i'm gay

mermaids: mostly women, not usually interested in men, attack sailors

1. Don’t Forget Your Old Shipmate

it doesn’t get more homoerotic than this

2. The Handsome Cabin Boy

three cheers for the ‘girl dresses as a boy to go to sea’ motif! ‘And the captain’s wife she says to him, “My dear I wish you joy, / For it’s either you or I betrayed the handsome cabin boy.”’

3. My Johnny’s Gone To Hilo/Tom’s Gone To Hilo

shoutout to the first-person pov in this mournful shanty about a lover who’s gone away to sea

4. Golden Vanity

the pathos of cameraderie in the face of a cruel captain! ‘So then the cabin boy he swam unto the starboard side / Saying, “Messmates, take me up for I am drifting with the tide.”’

5. Greenland Whale Fisheries

depending on the version - some have the captain lamenting the loss of the whale more than the lives of his crew, others vice versa. all are bops

6. Leave Her, Johnny

the lyrics make it pretty clear that the ‘her’ refers to the ship, but the ambiguity is still good, and either way it has a strong sense of cameraderie and the tune is a+

7. Admiral Benbow

some good old-fashioned rousing patriotism and loyalty to your heroic captain. there are two versions of this song and they’d both do fine on this list but i’m going with this one for this verse: ‘Now the guns they did rattle and the bullets did fly, / But brave Admiral Benbow for help would not cry; / “Take me down to the cockpit, there is ease for my smarts, / If my merry men see me, it would sure break their hearts.”’

8. Haul Away Joe

‘haul away together’/‘haul for better weather’ is up there on the list of ‘good if unintentional metaphors for gay solidarity’. also featuring the very gay moods of regicide and being told to kiss girls by your parents

9. The Bonny Ship The Diamond

‘Now don’t you weep, my bonny lass, though you be left behind, / For the rose will bloom on Greenland’s ice before we change our mind.’ this earns points for being very similar to some verses quoted in moby-dick

10. Northwest Passage

but rather than go on some journey to find some true love or whatever, she decides to use her last years to travel the seas with her crew and collect treasure and drink and be merry

Everyone’s heard that pirate’s call each other “matey”. What you probably haven’t heard is that the word matey comes from “matelote”.

In the Caribbean this word was used between buccaneers to signify a life partner. Matelotes could inherit from each other, shared space, fought together, could speak for each other when one was incapacitated or absent, and more often than not the relationship was romantic and sexual.

That’s right folks. Pirates had a term for their gay life partners.

In light of this, I present to you a new alternative for significant other and partner. Bring back matelote.

In an age when the English Navy ran on “rum, sodomy and the lash,” (as noted in many writings of the time), homosexual relationships were punishable by death.