Introduction

In the age of sail (ca. 1450–1850), seagoing communities were often big and diverse, with a great deal of sexual and gender difference. Large numbers went to sea in these centuries; in the early nineteenth century, at the height of its struggle against Napoleon, the British navy had more than 140,000 sailors enrolled on its books. ¹ Any population this large must include many forms of gender expression and sexual activity, people with all sorts of different bodies, desires, and identities.