Unspeakable Crimes, Repressive Archives, and the History of Homosexuality�in the Sailing Royal Navy
Louis Crompton (1925-2009)
Vern L. Bullough (1928-2006) and Bonnie Bullough
J. Homosex.�Vol. 1, no. 1 (1974)
The 1801 capture of the Africaine by HMS Phoebe
Admiral Sir Edward Thornbrough (1754-1834)
“On Thursday morning, soon after eleven o’clock [one marine, two sailors, and a boy] were executed on board H.M.S. Africaine… Whilst these loathsome creatures were suspending on the yard-arms of the Africaine, [a marine and sailor]… were flogged round the Fleet… All the boats of the Fleet attended the punishments.”
Hampshire Telegraph, 5 Feb. 1816
Comments on naval sodomy trials, from the research notes of naval historian Leonard G. Carr Laughton (1871-1955):
“This case is peculiar; astounding even”
“Extraordinary”
“A v. gross & filthy case”
“Gives every filthy detail”
From LAU/11-12, National Maritime Museum (Greenwich)
First published 1969
Patrick O'Brian (1914-2000)
Dramatization of a real 1797 naval sodomy hanging.��From the Channel 4 documentary Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash
(2005, for the bicentennial of the Battle of Trafalgar)
“Our English law... treats it... as a crime not fit to be named, peccatum illud horribile, inter christianos non nominandum.”
Sir William Blackstone (1723-1780)
From the Old Bailey Sessions Papers, 1797
The Sessions Papers are the dominant source for study of legal repression of sex between males. But they stopped reporting the details of trials in the 1780s.
Trial of Lt. W.T. Chamberlain, 1809, ADM 1/5400, National Archives (Kew)
“For having been off his Watch on the 1st of last month”
oldbaileyonline.org
Google “Radio Haiti Archive”