told not to think about Billy Budd is Billy Budd.
Being a museum, a repository of collected history and not a research institute, the museum has no internal mechanism to set up a dedicated department to this one topic as each newly discovered topic could demand a committee or advisory board, but can evaluate what information is supplied and curate it.
Thus, I have to continue my research on my own, although availing myself of any resources, can present myself as a volunteer with references to give me gravitas with museums, researchers etc. The museum will be very supportive and helpful, making resources available along with guidance and advice.
Being a Volunteer at the museum I can refer to myself in that capacity in the hope a little name dropping will help, but, obviously, I cannot speak for or represent myself as an official representative or spokesperson. This is standard.
I may have approached someone when I was a teacher and, although I could give my name, job, and school, teaching there did no give we the power to speak for the school or the district, commit the school to anything, and/or pass on my own personal, poltical, or religious beliefs as those of the school.
I will be coordinating with the curatorial staff as part of the process, and they, in turn, will act as part of a network of people beneficial to the research and helping to expand that network,, and if the museum is contacted in a follow up to someone’s having had contact with me, Iwho I am can be verified and validated.
SO IT COMES TO THIS.
There are plenty of websites that are begging to have help transcribing documents. People in the community can, at their own speed and on their own time either read through already transcribed log entries translating terms like “special friend” to what they actually are to show our side of the ambiguous vocabulary, or transcribe an original, it gets easier with time, and take note of those entries that contain information about homosexual activity and those involved.
At the same time, researchers who hear about these two entries might correct the assumption that I was the first, if not to find an entry mentioning Homosexuality, at least the first to notice an entry’s significance, by coming forward with previous found references in other logs but previously having no idea what to do with them, and this would be added to the archive which I am thinking of calling the Quigley Institute of Non-Heterosexual Archival Archaeology, or send it directly to the curatorial department of the museum as we find more evidence of us in the historic record that has been there but unseen.
Why should we accept that a woman had a companion, when we know from life what it is really all about.
Students, Academics, and history buffs now and in the future will want this information and this would make a good research paper for publication or to get the degree, and certainly there are members of the Pride Flag who would want to get involved.
The museum wants the information. We can be the source of it.
I am transcribing the Charles Phelps log book with the intention of looking for anything overlooked by those who do not know what they should be seeing, and, rather than stick to a strict transcription assignment after, I am being allowed the time and resources to follow trails and further research tips I might receive or come across.
We are now visible and we can make us more so.
As soon as I get the “Institute” organized, which for now will be a laptop and an email address to which people can send tips, assemble a list of archival sources, and direct contact links to the appropriate people at the museum, I will send that all out, and the research can continue and begin.
If you know of anyone anywhere who would be interested, if you know someone who has been considering a book or research paper on this topic but had no starting point, pass this on.
As far as the Museum’s support, they did not have a Non-Binary author of a banned book as the first speaker at the reborn New Bedford Lyceum because they were available, but because the museum saw it was important to do.
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