For your reading list

Taylor & Francis Group has announced the publication of Sexual and Gender Difference in the British Navy, 1690-1900, edited by Seth Stein LeJacq. From the publisher's website:

This volume is a collection of a variety of important records that will give readers insight into key themes into the history of what its criminal code called “the unnatural and detestable sin of buggery”- sex between males - in the Royal Navy. The richest sources are transcripts of trials, including ones that erupted into public scandals and ones that provide a vivid window into the sexual cultures of the navy. The book also provides lists of important records in the naval archive and will serve as a guide to finding and interpreting them. This important volume, accompanied by extensive editorial commentary, opens up this history and archive to researchers, teachers, and students studying queer history, the history of gender and sexuality, and naval and maritime history.

The abstract for one chapter gives a sense of the subjects covered by the book:

In the 1830s, Lt. John Towne published his account of his “service afloat during the late war” against France, originally in installments in the United Service Journal. An 1836 book republished his memoir along with another officer’s journal; the following excerpt is taken from that publication. In his memoir, Towne relays his experience witnessing a sodomy execution – and a badly botched gallows pardon. He describes the hanging occurring when he was serving on HMS Pompee in the West Indies.

Another:

In 1811, a navy court heard a disturbing case in which a marine, James Parker, was accused of raping a ship’s boy named James Nowlan. Nowlan was only about 15 years of age. This was the standard charge naval courts considered in buggery cases; most involved power imbalances, and most also involved allegations that men had sex with boys or adolescents. While it resembled hundreds of other cases, though, Parker’s gained special notoriety because it happened to set an important precedent in sodomy law.