Customer Reviews

Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition: English Sea Rovers in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean, Second Edition

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Ahoy me fine salty sailors. If ye be lookin for gripping adventure on the high seas, this be the book for ye. It hoisted me mizzen mast and shivered me timbers, Yar! If you've ever wondered exactly what to do with a drunken sailor, this is the book for you. The author, Barry Richard Burg is a great expert on seamen and it really shows through. I was dissapointed to find that the nautical phrase "a three days blow" didn't mean what I thought it did, but the author's loving descriptions of how these pirates would oil each other up with whale blubber and lash each other with the cat o' nine tails more than made up for it. I'm tempted to go summon my cockswain, rent "The Pirate Movie", then kick back and mourn the passing of the days when burly pirates would start their day by opening the seacock and pumping furiously. Customers who bought titles by Barry Richard Burg also bought titles by J. K. Rowling -- coincidence? I think not.

While there are certainly some interesting tidbits here and there, WAY too much of the book is of the form "since no records survive to show X is false, and those records that do exist are compromised in the following ways ..., we may assume that X is true."

Chapter One is a 40-page example of this; it can safely be skipped, as it is summarized in the first few words of Chapter Two: "Seventeenth-century Englishmen on all status levels were remarkably indulgent with homosexuality."

Those with only a casual interest in the subject should skim Chapters Two and Three and read the last two chapters, Buccaneer Sexuality and The Buccaneer Community. These chapters hold most of what you're probably reading the book for. Here are the bits about pirates and sex. Unfortunately, they are usually only a sentence or two long. Burg uses the little stories to construct an argument, not a narrative.

This last comment is not a criticism; he's clearly not setting out to tell a tale of high-seas adventure. (If you want this, go back to Melville.) A criticism: Burg often seems to overreach in the conclusions he draws from his sources (or lack of sources).

What looks to be a more satisfying read is "Gay Warriors," edited by the same author. This is an anthology of original sources from Homer to the present day, on the topic of "gays in the military."

Yes, most folks give a double take when they see the title to this volume. But really, it is quite informative about the life of a rover, and as the title suggests, it pulls no punches. A bit dry and overwordy at times, but definately worth a read.

One needs to take their hat off to Mr. Burg for an excellent book of the life and times of English family life in the 17th and 18th Centuries. He certainly searched through qiute a lot of archival material to find many of the accounts contained within this unique book. Cats who are abandoned are known as feral cats and are not, as rule very sociable. So who would have believed that children (both boys and girls) would be asked to leave their homes at a very young age and fend for themselves? Who would have believed that society would have turned a blind eye to sodomy, or in many cases, pederasty? It is worth noting that since these "feral" boys had probably never seen or had known about heterosexual sex between two consenting adults, sex to these boys was probably considered a rite of initiation, or at other times, a recreational pastime at best. There were two entries within Burg's book which I found to be of special note. When a pirate ship seized a merchant ship in the Indian Ocean, the ship was borded, the crew was murdered and the only woman on the ship was tossed into the ocean. She was probably seen as a piece of worthless baggage in the pirate's eyes. In another instance, a sixteen year old from England (John Durrant) was engaged in sexual activity with a Hindu man (Abdul Rhyme). The incident happened in plain view of the other pirates and was considered normal behavior. But since John Durrant should have realized that a Christian should not have intimate relationships with heathens, both he and his "lover" were punished for his indiscretion upon the ship's arrival in England. They were sentenced to 40 lashes, with an administration of water and salt applied to their wounds. They were fed bread and water for an unknown period of time, and the punishment was repeated with 10 lashes. For someone looking for a first or second person account of sex between boys, or worse yet, between a boy and a man, this book is not for you. "Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition" is a carefully researched, historical sociology book-specifically about the lives of some married couples who saw their children as young adults, and not as the unique and cherished people which they truly are.

The person stating there are no sources is quite wrong. There are several sources that support much of the activity Burg writes about. The sexual part of the book in my opinion was not particularly exciting. However, the major point, and one of the main reasons this work was assinged in a class I took was to notice the issues poorer people in England had to endure. If they lacked funds sufficient for marriage they simply became too much of a burden for their parents to handle. Therefore, many were forced to move. Unfortunately, these men and sometimes women were "stargglers" who ended up in port cities.Once in port cities many were pressed into service for the royal navy or merchant shipping. Several other books touch on the issues of England's poor. Wallington's world Briefly touches on what happens to male children unable to secure sufficient funds. Although some of the book is down right disgusting, it has an important point--many who were thrust into piracy did so out of neccessity or for the desire to remain in some sort of brotherhood.

Bought this book some years ago. Difficult but rewarding to read; it reads like a Ph.D thesis. I was not surprised at the content -- what would men, outcasts actually, do on a small ship at sea? Same as in prison. Temporary "spouses."

When Tampa entertained the notion of the Wydow (sp?) Pirate Ship Museum (which died a politically correct death when local NAACP ranted against it as Wydow had been a slave ship - but NAACP neglected to note many pirates were black and former slaves, some even masters of their own ships. A very good book is out there on that) I was going to wait until it was built and open and then mail them the book! But the Tampa Fathers chickened out.

This book relies mostly on the British "traditions" -- seems Americans weren't pirates long enough. Or hid their records better.

I actually found the book entertaining. Hurrah for opening up a "lost" piece of history. I love ephemera.

This one will shiver some timbers.

This book is very indepth in explain how pirates would survive on long journies abroad by sleeping nude three to a bunk like spoons. With the weather conditions, that was their only means of survival. It makes one understand that sodomy was part of their lives, as they usually had several male lovers aboard the vessel. The chapter on hot racking was especially revealing, considering 90% of all pirates engaged in that. This is a very good book about pirates and their lifestyles and I would recommend it to anyone.

It's true that in authoring this book Burg was slightly hampered by the fact that 300 years ago there weren't any busy homosexuals a la Steven Zeeland running around with tape recorders prying into the sex lives of pirates. Still, Burg does an excellent job weaving together what scanty materials do survive. Only the most persnickety footnote-fetishizing queens will fail to find this book a richly rewarding read.

While there are certainly some interesting tidbits here and there, WAY too much of the book is of the form "since no records survive to show X is false, and those records that do exist are compromised in the following ways ..., we may assume that X is true."

Chapter One is a 40-page example of this; it can safely be skipped, as it is summarized in the first few words of Chapter Two: "Seventeenth-century Englishmen on all status levels were remarkably indulgent with homosexuality."

Those with only a casual interest in the subject should skim Chapters Two and Three and read the last two chapters, Buccaneer Sexuality and The Buccaneer Community. These chapters hold most of what you're probably reading the book for. Here are the bits about pirates and sex. Unfortunately, they are usually only a sentence or two long. Burg uses the little stories to construct an argument, not a narrative.

This last comment is not a criticism; he's clearly not setting out to tell a tale of high-seas adventure. (If you want this, go back to Melville.) A criticism: Burg often seems to overreach in the conclusions he draws from his sources (or lack of sources).

What looks to be a more satisfying read is "Gay Warriors," edited by the same author. This is an anthology of original sources from Homer to the present day, on the topic of "gays in the military."

This was an excellent scholarly study of the social conditions that led men and boys to become pirates. The previous title was "Sodomy and the Perception of Evil," which is probably more apt. It's rather a shame that such a well-researched, scholarly book may be mistaken for a larkish commentary on gay pirates. The author is aware of this, and in fact many of his fellow researchers refused to be acknowledged by name, unwilling to be associated with a topic that is still controversial. What a shame that respectable historians whose research happens to include the topic of sodomy should remain anonymous, as if they are authors of pornography. This book is anything but prurient. Only one chapter deals directly with buccaneer sexuality, as much as it is possible to do so with so little documentation. The author does manage to unearth some truly obscure references and I don't think any historian could possibly know more about pirate sexuality, a topic which is inherently difficult to research because of the low literacy rates in the 16-18th centuries, and the inherent unwillingness of people to document intimate sexual details, particularly those relating to homosexual acts.

However the rest of the book is more of a history of the economic and social conditions that drove men to piracy, often involuntarily. Military "press gangs" forced men into naval service, and many escaped to pirate ships where they had more freedom and more financial gain than in the navy. Pirates themselves often forced their captives to become pirates at the threat of death. The romantic image of freedom-loving pirates is far from the truth. Many were thieves and killers and yet, most were no worse than many naval men and must be considered within the context of the social mores of the time in which they lived, a time in which corporal punishment, slavery, looting, and harsh treatment of children was fairly typical.

The author is primarily concerned with "situational" or "opportunistic" homosexual acts such as found in male-only prisons, jails, naval ships, and boarding schools. As such he does not write about homosexuality in the modern sense - a concept which did not exist in the age of piracy. His topic is actually relationships between men, whether they are friendships, sexual interaction, business partnerships and occassionally, romance. Especially fascinating are his sections on the gangs of homeless children that roamed England until the social reforms of the Victorian era. Children of the poor were often driven out to fend for themselves as young as 8 years old, generally because of economic necessity. Parents simply couldn't feed or care for them, and typically had many more youngsters that needed their attention. To a modern perspective, this is absolutely heartless, but given a choice between starving their infants and starving their 8- or 9-year-olds, parents had no choice but to focus their resources on the youngest, and bands of these unwanted children roved England, stealing and finding whatever work they could. These gangs were largely male and the author theorizes that many later became pirates and retained the opportunistic homosexuality they learned in these bands of boys.

The author writes extensively on sodomy and the law, and from that perspective, this book is a very well-researched history of such laws and correspondingly, how the social response to homosexual acts has changed throughout the years. His basic argument is that sodomy was only deemed a serious crime and moral sin late in the 19th century, and that, in previous centuries, it was regarded more as a peccadillo akin to adultery, considerably less serious than rape. He does not address how sodomy transitioned from a minor transgression to the mortal sin and unspeakable crime it became in the late 19th century, perhaps because this era is is beyond the age of sail with which his book is concerned. My own view, not necessarily the author's, is that the Christian notion of sin changed a great deal over the centuries, and corporal sin such as lust began to be regarded as far more serious than a sin of attitude such as avarice. In the Middle Ages, lust was a fairly minor transgression, and except in cases of adultery or sexual assault, was not thought to cause much harm to any but the parties involved. It was the subject of much comic theatre and poetry, and probably regarded with less consternation than it is today. By the Victorian era, lust and sodomy were regarded as dreadfully serious moral transgressions, and the law changed accordingly to make sodomy punishable by death and later, by years of hard labor.

I wish the author had written more about why social and legal attitudes about sodomy changed, but he simply states that they did and leaves it at that. Nonetheless, his book is exceptionally well-researched and includes many citations from rare documents and letters, some of which I am sure have never before been published. As an overview of sodomy and the law in the 16th-19th centuries, and as social history of piracy and the daily life aboard a pirate ship, this is a superb book.