GLR July-August 2022

ESSAY ‘A Dab of Tar on a Sailor’s Posteriors’ W ILLIAM B ENEMANN

I N THE SPRING OF 1842, Commander Uriah Levy found himself in a makeshift courtroom in Barnum’s City Hotel in Baltimore, facing a panel of five unsmil ing naval officers. If this was a circus, Levy had been in center ring before. He holds the record for the most times a U.S. Navy officer has been hauled before a mil itary tribunal: six courts-martial and two courts of inquiry. Levy’s 1842 trial concerned the spectacle of punishment, homosexual liaisons among members of his crew, and the role of shame in the exposure of the male body. Mostly the case was

shipman Daniel Ammen gave an order to man the clew-gar nets. A young sailor named John Thompson echoed the order, mimicking the midshipman’s voice to the amusement of his shipmates. Ammen did not hear the mocking, but Passed Mid shipman James Doyle did, and he alerted his colleague that he was being mocked. Ammen, in turn, informed Captain Levy of the sailor’s insubordination. It was a flogging offense, but Levy was personally reluctant to use corporal punishment on sailors unless it was absolutely necessary. Moreover, the Secretary of the Navy had issued a cir

about the male backside, about its context and symbolism, about a boy’s butt and how it differs from a man’s butt, about the legal de lineation of the point in time when the juve nile gluteus maximus moves from the public sphere and becomes something a man pos sesses in his own right, a res with entitle ments and protections. In the end, the court case was about ass cracks. Uriah Levy was the only Jew of his rank in the Navy, and most of his court appear ances were triggered by his refusal to accept the pointed anti-Semitism he encountered from his fellow officers. Judicial hearings frequently concluded that Levy had been in tolerably provoked in his violent outbursts— yet he was still censured, kicked out of the Navy (and then reinstated), and passed over for plum assignments for which he was clearly qualified. When pressed, the Secre tary of the Navy explained that, although he himself held no prejudice against people of the Hebrew faith, he needed to assemble crews that could work together:

cular recommending that flogging be “dis continued where practicable” and be replaced by “some badge of disgrace, fine, &c.” Levy quickly devised an appropriate punishment. He ordered Thompson to drop his trousers and lean over a cannon. He then sent one of the ship’s boys to fetch some tar. Here another sailor, named Van Ness, erupted in anger and attempted to halt the punishment. Thompson was Van Ness’s “chicken”—an arrangement whereby an older sailor provided protection and gifts to a younger shipmate in return for sexual favors. Van Ness made a violent attempt to protect his boyfriend’s buttocks from being exposed, but he was hauled away and given twelve lashes with a cat o’ nine tails. When the boy returned with a piece of oakum dipped in tar, Levy ordered him to smear it on Thompson’s backside. A pet par rot aboard the ship had recently died, and the captain had some of its feathers plucked and inserted into the tar. He then told Thompson that he was teaching him a lesson about par roting officers. Thompson wore the “badge of disgrace” for about ten minutes, and then he was ordered to clean himself up and return to work. That should have put an end to the matter, but unfortunately Commander Levy had made an enemy of Vandalia ’s lieutenant,

I perceived a strong prejudice in the service against Capt. Levy, which seemed to me, in a considerable part attributable to his being of the Jewish persuasion; and while I as an executive officer had the same liberal views which guided the President and Senate, in commissioning him as a Capt., I always endeavored, in fitting out ships, to have some reference to that harmonious co-opera tion which is essential to the highest effectiveness. The outrage that reached its climax at Barnum’s City Hotel began innocently enough. Onboard the sloop Vandalia , Mid William Benemann is the author of Unruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail , and Men in Eden: William Drum mond Stewart and Same Sex Desire in the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade.

Commander Uriah Levy in 1862.

George Mason Hooe, who reported his superior officer to the Navy Department. Three years after the incident with the par rot feathers, Levy found himself in a Baltimore courtroom, charged with forgery, cowardice, and scandalous behavior— charges arising from three unrelated incidents in the past. The first two were easily dispensed with, but the third—the exposure of Thompson’s buttocks—raised too many explosive issues to be swept quietly away. The officers of Vandalia who were called to testify described

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