Exploring the Station

Abstract

This chapter explains that an integral part of leave at a coaling station, particularly for “bluejackets,” was an immersion in that place’s indigenous populations, cultures, unique sights, landscapes, and fauna. Such experiences were widely recorded in diaries, published accounts, and presented through sketches and photographs, many of which were widely disseminated at home. The ways in which stations and their populations were depicted largely fit a wider pattern of seeing imperial spaces—as well as the populations, landscapes, and fauna that populated them—as exotic and “other.” The chapter also explores the use of indigenous prostitutes and shows how—although prostitutes were tolerated “on station” despite domestic moral fervour—the spread of venereal disease was a real problem for the navy and something that was often blamed on the imagined charateristics of both women and other races.