Matelotage - Same Sex Civil Unions During the Golden Age of Piracy

When you imagine pirates, you probably think of treasure maps, rum, and the Jolly Roger fluttering above the deck. But behind the cutlasses and cannon smoke lay a social world that was surprisingly complex. One of the most intriguing customs of the Golden Age of Piracy was matelotage — a form of partnership between two men that could be financial, romantic, or somewhere in between.

Far from just being about buried treasure and plunder, pirate life also included contracts of companionship, shared inheritance, and, in some cases, intimacy that blurred the lines between friendship, brotherhood, and marriage.

Historians find many similarities between modern same-sex marriage and 17th century matelotage.

What Was Matelotage?

The word matelotage comes from the French matelot, meaning sailor or seaman. It’s also the root of the familiar “matey,” making it quite literally “sailor-talk.” Historians trace matelotage back to the 1600s, when pirates began creating their own rules and customs in the Caribbean.

At its simplest, matelotage was a financial agreement. Life at sea was brutal and often short. Pirates needed a way to ensure their possessions, wages, or share of plunder went to someone they trusted if they died. According to economist Peter T. Leeson in The Invisible Hook, the agreement typically meant one sailor could inherit the other’s wealth, while some was left “to the dead man’s friends or to his wife.”

Édouard Corbière’s 1832 novel Le Négrier, although fictional, described matelotage vividly:

“This amatelotage of sailors among themselves, this hammock camaraderie, establishes a type of solidarity and commonality of interests and of goods between each man and his matelot.”

So while the origin was practical, it often grew into something far deeper.

The Surviving Pirate Contract of 1699

One of the most compelling pieces of evidence is an actual matelotage agreement from 1699 between Francis Reed and John Beavis, drawn up at Port Dolphin. It reads in part:

“Be it knowen … that Francis Reed and John Beavis are entered in Consortship together … And in Case that any sudden accident … should happen to the forsd Francis Reed … what gold, Silver, or any other thing whatsoever shall … fall to ye forsd John Beavis …”

This surviving contract shows matelotage wasn’t just gossip or speculation. Pirates wrote down their partnerships in legally recognisable terms, contracts that carried weight among crews who prized fairness and clarity.

Romance, Sex, and Favouritism at Sea

But matelotage wasn’t always just about money. Pirate ships were overwhelmingly male spaces, and men at sea sometimes formed close — even romantic — relationships.

Professor Barry Richard Burg, in his book Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition, argued that matelotage was:

“An institutionalized linking of buccaneer and another male — most often a youth — in a relationship with clearly homosexual characteristics.”

These bonds could echo the patron-youth arrangements of ancient Greece. A younger sailor might trade intimacy for security or a share of plunder. George Shelvocke, an English privateer commander, notoriously promoted a cabin boy to first mate at breakneck speed. The rest of the crew grumbled:

“The boy gave us all a kind of emulation, wondering what rare qualifications Shelvocke could discover in a fellow, who but a few days before rinsed our glasses and filled us our wine.”

Clearly, romantic or sexual matelotage could bring privileges as well as companionship

An early map showing the island of Tortuga, off the coast of what is Haiti today.

Passion, Jealousy, and Violence

Matelotage bonds were not taken lightly. Pirates defended their partners fiercely, and sometimes those passions boiled over.

Captain Bartholomew Roberts, one of the most famous pirates of the early 1700s, once killed a crewman after a quarrel. The dead man’s matelot, Jones, exploded in anger, publicly berating Roberts. Roberts stabbed Jones too, but this time Jones retaliated, throwing the captain over a cannon and beating him senseless.

For daring to strike his superior, Jones was flogged — two lashes from every man on the ship. The incident shows how entangled love, loyalty, and discipline could become in the tense world of pirate society.

How Widespread Was Matelotage?

Evidence suggests matelotage was not uncommon. A register in the Calendar of State Papers: Colonial Series records that John Swann was a “great consort of [Captain] Culliford’s, who lives with him.” The wording is ambiguous but hints at a relationship beyond simple economics.

The explorer and pirate William Dampier’s crew were rumoured to have practised matelotage, and even Captain Robert Culliford — who famously betrayed Captain Kidd — was associated with it.

In Roberts’ own case, Welsh sources link him to a crewmate nicknamed “Miss Nanny” (John Waldon), which some historians read as evidence of a romantic companion. While speculative, it adds to the picture of emotional intimacy among pirates.

Debate Among Historians

Not all scholars agree that matelotage was primarily sexual. Hans Turley and others warn against reading too much into terms like “consort,” which could simply mean business partner. They argue that many modern interpretations risk projecting contemporary understandings of sexuality onto ambiguous historical sources.

So was matelotage gay marriage at sea — or just an insurance policy? The truth probably lies somewhere in between. As one modern commentator summarised:

“Some pirates were married to women and entered matelotage, complicating any neat ‘gay marriage in disguise’ narrative.” (theamm.org)

Land vs Sea Attitudes

On land, homosexuality could lead to prison or even execution. In Tortuga, Governor Jean Le Vasseur asked France to send 2,000 prostitutes in 1645, hoping to reduce the prevalence of matelotage. Instead, many pirates married the women and then shared them with their matelots, blending the custom into new forms.

It seems matelotage wasn’t easily eradicated — it fulfilled deep needs for loyalty, security, and companionship that pirates couldn’t find ashore.

Matelotage as a “Queer Contract”

Recent scholarship reframes matelotage as part of a broader history of contractual intimacy. A 2025 paper in Atlantic Studies suggests that matelotage should be seen as a “queer contract,” where two men formalised obligations of care and inheritance that rivalled those of traditional marriage.

Seen this way, matelotage wasn’t an oddity but one expression of how humans have long built intimate partnerships outside official structures.

Pirates in Popular Culture

Modern culture has run with the idea of queer pirates. Shows like Black Sails depicted Captain Flint as bisexual, and Our Flag Means Death gave audiences a tender (and hilarious) romance between Stede Bonnet and Blackbeard.

These portrayals don’t always match the historical evidence, but they reflect the enduring fascination with matelotage and the sense that pirate life allowed for freedoms denied on land.

Why Did Pirates Value Matelotage?

Ultimately, matelotage gave pirates what they craved most: security in an insecure world. Whether romantic, platonic, or financial, having a matelot meant someone to inherit your share, nurse you when sick, fight alongside you, and stand by you in mutiny or battle.

For men who lived by the sword, it was a form of trust that transcended the law of nations.

Conclusion

Matelotage was part will, part marriage, part love affair, and completely pirate. It shows that behind the plundering and violence, pirates created their own forms of loyalty and intimacy. Some were business-like, others were deeply affectionate, and a few were scandalously sexual.

We may never know how common matelotage truly was, but its very existence complicates our view of pirates as lonely rogues. Instead, it reveals them as men who, even while outside the law, sought the same bonds of companionship, love, and protection as everyone else.

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Sources

• Peter T. Leeson, The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates

• Barry Richard Burg, Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition

• Hans Turley, Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash: Piracy, Sexuality, and Masculine Identity

• Édouard Corbière, Le Négrier (1832)

• Calendar of State Papers: Colonial Series

• Atlantic Studies (2025), “Bound to a mast: matelotage and the queer contract”

• The AMM Blog: “Matelotage: Gay Marriage Among Pirates or Just a Business Partnership?” (theamm.org)

• University of Reading History Blog, “Pirate Legends, Matelotage, and Mavericks” (2023)

• Swansea LGBTQ Cymru, “17th-Century Pirates and Queer History”