ABSTRACT
In 1798 James Stanier Clarke published a set of sermons given on board the Channel fleet ship the Impetueux, where he had served as sea chaplain since 1796. Their publication thus marks an acute realization of the pivotal role of the sailor for the constitution and significance of British national identity, and alludes to several highly-loaded ideological values about his status in late eighteenth-century Britain. If the ideological significance of the ship operated simultaneously at allegorical and functional levels, that is as the symbol of the nation - the ship of state - and the material provider of the state's economic prosperity, the persona of the sailor was articulated similarly. The greater paradox of the sailor's social identity he was of necessity removed from society. The political economy of the sailor comprised the transformation of the physical body into a unit of labour currency, an economic value like the cargo it heaved and shipped.
