Another interesting vintage photograph. From Studio Royale of London.* It’s got that mid-century film still thing going on and a nice reference to the old law of the sea. Whether in the legitimate Navies or their pirate shadows authority condensed into the will of a single man, the Captain, and was enforced by, among other things…the sting of the lash.

For another mid-century photo, this one of mysterious provenance, click here. For more on homoeroticism on the high seas, check out Hans Turley’s Rum, Sodomy and the Lash: Piracy, Sexuality and Masculine Identity. NYU Press, 1999.

*Thomas Waugh. Hard to Imagine Gay Male Eroticism in Photography and Film from Their Beginnings to Stonewall, New York: Columbia University Press, 1996, page 256.