⚓ gay pirates and the bonds of matelotage

so my friend scar told me this cool thing about pirates.

i already knew the same-sex-oriented girlies had a hack: dip into the convent, dodge marriage, and post up together for life. (i know from experience — shout out to my auntie sister genevieve and her “best friend” of 70 years who always signed christmas cards and came to parties together — with my beloved auntie, sister charlotte!)

and dudes did it too — sneaking into monk life just to orbit each other without nosy neighbors clocking it.

but scar told me that some men went to sea and became pirates or outlaws. and because ship captains make the laws on their own ships, they can marry people legally. they can also do wedding ceremonies and the crew will respect any couple the captain sealed.

so this means gay dudes would leave the world and go off to be pirates — and get married!! and pirates recognized the love!!!

what’s it mean?

idk… maybe outlaws recognize the sting of being othered, so they weren’t about to gatekeep love on deck. high class crime exists too, buuuuuttt that’s for another day…!

captains didn’t give a rat’s ass who you bunked with as long as you pulled rope and didn’t start drama — and if anyone came for you, cap had cannons locked and loaded. pirate hr.

there was even a name for it: matelotage — basically pirate marriage, where two crew members split their loot, watched each other’s backs, and inherited from one another. ride-or-die, sealed with rum instead of rings.

and this wasn’t a fantasy. historians have receipts: french buccaneers in the caribbean literally signed contracts called articles de matelotage. survivors got the other’s share of loot. some had joint property. one chronicler even side-eyed how “many of them kept boys as their companions” (hmmm, wonder what that means). so yeah, it was real, and yeah, it was gay.

my assumption too is that many dudes might do matelotage just for the conveniences. but a matelotage would have to go beyond buddies whether sexy or romantic or not. you have to trust that person and want them forever.

there’s lots of names for that. plp — nerds do it all the time; plp is platonic life partner.

and i told scar about boston marriages, when ladies lived in the city and enjoyed all the cool-ass city things. there was no official paperwork of marriage, but sometimes they made legal arrangements for each other — and in some cases, like pirates on the ship, they could even have a real wedding ceremony, even if it wasn’t recognized by a church or government. they’d lock it down with inheritance papers, deeds, and shared lives together.

i know these are marriages and love match options for really brave lgbtq peeps of the past, but… i’m sure many cases were just bffship and familyship. because we don’t have blood relatives and love relatives mutually exclusively.

whether sex or romance was part of it — there had to be love. it was your chosen family. giving you something others around you couldn’t, and you want to commit to that.

🌊 humans always hack the system.

pirates called it matelotage. ladies called it boston marriage. nerds call it plps. the military calls it your battle buddy. nuns just call it “living for god” (with your girlie in the next cell).

all the same thing: a loophole for love.

it really doesn’t matter in the end. if you love somebody special and wanna bind yourself to them… there are ways. humans who are queer and marginalized have found ways to care for one another when conventional ways failed them.