Distinguished navigators and sea-warriors, daring pirates, storm-defying Wikings, bronzed captains in the merchant-services of the world, have been also uranian lovers.
Some names are historic. We find one such Dionian-Uranian in Yasco da Gama. Another, according to accusation, was Cornelis van Tromp, the son of Martin van Tromp.
One of the most eminent of English naval commanders of the century just closed was prominent in an homosexual scandal, suppressed vigorously on account of the high personages involved, but disconcertingly general at its date. A curious sea-incident occurs in Smollet's Roderick Random", where the hero of the novel is stationed on a ship commanded, for a time, by an effeminate uranistic officer, living in open sexual intimacy with his doctor.
Also is to be cited the other passage in the same story, where a homosexual nobleman, enamoured of the young surgeon, tries to broaden Random's views as to intercourse between males, by the praise and perusal of Petronius.
On the D—, homosexuality was rife, and one could see with his own eyes how it was going on, even between officers, i have been told that in some services the Austrian and French, for instance , nobody ever remarks about it, taking such a thing as a natural proceeding.
