Customer Reviews

Rum, Sodomy and the Lash: Piracy, Sexuality, and Masculine Identity

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is a very dry, dense, academic book that attempts to analyze what the author refers to as "sodomitical activity" in the golden age of piracy based on source documents original to the period. It is slow reading, and if you're looking for lurid gay sex and rampant queerness among pirates, just stick to Pirates of the Caribbean slashfic because it's not in here.

The author admits that due to social taboos of sodomy and homosexuality, the overt references in period works are basically non-existant. Instead however, he offers contextual readings of various documents, historical events, and literature of the period that makes a case for subtextual evidence of homosexual predilection among some pirates of the time (for example, the section of the Pirate's Articles that specifies no woman or boy be brought aboard ship, which he interprets as an implication that some crewmen might have regarded boys/boy prostitutes as desirable).

He does raise some interesting questions about the contrast between pirates being depicted at the time as "hypermasculine", and how that can be reconciled with the fact that pirate society was by nature "homosocial," and how its homosociality would allow for various types of relationships among the men. He also offers some very interesting criticism and ideas about the significance and homosexual implications of the Daniel Defoe novel Captain Singleton, in which the piratical hero develops a very close, committed, lifelong relationship with his shipmate, Quaker William.

Overall, though, the book is overly conscious of its own academic tone (in that sort of "in the following chapter I will endeavor to show (blah blah blah)" fashion, or, in the introduction a sort of itemization of "chapter one will explore such and such, and chapter two will investigate thus and that," etc) and the chapters do not hang together well in a linear fashion. The book is very choppy to read as a whole work, and seems like it might be a compendium of various essays on the topic that the author wrote over a span of several years, for various reasons, which by virtue of a common theme of homosexual investigation, he then cobbled together into a single book. The last chapter is such an exaustive explication of the Robinson Crusoe trilogy, largely avoiding the subject of homosexuality altogether, that I had to struggle to finish it.

So. Useful information in places, interesting ideas, not terribly readably executed. I would only recommend this book to those dedicated to a in-depth study of the history of piracy and/or gay history. It did make me interested in reading Captain Singleton at some point...

I must disagree with the narcissitic assessment of other readers and point out that Professor Turley gives us the pirate tradition in a refreshingly vivid and informed historical frame. He does not, as some recent pop philosophers have, merely appropriate this complicated and obscure realm of masculinity to posit as some kind of ahistorical arcadia. Instead, peppering his account with the thrilling vocabulary of original pirate narratives, Turley brilliantly offers the pirate example as a prism through which our current agonizing over narrative and gender can be usefully refracted. Scholarhship this lively, impassioned, and deeply informed is all too rare. Bravo, Professor Turley!

This book brought home, in a very real sense my experiences growing up in a sea-going family. Oh, how I longed for the days of swashbuckling and hotbunking. A bit too graphic, perhaps, for the faint of heart. Overall, a good effort.

Book was okay but more of a text book than light reading. Review was a little misleading

A very pleasant description of sexual life, fun and murder offshore which we may all identify with. Warmly recommended as easter cosy reading or a fairy tale for older kids. The agony of adolescence well catered for.

Some people may enjoy rewriting history to suit modern prejudices; I find it revolting, and this book is a perfect example of the phenomenon. It is at best a poorly organized and incomplete review of the era of piracy; at worst, it is a pathetic attempt to impose the author's misconceived ideas on reality. Avoid it at all costs, for it is garbage.