Exploring the Station

Gray, Steven

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-57642-2_9

Steven Gray⁴

Part of the book series: Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series ((CIPCSS))

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Abstract

This chapter explains that an integral part of leave at a coaling station, particularly for “bluejackets,” was an immersion in that place’s indigenous populations, cultures, unique sights, landscapes, and fauna. Such experiences were widely recorded in diaries, published accounts, and presented through sketches and photographs, many of which were widely disseminated at home. The ways in which stations and their populations were depicted largely fit a wider pattern of seeing imperial spaces—as well as the populations, landscapes, and fauna that populated them—as exotic and “other.” The chapter also explores the use of indigenous prostitutes and shows how—although prostitutes were tolerated “on station” despite domestic moral fervour—the spread of venereal disease was a real problem for the navy and something that was often blamed on the imagined charateristics of both women and other races.

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Notes

1.
Oliver Walton, Social History of the Royal Navy 1856–1900, unpublished PhD Thesis, Exeter, 2003, 210.
2.
A.E.G. Anning, F.J. Bentley, and Lionel Yexley, The Log of H.M.S. Argonaut, 1900–1904. China Station (London: Westminster Press, 1904), v.
3.
Mr. Dicks describes Gibraltar as “a very pretty place but with not much population only English soldiers and a dockyard.” Diary of Mr. Dicks of H.M.S. Proserpine, Royal Naval Museum, Manuscript Collection, JC 68 100/79 (2), 17.
4.
Louise Moon, ‘“Sailorhoods”: Sailortown and Sailors in the Port of Portsmouth circa 1850–1900’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Portsmouth, 2015, 57. See also Brad Beaven, ‘The resilience of sailortown culture in English naval ports, c. 1820–1900’, Urban History, 43, 1 (2016), 72–95.
5.
James R. Ryan, Picturing Empire: Photography and the Visualization of the British Empire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 13.
6.
Tim Cresswell, Place: A Short Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 23.
7.
Stephen J. Hornsby, ‘Discovering the Mercantile City in South Asia: The Example of Early Nineteenth-Century Calcutta’, Journal of Historical Geography, 23, no. 2 (1997). This was also true of British Hill Stations in India. See Judith T. Kenny, ‘Climate, Race, and Imperial Authority: The Symbolic Landscape of the British Hill Station in India’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 85, 4 (1995).
8.
A.D. King, Colonial Urban Development: Culture, Social Power and Environment (London: Routledge, 1976), 17; Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992), 8.
9.
Walton, Social History of the Royal Navy, 183.
10.
Pratt, Imperial Eyes.
11.
Lucy Lippard cited in Cresswell, Place: A Short Introduction, 49; King, Colonial Urban Development, 58–59.
12.
Tim Cresswell, On the Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World (London: Routledge, 2006), 220, 225, 257.
13.
Cresswell, On the Move, 251; G.R. Parker, The Commission of H.M.S. Implacable, Mediterranean Station, 1901-1904 (London: Westminster Press, 1904), 6–7.
14.
‘Jack Tar and His Luxuries’, Queensland Times, 21 December 1908.
15.
W.H. Watts, The Commission of H.M.S. Retribution, North American and West Indies Station, 1902–1904 (London: Westminster Press, 1904), 17–19.
16.
Ibid., 14.
17.
Sam Noble, ‘Tween Decks in the Seventies: An Autobiography (London: Sampson Low, Marston and Company, 1925), 92–93.
18.
Diary of A C East, H.M.S. Natal on its Cruise to India as escort to Royal Visit, 20 January 1912, National Museum of the Royal Navy, Manuscript Collection, 95/90 (28).
19.
Reginald A. Silk, The Log of H.M.S. Karrakatta, 1900–1903, Australian Station (London: Westminster Press, 1904), 15, 19–21.
20.
Ibid., 17.
21.
H. Callow, The Commission of H.M.S. Royal Arthur, Flag Ship, Australian Station. 1901–1904 (London: Westminster Press, 1904), 74–76.
22.
A. Reeve, The Commission of H.M.S. Perseus. East Indies, Including Persian Gulf and Somaliland. 1901–1904 (London: Westminster Press, 1904), 26; Silk, The Log of H.M.S. Karrakatta, 19–21.
23.
W. Wheeler, The Commission of H.M.S. Pandora, Mediterranean Station, 1901–1904 (London: Westminster Press, 1904), 25–28; Reeve, The Commission of H.M.S. Perseus, 6, 40; G. Crowe, From Portsmouth to Peking Via Ladysmith with a Naval Brigade (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Daily Press, 1901), 86.
24.
Diary of Mr. Dicks of H.M.S. Proserpine, Royal Naval Museum, Manuscript Collection, JC 68 100/79 (2), 62–64.
25.
For a thorough exploration of this idea, see Jan Rüger, The Great Naval Game: Britain and Germany in the Age of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
26.
Callow, The Commission of H.M.S. Royal Arthur, 7.
27.
J.B. Brodie, A.F. Ray and Lionel Yexley, The Log of H.M.S. Goliath, China Station, 1900–1903 (London: Gerrards, 1903), 103.
28.
G.H. Gunns, The Log of H.M.S. Sutlej, Pacific and China Stations, 1904–1906 (London: Westminster Press, 1906), 140.
29.
W.J.J. Spry, The Cruise of Her Majesty’s Ship Challenger (London: Sampson Low, Marston and Company, 1899), 193–201; Diary of A C East, H.M.S. Natal on its Cruise to India as escort to Royal Visit, 9 January 1912, National Museum of the Royal Navy, Manuscript Collection, 95/90 (28); Diary of Mr. Dicks of H.M.S. Proserpine, Royal Naval Museum, Manuscript Collection, JC 68 100/79 (2), 86.
30.
H. Breaks, The Log of H.M.S. Bonaventure, Pacific and China Stations, 1903–1906 (London: Westminster Press, 1906), 70–71.
31.
Journals of Donovan C. Roe, 1911–1912, NMM, JOD/92/2; Reeve, The Commission of H.M.S. Perseus, 6; J.R.M.A. Brown, The Log of H.M.S. Repulse, 1902–1904, Mediterranean Station (London: Westminster Press, 1904), 56.
32.
Diary of Petty Officer Lew Hanbridge, H.M.S. Philomel, 14 January 1916, British Library, MSS. Eur.C.172.
33.
John Anderson Dougherty, The East Station; or the Cruise of H.M.S. Garnet 1887–1890 (Malta: Muscat Printing Office, 1892), 87, 115.
34.
Spry, The Cruise of Her Majesty's Ship Challenger, 193–201.
35.
Brodie, Ray, and Yexley, The Log of H.M.S. Goliath, 8; Raphael Semmes, The Confederate Raider Alabama (London: Richard Bentley, 1865), 320–335.
36.
Diary of A.C. East, H.M.S. Natal on its Cruise to India as escort to Royal Visit, 25 November 1911 and 20 January 1912. National Museum of the Royal Navy, Manuscript Collection, 95/90 (28).
37.
Reeve, The Commission of H.M.S. Perseus, 66.
38.
Brown, The Log of H.M.S. Repulse, 16.
39.
Spry, The Cruise of Her Majesty’s Ship Challenger, 14; Gunns, The Log of H.M.S. Sutlej, 8.
40.
Callow, The Commission of H.M.S. Royal Arthur, 35, 38.
41.
See Mimi Sheller, Consuming the Caribbean: From Arawaks to Zombies (London: Routledge, 2003).
42.
John Connell, ‘Island Dreaming: The Contemplation of Polynesian Paradise’, Journal of Historical Geography, 29, no. 4 (2003); Silk, The Log of H.M.S. Karrakatta, 54–65.
43.
Callow, The Commission of H.M.S. Royal Arthur, 74–76; Connell, ‘Island Dreaming’. For studies of Western understandings of Pacific sexualities see Matt K. Matsuda, Empire of Love: Histories of France and the Pacific (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Lee Wallace, Sexual Encounters: Pacific texts, modern sexualities (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003).
44.
Connell, ‘Island Dreaming’; Silk, The Log of H.M.S. Karrakatta, 54–65.
45.
See, for example, Lieutenant-Colonel T.R. St.-Johnston, The Islanders of the Pacific: or The Children of the Sun (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1921), 263.
46.
H.M. Fowler, The Log of H.M.S. Encounter, Australian Station, 1908–1910 (London: Westminster Press, 1910), 124.
47.
Gibbs, The Cruise of H.M.S. Grafton, 10–11.
48.
Anning, Bentley, and Yexley, The Log of H.M.S. Argonaut, 33.
49.
Rotem Kowner, ‘“Lighter Than Yellow, But Not Enough”: Western Discourse on the Japanese “Race,” 1854–1904’, Historical Journal, 43, 1, 103–131.
50.
A.E. Butterworth, The Log of H.M.S. Bedford, China Station, 1907–1909 (London: Westminster Press, 1909), 128.
51.
Ibid.
52.
Gibbs, The Cruise of H.M.S. Grafton, 85.
53.
Journal kept by Edward Charrington, 1899–1902, National Museum of the Royal Navy, Manuscript Collection, 1999/51/7.
54.
Now Namp’o, North Korea. Gunns, The Log of H.M.S. Sutlej, 96.
55.
Journal kept by Edward Charrington, 1899–1902, National Museum of the Royal Navy, Manuscript Collection, 1999/51/7.
56.
Silk, The Log of H.M.S. Karrakatta, 15.
57.
Journal kept by Edward Charrington, 1899–1902, National Museum of the Royal Navy, Manuscript Collection, 1999/51/7.
58.
Ibid.
59.
Diary of Mr. Dicks of H.M.S. Proserpine, Royal Naval Museum, Manuscript Collection, JC 68 100/79 (2), 52.
60.
Albert Newton, The Commission of H.M.S. Grafton, Pacific Station, 1902–1905 (London: Westminster Press, 1905), 125.
61.
Watts, The Commission of H.M.S. Retribution, 99–100.
62.
Noble, ‘Tween Decks in the Seventies, 90–92.
63.
Wheeler, The Commission of H.M.S. Pandora, 8, 81.
64.
Diary of A C East, H.M.S. Natal on its Cruise to India as escort to Royal Visit, 1st December 1911, National Museum of the Royal Navy, Manuscript Collection, 95/90 (28).
65.
Diary of Mr. Dicks of H.M.S. Proserpine, Royal Naval Museum, Manuscript Collection, JC 68 100/79 (2), 33.
66.
Lesley A. Hall, ‘What shall we do with the poxy sailor?’ Journal of Maritime Research, October 2004, 113, 116.
67.
Dougherty, The East Station, 84.
68.
See, for example an article by a naval surgeon, J.P.H. Greenhalgh, ‘Syphilis in the Royal Navy’, British Medical Journal, 1900, 2, 1497.
69.
British Parliamentary Papers, 1870 (202) Navy (Health) for the Year 1868.
70.
R.J. Miners, ‘State Regulation of Prostitution in Hong Kong, 1857 to 1941’, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 24 (1984), 145. See also Philip Howell and David Lambert, ‘Sir John Pope Henessy and Colonial Government’, in David Lambert and Alan Lester (eds), Colonial Lives across the British Empire: Imperial Careering in the Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 228–256.
71.
Philip Howell, Geographies of Regulation: Policing Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century Britain and the Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 179.
72.
Philippa Levine, ‘“A Multitude of Unchaste Women”: Prostitution in the British Empire’, Journal of Women's History, 15, no. 4 (2004), 159.
73.
See, for example, Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Conquest (London: Routledge, 1995), 47; Philippa Levine, ‘States of Undress: Nakedness and the Colonial Imagination’, Victorian Studies, 50, no. 2, 189–219.
74.
Howell, Geographies of Regulation, 211; Levine, “A Multitude of Unchaste Women”: Prostitution in the British Empire’, 161.
75.
Howell, Geographies of Regulation, 189.
76.
Ibid., 5.
77.
Levine, ‘“A Multitude of Unchaste Women”: Prostitution in the British Empire’, 162; Howell, Geographies of Regulation, 2.
78.
British Parliamentary Papers, 1870 (202) Navy (Health) for the Year 1868.
79.
British Parliamentary Papers, 1870 (202) Navy (Health) for the Year 1868; British Parliamentary Papers, 1875 (380) Navy (Health) For the Year 1874.
80.
British Parliamentary Papers, 1878 (397) Navy (Health) for the Year 1877.
81.
British Parliamentary Papers, 1875 (380) Navy (Health) For the Year 1874.
82.
British Parliamentary Papers, 1875 (380) Navy (Health) For the Year 1874; British Parliamentary Papers, 1898 (343) Navy (Health). Statistical Report of the Health of the Navy for the Year 1897.
83.
British Parliamentary Papers, 1878 (397) Navy (Health) for the Year 1877.
84.
British Parliamentary Papers, 1893–1894 (404) Navy (Health) for the Year 1892.
85.
The classic work on the Contagious Diseases Act is Judith R. Walkowitz, Prostitution and Vicotrian Society: Women, class and the state (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).
86.
Miners, ‘State Regulation of Prostitution in Hong Kong’.
87.
Watts, The Commission of H.M.S. Retribution, 98.
88.
British Parliamentary Papers, 1870 (202) Navy (Health) for the Year 1868.
89.
Christopher C. Saunders, ‘Mozambiekers: The Immigration of an African Community to the Western Cape 1876–1882’, in C.C. Saunders and H. Phillips (eds), Studies in the History of Cape Town (Cape Town: The Department, 1979), 129; B.B. Brock, B.G. Brock, and H.C. Willis, Historical Simon’s Town (Cape Town: A.A. Balkema, 1976), 46.
90.
For a history of the spread of contagious disease across maritime spaces, see M. Harrison, Contagion: How Commerce Has Spread Disease (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013); Alison Bashford (ed.), Quarantine: Local and Global Histories (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
91.
Spry, The Cruise of Her Majesty’s Ship Challenger, 125–130.
92.
Noble, ‘Tween Decks in the Seventies’, 165; Dunslow and Jones, The Commission of H.M.S. Eclipse, 45–47.
93.
Anning, Bentley, and Yexley, The Log of H.M.S. Argonaut, 25, Butterworth, The Commission of H.M.S. Glory, 8–9.
94.
Breaks, The Log of H.M.S. Bonaventure, 85.
95.
Gunns, The Log of H.M.S. Sutlej, 113, 114, 119.
96.
Spry, The Cruise of Her Majesty’s Ship Challenger, 193–201.
97.
Diary of A.C. East, H.M.S. Natal on its Cruise to India as escort to Royal Visit, 1 December 1911, National Museum of the Royal Navy, Manuscript Collection, 95/90 (28).
98.
Diary of Petty Officer Lew Hanbridge, H.M.S. Philomel, 13 January 1916, British Library, MSS. Eur.C.172; Diary of A.C. East, H.M.S. Natal on its Cruise to India as escort to Royal Visit, 27 December 1911, National Museum of the Royal Navy, Manuscript Collection, 95/90 (28).
99.
Diary of Petty Officer Lew Hanbridge, H.M.S. Philomel, 6 January 1916, British Library, MSS. Eur.C.172.
100.
Ibid.
101.
Diary of Mr. Dicks of H.M.S. Proserpine, Royal Naval Museum, Manuscript Collection, JC 68 100/79 (2), 66, 86.
102.
Parker, The Commission of H.M.S. Implacable, 7.
103.
Journals of Donovan C. Roe, 1911–1912, NMM, JOD/92/2; Brown, The Log of H.M.S. Repulse, 16.
104.
Parker, The Commission of H.M.S. Implacable, 9.
105.
Ibid., 36; Wheeler, The Commission of H.M.S. Pandora, 25–28.
106.
Diary of Mr. Dicks of H.M.S. Proserpine, Royal Naval Museum, Manuscript Collection, JC 68 100/79 (2), 19, 29.
107.
Gunns, The Log of H.M.S. Sutlej, 140; Butterworth, The Commission of H.M.S. Glory, 15; Wheeler, The Commission of H.M.S. Pandora, 25–28; Breaks, The Log of H.M.S. Bonaventure, 10; Journals of Donovan C. Roe, 1911–1912, NMM, JOD/92/2.
108.
Diary of Mr. Dicks of H.M.S. Proserpine, Royal Naval Museum, Manuscript Collection, JC 68 100/79 (2), 46.
109.
See for example John S. Shearston, H.M.S. Nelson: An Account of Her First Commission on the Australian Station (Sydney: Thomas Richards, 1885).
110.
Ibid., 24.
111.
A.E. Butterworth, The Commission of H.M.S. Glory, Flag Ship of Commander-in-Chief, China Station, 1900–1904 (London: Westminster Press, 1904), 5–6.
112.
Newton, The Commission of H.M.S. Grafton, 19; Brodie, Ray, and Yexley, The Log of H.M.S. Goliath, 103.
113.
Gibbs, The Cruise of H.M.S. Grafton, 53–54; Butterworth, The Commission of H.M.S. Glory, 14. Articles about cycling became frequent, for example, in Navy and Army Illustrated.
114.
Gunns, The Log of H.M.S. Sutlej, 23; Journals of Donovan C. Roe, 1911–1912, NMM, JOD/92/2.
115.
Butterworth, The Commission of H.M.S. Glory, 15.
116.
William Beinart and Lotte Hughes, Environment and Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 91, 163–164.
117.
Journals of Donovan C. Roe, 1911–1912, NMM, JOD/92/2.
118.
Ibid.
119.
Shearston, H.M.S. Nelson, 22.
120.
Journals of Donovan C. Roe, 1911–1912, NMM, JOD/92/2.
121.
Journal kept by Edward Charrington, 1894–1898, National Museum of the Royal Navy, Manuscript Collection, 1999/51/5.
122.
Diary of A C East, H.M.S. Natal on its Cruise to India as escort to Royal Visit, 28 December 1911, National Museum of the Royal Navy, Manuscript Collection, 95/90 (28).
123.
Diary of Mr. Dicks of H.M.S. Proserpine, Royal Naval Museum, Manuscript Collection, JC 68 100/79 (2), 46.
124.
Ibid., 59.
125.
Journals of Donovan C. Roe, 1911–1912, NMM, JOD/92/2; Callow, The Commission of H.M.S. Royal Arthur, 74–76; H. Furneaux, The Log of H.M.S. Diana, Mediterranean Station, 1904–1906 (London: Westminster Press, 1907), 94–95.
126.
Journal kept by Edward Charrington, 1894–1898, National Museum of the Royal Navy, Manuscript Collection, 1999/51/5. The journal later reports that a hunting trip killed three buffalos.
127.
Crowe, From Portsmouth to Peking Via Ladysmith with a Naval Brigade, 90; Watts, The Commission of H.M.S. Retribution, 1902–1904, 163.
128.
Breaks, The Log of H.M.S. Bonaventure, 15.
129.
See, for example, Takashi Ito, London Zoo and the Victorians, 1828–1859 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2014).
130.
Gibbs, The Cruise of H.M.S. Grafton, 140.
131.
Dougherty, The East Station, 19.
132.
Breaks, The Log of H.M.S. Bonaventure, 118; Parker, The Commission of H.M.S. Implacable, 104; Fowler, The Log of H.M.S. Encounter, 118.
133.
Wheeler, The Commission of H.M.S. Pandora, 54.
134.
Noble, ‘Tween Decks in the Seventies’, 92–93.
135.
Parker, The Commission of H.M.S. Implacable, 104; Newton, The Commission of H.M.S. Grafton, 135, 201.
136.
Newton, The Commission of H.M.S. Grafton, 91.
137.
Noble, ‘Tween Decks in the Seventies’, 229.
138.
Many servicemen referred to the Maltese as goats. See Brown, The Log of H.M.S. Repulse, 6.
139.
See, for example, Kirsten Greer, ‘Geopolitics and the Avian Imperial Archive: The Zoogeography of Region-Making in the Nineteenth-Century British Mediterranean’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 103, 6 (2013), 1317–1331.

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Gray, S. (2018). Exploring the Station. In: Steam Power and Sea Power. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57642-2_9

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57642-2_9
Published: 28 September 2017
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