🏳️‍🌈🏺Black/Queer/Pirate

🏳️‍🌈🏺2-Gay in History🏺🏳️‍🌈

For many persons of color, the freedom of the sea was the only freedom to be had, which also attracted many queer folks.

For Black men in the age of piracy, maritime labor offered something plantation life did not: movement and independence. Even in places where they were technically free, they were often restricted or even in danger of re-enslavement. Ships were all-male environments, many of which inherited British common law bans on homosexuality, but they at least had the sense of freedom.

In 1749 naval court-martial prosecutions for “unnatural acts,” Black sailors appear in these records alongside white sailors — sometimes accused together, sometimes described in ongoing relationships rather than isolated encounters. By trying to erase queer people, authorities preserved the evidence, as very few other records of naval culture survived.

Port cities like New Orleans and Charleston saw periodic arrests of sailors for “lewd conduct.” Black men were part of these arrests but often faced far more severe punishments—enslavement.

When faced with such punishments, some queer people turned away from the formal navy altogether. Pirates complicate the queer picture even further. In the 17th-century Caribbean, buccaneers commonly entered into formal partnerships called matelotage, in which two men shared property and inheritance — arrangements some historians interpret as including romantic or sexual bonds.

Multiracial crews were common (Black Caesar sailed with the possibly queer Blackbeard) Pirate codes sometimes specifically regulated gay conduct, which indicates it was common enough onboard, but evidence is still sparse and uneven.

But there is a century old persistent myth: that a queer black merchant sailor was to be sold into slavery in Charleston for sodomy on board by a tyrannical Captain. In response the whole crew mutinied, and with little other option, turned Pirate. While documentation is absent it fits in the known gaps, which is so often where we were forced to live.

Black/Queer— Free on the sea away from the official record.

Be gay, do pirate

We will revisit Blackbeard & Bonnet in a future post.