Anytime you get men in a place with no women available you’re gonna wind up with homosexual acts.
This is what is termed as “situational sexual behavior”
It wasn’t typical for pirates to spend months out of sea like a merchant vessel or a Royal Naval vessel might. The men pressed into service in the Royal Navy were often forbidden from going onto shore when the ship was in port. Have no fear, boats full of prostitutes would head towards the ships, come aboard, and ply their trade. So even when faced with no women for months at a time there was going to come a point where women would be available. That differs from a prison scenario where there will most assuredly be no contact with women for a number of years or even life.
Unfortunately there is scant evidence that exist about homosexuality and piracy in the 17th and 18th centuries. While I’m certain it existed I do not know to what extent.
A decent book about sailors and women is Women Sailors and Sailor’s Women by David Cordingly.
Magellan had a ship’s master strangled for committing sodomy with a cabin boy, but the cabin boy was spared (although he may have committed suicide or been murdered subsequently). However, although sodomy was a capital crime, in practice most captains looked the other way unless the acts were too obvious.
Samuel Talty’s Empire of Blue Water (2007), a non-fiction recounting of the career of pirate Henry Morgan, states that the prototypical buccaneers, the boucaniers of the north coast of Hispaniola, prohibited women in their camps, instead forming relationships with other boucaniers as matelots (literally “bed mates”) for “lifelong, probably sexual, relationships.”
With regard to the OP, I doubt that pirate ships were crewed by a greater percentage of true homosexuals than other ships at the time. Situational homosexuality, however, no doubt was common, as it is in any other environment where women are not available to heterosexual men. The difference would have been that in at least some pirate ships homosexuality would have been more tolerated, since they had no particular concern for the law. On most navy and merchant ships, homosexual acts would have had to have been more covert due to their illegality. Of course, there may have been some pirate captains who did not permit homosexuality as well.
The book you are thinking of may have been Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition: English Sea Rovers in the Seventeenth Century Caribbean, by B. R. Burg, although this was first published in 1983.
You can browse parts of it in Wiki Books.
Ha! I’ve actually read that book. Pretty faskinatin.
Though, I would guess ships in general would have a slightly greater percentage of true homosexuals than the general population, just because those who found that the kind of liked the situation of ‘situational homosexuality’ (even if not consciously admitting it) might tend to stick around, while those who were really opposed might tend to find another occupation.
Again, I suspect this would have varied a lot ship-to-ship as well.
Colibri, I think you found exactly what I was looking for! In the link to Wiki Books, the author mentions that he did a lecture and that it was widely publicized in the late 70’s and hit the wire services. He goes on to mention that he got lots of mail about that article from all over. Most likely, I read one of those wire reports in a local free rag and was trying to find that book. I know I read it back then, but have never been able to find any specific reference since.
Thank you!
Bucco Bruce’s color scheme ought to have made it pretty obvious that he was straight. A gay pirate would have lost his lunch at seeing red-white-and-orange uniforms.
Michael Shermer in his skeptic column in SA wrote about pirate societies recently. They were well organized and had rules against keeping boys as sexual servants, so obviously pedophilia and homosexuality was common enough to make laws to control it. Im sure the people of the period understood this and thus warned boys about the lifestyle.
There were laws against witchcraft and sorcery, too. Does that mean there were witches and sorcerors all over who needed to be legislated for?
You’re welcome.
If we know anything today, we know that piracy is not a “lifestyle choice.” 
>There were laws against witchcraft and sorcery, too. Does that mean there were witches and sorcerors all over who needed to be legislated for?
Sure, there were people who practiced witchcraft. Whether it got results or it didnt doesnt matter.
Not necessarily, no. Many would prefer the opposite sex but find it easier to get access to children of their own gender and are willing to screw what’s available. Some are attracted to children as such, regardless of gender; offenders who are attracted to very young children (under 6 or so) are more likely to ignore gender.
I would assume that there are many who would fit your description, but if for example a male pedophile is ONLY sexually attracted to male children (victims), I would think that would make him a homosexual (gay) pedophile, by definition.
By that narrow standard, masturbation is a homosexual activity, isn’t it?
Well, yes, but that wasn’t the question. Also, the general way the academic-types I’ve read treat this sort of thing is to define “orientation” on the basis of attraction to adults, so a male pedophile who is only sexually attracted to male children, and not to adults of either gender, would be a pedophile, not a homosexual.
Besides, if you’re having sex with teenagers, you’re not a pedophile. Pedophiles are sexually attracted to prepubescent children.
No. A man who is attracted to little boys is, psychologically, virtually identical to a man who is attracted to little girls. But they are both very different from a man who is attracted to adults, either gay or straight. So he is a pedophile who happens to be attacted to boys, not a gay man who happens to be attracted to boys.
Unless, of course, you’re a hermaphrodite.
I would bet that if you asked the question I originally asked (post #18) to 100 random people on the street, the vast majority would say that the men in question were homosexual. They might ALSO be “pederasts” or some other label, but the fact that they prefer young men makes them gay.