In 2017, as a volunteer transcriber at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, I was assigned the log book of the Newport, a steam powered whaling vessel out of San Francisco owned by a New Bedford firm, scheduled to spend three seasons hunting for Bowhead whales in the North Pacific whaling field from 1893 through 1896. As the Bowhead whale has an annual North/South migration, rather than chase them, knowing their route would take them through the Bering Strait into the arctic waters and since this would bottleneck them into a smaller expanse than the open Pacific ocean, for a number of years whaling vessels would gather at Herschel Island, 60 miles East of Barrow, Alaska, off the northern edge of Canada in the Fall, carefully winterizing the ships to withstand the forming ice in order to sit through the winter, making them into homes for the crews while other amenities were supplied by the company owned village established on land to wait for the whales to return in the spring and have them come to the whalers and not the usual way with the whalers chasing them.
It was a common practice for whale ship masters to bring their wives on long voyages and spending the winter on Herschel Island as a couple was a good practice for them either because their wives were welcome additions who would have been left at home for those three years, or the wives had insisted on being there as the Indigenous women might be seen as too great a temptation for their otherwise devoted husbands. They knew their husbands. The whale ship masters wintering on Herschel Island usually brought their wives and their children.
During the winter of 1895, Sophie Porter, wife of Captain Porter of the Jesse H Freeman, took photographs of those wintering on Herschel Island that year and among them are those of the Captains, their wives, the ships, the indigenous people, both adults and children, and miscellaneous pictures of crew members.
In the log books kept during that time on the Island, there are entries about the interactions of captains with their wives. We know the captains had sexual relations not only with their wives but with the indigenous women. Captain Leavet, having fallen in love with and marrying an indigenous woman, left whaling, remained on Herschel Island for a time, and became a very prominent person in that area of Canada off of which the Island lay. Captain Leavet’s activities would have been noted as he was a captain, but if there were women available to him, they were also there for any crew member as well.
Crew members did not have the privilege of bringing a mate with whom to winter, so if there was to be any sex for them, it was either with the Indigenous people in the area or each other.
Until 2017, it would seem, the answer to the question regarding homosexual activity on whaling ships, whether or not it was merely situational or because of sexual orientation, or even, perhaps, as many whaling voyages took place before Psycho-analysis invented the word “Homosexuality” and created the gender binary, just natural, had consistently been that all-male crews isolated for months and years on a ship at sea and having natural needs would most likely have engaged in some form of Homosexual activity. It was a logical assumption with no actual record of any beyond what appeared to be Melville’s hints in Moby Dick and other of his writings.
We have log entries that describe the sexual activities of crews in ports or near islands, such as the one in the South Pacific where a captain had to abandon his ship until major repairs could be completed because of the number of nails that had been melted down for local use in exchange for sex.
While studies have been done and books written regarding Homosexuality among pirates, a different topic as pirating and whaling, although taking place on ships, were not the same by nature, there has been no serious study of Homosexuality on whaling ships, or, if there is, it is being done quietly.
The whaling ship Newport was wintering on Herschel Island over the winter of 1894-1895. Among the log entries is,
“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.”
There are a number of archive sites with digitized copies of handwritten, historical documents making them conveniently available world-wide for anyone that has a need for them or an interest in them. Although most have yet to be transcribed into a digital, typed format, before being placed on such a site, a number of people read through the original manuscript listing items and topics they deem to be of interest to others, leaving it up to a person who comes upon such an item in the list to read the original document for the information or go a bit further and transcribe it for the convenience of others.
However, in the case of the Newport logbook, the previewers of the log may have mentioned whales, baseball games, hunting expeditions, and other items of interest found in the log and deserving of further research, but there is no mention of what might be considered an out of the ordinary occurrence on a whale ship and, so, something to be noted, the event with the steward, Scott.
Because the transcription of the Newport log was needed for a specific purpose by a particular date, the task of transcribing the logbook was divided among a number of transcribers to save time, and it was by sheer luck that I got the section with the February 11, 1895 entry. There had been nothing in the topic summary that would have made the log anything special, and it is possible that, had that section been transcribed by someone else, being just words of little importance, they would have been simply typed out. We often ran into archaic nautical terms that we would look up when convenient if we remembered to, and having had to define “Onanism” to some well educated people when I presented museum leadership with the entry, I could see how one of the other transcribers could just type out an unknown word whose meaning someone must know but not necessary for he or she to know while simply transcribing.
Upon being told about my discovery a few years after it, I was informed by a professor of maritime history, that, while reading certain log books for weather references, he had come upon a second log entry from a ship 50 years before the Newport entry, the Charles Phelps in 1843, that included the line, “allso tried to hire a Portuguese deckhand to commit Soddomy”.
Monday Jan the 30: This day begins with light baffling wind steering NE by East 2 AM wind hauled to ENE heading N at 8 AM wind NNW & clowday at 9am lowered for a Right Whale did not strike 6PM seased Wm H Smith up to the main rigging the Captain gave him 39 lashes for indeavoring to poisen the officers by putting callomil & julep & other stuff in bread He said Wm H Smith indeavored to get the cook to poisen men Forward he also threatened to kill Washington Fletcher & Clark Orlin with a dirk & carving knife and any other that molested him he also tried to hire a Portuguese to commit sodomy for these crimes he received the above named lashes with a 6 tailed cat put him in irons put him between deck took in sail head W”.
William H. Smith, the steward, was given 29 lashes for this and for having previously attempted to poison the captain by putting a chemical into the bread dough. The attempted murder, the flogging, and the offer to purchase sex should be listed as topics of interest unless for some reason, but only the poisoning is. Maybe it was purposely omitted because such a topic went against the reader’s personal, political, and/or religious belief, thus denying a lead to anyone doing research in this area, or it was either deemed of no interest to anyone, or it just did not register and, perhaps this applies to the Newport, as well and to others.
If Homosexual activity was the target of research, the very logs with the sought after information would have been passed over and may have been prior to 2017, in the case of the Newport, by those who did not know they had been looking at what they sought.
Finding two whaling crew members on two separate ships, decades apart, brought the assumption of Homosexuality into the realm of reality, and for over 150 years in one instance and over 100 in the other this information existed and remained unseen.
The answer to the Question is now, “Yes. There was Homosexuality on board whaling ships. We have log entries on that topic.”
A careful examination of the historical record shows that when religion and politics wed, things like same sex activity needed to be regulated to ensure there was conformity and a continual resupply of the population could be met. If same sex coupling was allowed to continue, it could decrease the number of those needed to keep the monarch and all who benefited from his personage and largess in power as feudal armies, and the whole feudal system depended not on humanity, but a steady supply of people to send into battle and tax in order to do that. Those in same sex relationships also made the rules that controlled society somewhat fluid and if this “freedom” of expression without control spread, equality would have come sooner in history and monarchies and the system dependent on it ended just as soon.
It would also show that there were more ways to do things than those demanded by church and monarch, and this fluidity of rights and thought could be dangerous to those in power. Politics often uses religion and vise-versa when beneficial to those who gain from the power of either, or both.
When same sex couples were discovered in the act, although both people might be punished, the more ostentatious kind was meted out to the one who had either, in the case of a dominant Lesbian, usurped the male role, while in a male couple the harsher punishment was given to the one that assumed the woman’s role and demeaned his sex.
When Psychoanalysis started up, in order to work, there had to be a normal and an abnormal, and the only delineation was that what the founders of psychoanalysis did was normal, while what they neither did nor were attracted to, or may have found objectionable, was abnormal.
They had to take human sexuality that was boundless and put it into boxes.
The term “Homosexuality” with all its assigned baggage did not come about until the late 1860s, and then being normal and abnormal could be measured and people put in cubbyholes. Most people are not aware that as the talk of psychoanalysis began to enter common conversation, non-Homosexuals wanted to know what they were called, and, so, in spite of the idea that their behavior was the norm, they were labeled Heterosexual.
It, like Homosexual, was coined to label an invented category coming into existence as a word about a quarter century after the division was made.
The reality is that the hard division only began when whaling was becoming a slowly dying industry and only when the artificial normal/abnormal divide was invented. The possibility exists that even as we look back and view examples of male/male interaction on whaling ships looking for the Homosexuals or just Homosexual activity, we may actually be rediscovering that there really never was and still is not in nature, a binary until we invented one and these men were not involved in Homosexuality but in human sexual activity.
Society’s rules did not apply on board a ship with its own micro-society. It was only when a crew member returned to port that he had to abide by community standards, and communities can become quite judgmental and condemning if “properly” influenced.
What happened on the ship, an island, a port of call, or another ship, as in the Newport instance, stayed there.
While looking for Homosexuality, we might actually prove that when free of society’s rules and expectations, real or created, Non-Binary is the normal human condition.
If the assumption was that an all male crew being alone at sea was responsible for situational Homosexuality because of the environment and for that reason alone, any record of it on land where there were options would be important.
As the whaling ship Newport was wintering on Herschel Island over the winter of 1894-1895, it was not isolated. Scott, the steward, was not out on a ship isolated with a stag crew for weeks, months, or even years.
That year, from the beginning of wintering in the fall of 1894 until the sea was open enough to steam out of port in May of 1895, the population of Herschel Island was the largest in the whaling company’s history of using that island. There were 1,500 people living on Herschel Island, not counting the Indigenous people who came in and out of the community to trade and the occasional visitors and company men who arrived via steamship and left after a while.
Captains were having sex with their wives, a birth is recorded, and captains and, presumably, others were having sex with Indigenous women. Yet, even with the option, Mr. Scott was involved in Sodomy and, considering the difference between Onanism and Sodomy, it can be assumed that he was not the only one so inclined.
His was not situational Homosexuality as it was not the only option caused by isolation.
I had been taking it for granted that this entry was an example of men having sex with each other on whale ships, finally having the assumption becoming recorded reality, but I was to realize that by the time the captain had come upon Mr. Scott, the Newport had been sitting at Herschel Island for at least 6 months during which time there were captains and their wives doing what any husband and wife could do and mentions of interactions with the Indigenous people, one Captain marrying one and giving up his profession for a life in the North of Canada with her. There are records of multiple social events in the Jesse H Freeman log, referred to often as Sophie Porter’s Journal, and the entertainment at these gatherings was often supplied by a theater group and/or the chorus formed among members of the various crews, “The Herschel Snowflakes”, which would require practice and rehearsals which obviously could not be done with the men scattered on ships throughout the Pacific. You could not rehearse band music, plays, and/or choral presentations in isolation.
There are multiple mentions of baseball games played on the tundra, hunting trips with the indigenous people, small and large gatherings, and men who ran away in pairs and groups, some to be captured and brought back, others to die in the wilderness or to actually get away safely.
There was no forced isolation that would have resulted in the only sex among the crew being Homosexual. On Herschel Island there were options from September to late April. There were no conditions that would call for Situational Homosexuality, just discreet hookups, especially after the Reverend Stringer showed up, and this applied to any sex out of wedlock. To the contrary, Herschel Island was a community of 1,500 of the best and worst people and all between, and an ever changing Indigenous population that came and went for trade.
Mr. Scott, therefore, does not fit the assumed reason for Homosexual activity on a whaling ship as he was not isolated, but was living in a large community with a great amount of interpersonal interaction, and could address his natural needs accordingly.
He was found in this act of Sodomy, not forced into it by circumstances, but apparently by will, six months after arriving. There are no further mentions of Mr. Scott nor any preceding or succeeding instances, so, although we have a concrete mention of this one time, we have to leave it to assumption that it was not the first and last, only the one walked in on.
What I originally saw as proof of an assumption related to all whalers might be, in reality, the discovery of an individual Gay man and the existence of more on Herschel Island as Mr. Smith may have had no problem with Onanism, but as he was found in the act of sodomy, he was possibly not alone.
I was recently at a lecture about the writings of a self-emancipated Black man. A reference found in one book by the presenter and author of the book upon which the lecture was based was loosely connected to something mentioned in another book, and this led to research showing that an obscure writer and a very highly respected writer on par with Frederick Douglass was one and the same person. It all came down to a lot of strings suddenly getting pulled together until, unless you went out of your way to deny what is presented, you cannot but help see the obvious.
I believe it is that way with Mr. Scott, the steward and we have found Gay Whaler #1.
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