“Shoreside people as we call them, their attitude was probably old-fashioned. At sea it was always live and let live”

– Anything Goes at Sea: A Gay Seafarer’s Memoir by Michael Rudder

Meet Bobby and Patsy, two gay men who met in the Merchant Navy in the 1960s and lived together in Canning Town, London. Their personal photos are part of the Michael Rudder Collection at London’s Bishopsgate Institute.

Homosexuality used to be illegal in the UK. The Sexual Offences Act 1967 made changes so that homosexual men over the age of 21 could have sexual relationships, in private.

Their pictures were shared by Stef Dickers, the Special Collections and Archives Manager at Bishopsgate Institute. There are many more photos from the Michael Rudder Archive documenting queer life on board British merchant ships during the 1950s and 60s, including this album:

The term Merchant Navy was coined by King George V in 1919, as recognition of the sacrifice made by merchant seafarers during the First World War. On the 14th February 1928, ‘His Majesty King George V formally renamed the Mercantile Marine in appointing HRH The Prince of Wales as the first ‘Master of the Merchant Navy and Fishing Fleets’… The correct technical term is the British Merchant Mercantile and you are a merchant seafarer.

– The Honourable Company of Master Mariners

Above: Meet ‘Mary Alice’ (Wilfred Ellis) (on the left in the second photo) and friends in the merchant Navy at sea.

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Michael Rudder spent years working in the Merchant Navy. He spoke to Royal Museum Greenwich:

Michael Rudder’s parents were surprised when he told them that he wanted to work at sea. It was quite the change from his childhood upbringing: living on a farm in Enfield, a shop in rural Essex, a pig farm in Camberley before finally settling near Guildford in Surrey.

‘I had a very normal education. At school I took some “O” levels, but I wanted to take cookery,’ Michael recalls. ‘But I went to a boys’ school, and they didn’t teach cookery. They made enquiries at the girls’ school, and I took Domestic Science at the girls’ school.’

A hotel management and cookery course followed at Guildford Technical College, which Michael, to use his own words, ‘passed with flying colours’.

It was one of his teachers at the college who first suggested the idea of a career at sea. Michael recalls their conversation: ‘He said, “I tell you what boy, why don’t you get a job on a ship? I can help you. You’ll go away to sea, see the world, earn a few bob: you’ll love it.”’ I thought, “That sounds good.”’

The teacher gave Michael a glowing reference for his application with P&O, and he got his first job at sea at the age of 17.

‘My mother said to me, “Oh you’re joining the Merchant Navy”. I said, “Oh no, it’s nothing like that Mum, it’s a floating hotel and I’m going to be a waiter and afloat.” I was so naïve.’..

His progression through the Merchant Navy ranks took him from deck boy to Able Seaman, and from cruise liner Oriana through Canberra and the QE2…

‘I was in a four-berth cabin, but I shared it with other gays,’ Michael says. ‘We had curtains all alongside the side of the bunk for privacy, so if you wanted to “entertain a gentleman…”’