Making Men in the Age of Sail

Book excerpt: Myths and stereotypes surrounding seafarers in the Age of Sail persist to this day. Sailors were celebrated for their courage, strength, and skill, yet condemned for militancy, vice, and fecklessness. As sail gave way to steam, sailing-ship mariners became nostalgic symbols of maritime prowess and heritage, representing a timeless, heroic masculinity in an era when the modernizing industrial world was challenging assumptions about gender, class, work, and society. Drawing on British seafaring memoirs from the late nineteenth century, Making Men in the Age of Sail argues that maritime writing moulded the reading public’s image of the merchant seaman. Authors chronicled their lives as they grew from boy sailors to trained seafarers, telling colourful tales of the men they worked with – most never doubted that the sailing ship had made them better men. Their testimony reinforced and preserved conservative perspectives on seafaring manhood as Britain’s economic and technological priorities continued to evolve in the new steamship age. Offering a gender analysis of the image of the seafarer, Making Men in the Age of Sail brings the history of British sailors into wider debates about modernity and masculinity.