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The resilience of sailortown culture in English naval ports, c. 1820–1900

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2015

BRAD BEAVEN
BRAD BEAVEN*
Affiliation:
University of Portsmouth, Milldam, Burnaby Road, Portsmouth, PO1 3AS, UK
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Abstract:

Sailortowns were districts in ports where sailors visited, often lived and were entertained. However, while historians have made significant strides in exploring sailors in merchant ports, naval sailortowns have largely been overlooked. It will be argued here that in the English naval towns of Portsmouth and Plymouth, sailortown exhibited a sense of ‘Otherness’ and a subaltern resilience to the cultural hegemony of civic progress and modernity during the second half of the nineteenth century. Those living in naval sailortowns were geographically and culturally marginalized from the centres of economic and political power and their relationship with the civic and naval authorities was one which varied between compromise and resistance.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , February 2016 , pp. 72 - 95
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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