And the chain wasn’t braided, either.
1000 points for whatever Hogwarts house you’re in. Well done!
And that’s the answer. Great minds think alike. I DM’d Elliot on instagram but didn’t get an answer yet.
True, but surely this puts to rest any assertions that the songwriter couldn’t have intended to convey an old-time era.
IOW, I was right. So there.
This is not settled at all. We need more info from Mr Lurie. What western port in this “age of sails” ? Were there even shipbuilders on the pacific coast of the US territory? Was Brandy easy, putting out to make ends meet while working where? Tavern, ale house, pub, or Mrs Miggins Pie Shop?
Fiction or not it’s still not making sense. 
I think “western” is just one of those descriptors that works better in lyrics, like trains are always southbound in folk songs. I base that on zero research or even being able to remember a single additional example, so you can take it to the bank.
Looking Glass was a Rutgers band. The most western place on the Raritan River that sailing ships arriving into Raritan Bay could go was New Brunswick. New Brunswick is the home of Rutgers University. QED
Ingenious move, contacting the artist!
Cecil Adams would be proud.
The song was released in 1972. No “70s and onward” from there unless you meant 1870s and onward.
And the absent man is almost certainly a merchant seaman, not a naval seaman.
Did anyone else think Brandy looks like Daria Morgendorffer with short hair and no glasses?
I hope not.
Wayne: noooooooo (laughter)
I kinda pictured her looking like Arija Bareikis in the Criminal Intent episode Astoria Helen. Kinda plain, kinda cute, with a sensitive vulnerability.
Obviously Arija Bareikis was six years old when the song came out, but I projected backwards. 
Me too. I always took the “fine girl” speech as a gentle rejection, an admonition to find a nice lad and settle down - which I imagined Brandy eventually doing. (She doesn’t seem to have a shortage of admirers.)
As for the locket, the song says the sailor came “bringing gifts” - plural - I never thought they were all for Brandy (whom I pictured as looking sort of like an auburn-haired version of the St Pauli girl).
That’s exactly what she looks like.
Do you also picture her donning a forest green cloak at the end of the day? And maybe carrying an old-fashioned lantern?
I have a less distinct vision of the sailor, but I think he’s maybe 40ish - young enough to appeal to a girl in her late teens or early twenties but old enough to have risen in rank (possibly even to captain) and gone on a host of adventures. He has the means to obtain nice things, and he has good taste, but there isn’t room to build a collection on a ship, so he uses them to Make an Entrance when he sails into town. (The pretty Welsh things he obtains here - the “western bay” is clearly in Wales - will seem exotic wherever he goes next.) I think the fact that Brandy “could feel the ocean fall and rise” speaks to the vividness of his stories; he’s not giving her any special attention - he’s working the crowd, and he’s uncommonly good at it. He has no objection to partaking in the pleasures of the flesh, mind you, but he wants a woman, not a girl - “and Brandy does her best to understand.”
Brandy looks like Wrath of Khan-era Kirstie Alley.
I think she’s more innocent looking than that. More of a cross between the St. Pauli’s girl and the girl next door.
i reckoned on him looking like the original old spice sailor, or the ghost from the ghost and mrs muir.
The sailor I envision is an uncommonly good looking ordinary seaman who is lucky at cards thus he’s flush with coin. He has a Brandy in every port, though this particular one almost snared his heart. But tide waits for no man or woman and that’s his easy escape. On to the next port!
This is what I pictured our sailor “Sterling” as. Maybe a little younger.
