Aside from fiction, few records document same-sex behaviors during this time. In his mid-century diaries, Philip C. Van Buskirk, an American marine, details mutual sexual interactions among sailors. They include mutual masturbation (called “going chaw for chaw”) and anal intercourse, as well as sexual and romantic relationships between older sailors, often officers, and cabin boys as young as thirteen. In 1853 his diary records an older sailor’s opinion about sex between men. While the sailor would punish men who had sex with men on land, he had no desire to do so at sea: “What can a feller
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