Bristol sailors in the nineteenth century : a breed apart?

There is a stereotypical perception of the sailor as being a drunken, promiscuous, violent nuisance on the streets of a port town. In offering a partial corrective to this, this article portrays sailors in ways not normally associated with the stereotypical image and identity politics of sailors. Whilst recognizing substantial differences between types of sailors and that conclusions drawn cannot be true for all who went to sea, it will be argued that merchant sailors as a subsection of the working class had considerable agency in integrating themselves both spatially and culturally in working-class communities of Bristol in the nineteenth century. Naturally, many merchant sailors continued to display behavioural traits common of sailors, but there were those who more closely aligned to respectable working-class culture, rather than maritime culture, and to those who might be termed a better class of working man. Through situating sailors in societal, familial, residential, occupational, religious, and cultural contexts, it will be argued that sailors were not the perceived breed apart but were an integrated presence in Bristol’s wider workingclass culture.