Hello Sailor!: The hidden history of gay life at sea
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.54 (532 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0582772141 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 272 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-01-24 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Never before has the story been told of the masses. And on some liners to the sun and the New World, queens and butches had a ball. Hello Sailor! uniquely shows what it was like to be queer at sea at a time when land meant straightness. When gays had to be closeted, ships were the only places where homosexual men could not only be out but also camp. . They sashayed and minced their way across the world's oceans. These are the thousands of queer seafarers, mainly stewards, who sometimes even outnumbered the straight men in the catering departments of ships that were household names and the pride of the British fleet
Tidewater said Gay Liberation at Seas on Ships. The book is a great review of "gay life at sea" on Cruise and Merchant Marine ships, not the Royal or US Navies (where such a wealth of gay information will never be available) It is a great resource book for studying gay life in a time when the population spent more time at sea rather than the quick weekend trips on the present day giant ships where one never has to leave his cabin for entertainment.On the cruise ship gay men were free to be gay long before the coming of gay lib. Moreover, the ships provided an ideal venue for would be entertainment stars or the . "Drag Queens go to sea." according to J. Mayer. I would not call this a history of gay life at sea. I would call it a history of Drag Queens at sea. While a very interesting book in some respects - the gay slang, while making sense, was new to me. Very interesting book in the very, very narrow niche that it does cover, it is in no way it representative of what I would consider the whole gay community at sea.
He is the world's leading writer on Polari, a secret form of language used by gay men, particularly gay sea-farers, in the 1950s and a 1960s. . Jo Stanley is known world wide as one of the leading writers on women/gender and the sea, She writes fiction and non-fiction and is most famous for her acclaimed Bold
"a fascinating account."Gay Times "Hello Sailor! transcends its niche as a piece of gay history and, instead, becomes something that has resonances for all readers, whether gay, straight or something in between."The Observer 'an eminently readable, often amusing and original book'Journal of Contemporary History, Vol 41, No 1. "What this fascinating book is really about is not 'gay life at sea' in general, but the gay ghettos on many liners and cruiseships during the fifties and sixties."George Melly, The Mail on Sunday