Shifting and Permanent States: Experiencing Disability in the Seventeenth-Century British Navy

*Reader Note: This post makes critical use of terms used by historical actors, which people today might consider offensive or abrasive today, specifically the term “Cripple.” These are used analytically and in pursuit of a better understanding of the ways that early modern people conceptualized their bodies.

The term that we most commonly associate with the deterioration of the form and especially function of the body in the modern day is “disability.” But how did people in the past conceptualize this experience of shifting embodied states? This question has been central to the development of historical studies of disability. Many scholars (most notably Lennard Davis) have argued that this is a truly modern term and that its origin can be traced to the nineteenth century. Where scholars have discussed “disability” for the premodern period, they have claimed that the word itself was not in use by medieval or early modern writers or actors, or that where we do see the word or concept, it refers exclusively to an inability to serve or toil. Some, like Irina Metzler, have argued that we cannot talk about premodern disability, only physical impairment, because “disability” implies social and cultural connotations that our historical actors “may not have shared with modern impaired people.” This suggests that premodern people were not actively using or understanding this term in their own distinct context, but records, like those found in the Chatham Chest, show that early modern people were using disability language to talk about their bodies and conceptualize physical changes therein. 

While it may be anachronistic to read modern theories and definitions of “disability” onto historical actors and periods, what I aim to do here, is to engage with the ways that primary sources show us people interacting with the concept of disability and what it meant to them in their grounded embodied experiences. The word “disability” is quite prevalent in early modern source materials as a term used by people speaking about their bodies, as a method of self-definition, and as a way to engage with systems of social, structural, and financial support being developed in this historical moment (including access to pensions, additional career opportunities, and legal benefits).

“Credit: © National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London." The Chatham Chest fund was created in 1590 to provide pensions for wounded and disabled seamen, but the iron chest itself was created in 1625 to hold the funds until they were disbursed.

Disability was an active category of self-identification in early modern England, it was not a category defined strictly by loss or negation, and it was not tied exclusively to a lack of ability to serve or toil. There are some obvious connections to economic productive capacity, as the term “disability” was certainly used in economic and legal senses in this period. However, there are many cases in which people described themselves as “disabled” in the context of petitioning for new work or military positions (implying that they are not unable to do these kinds of labor or service). They both identified themselves as “disabled,” and simultaneously indicated that they were “able” to perform a specific set of tasks in a new position. One location where we can observe this premodern disability language and experience is in the archives and records of the seventeenth-century British navy. The increasing scale and frequency of naval warfare over the second half of the century resulted in a plethora of primary material containing innumerable discussions of wounds, processes of healing and recovery, and disability experiences, from both institutional and individual perspectives. The Chatham Chest, for instance, was a pension fund for disabled sailors created in 1590, the records for which represent a rich archive of disability experience.

Upon entering naval service, sailors were rated in one of several categories, which determined their place on the ship, as well as their level of pay. Scholars have argued that these ratings were based on skill level in performing specific tasks while at sea, but evidence tells us that these were also determined by the physical state of the seaman’s body. Naval paybooks from the seventeenth century list each sailors’ rating in one of three categories: “Able,” “Ordinary,” and, somewhat less frequently, “Criple” (variable spelling). One such paybook, from 1685, shows an example of an entry in which one William Moor was initially rated as “Able,” which was then crossed out and replaced with “Ord.” This was then crossed out again and replaced with “Criple,” demonstrating a shift in Moor’s embodied state within the confines of this particular voyage or period of service. Shifting entries of this kind are scattered throughout these records from the later decades of the seventeenth century.

Notably, the rating of seamen usually occurred after ships had set sail. It was not enough to observe the body on land, to see its shape and be able to determine that it was able; rather it was necessary to see the body in motion, performing the tasks necessary on board the ship, with the additional physical factor of the sea testing one’s balance, strength, agility, and the function of both the body as a whole, as well as each limb individually. The process and timing of rating thus suggests a differentiation between form and function of the body in defining the boundaries and delineations of the “able,” “ordinary,” and “disabled” bodies of early modern seamen. “Disability” in this context applied to acquired physical impairments, rather than periods of sickness or illness, even if these required a leave of absence for treatment or recovery.

There were a variety of ways that seamen came to describe themselves as “disabled,” which included degrees of disability, as well as temporary and permanent states. Some seamen might speak of a single limb becoming disabled during their service, or a limb being “utterly disabled,” while others would describe a wound or injury and then state that this rendered them more generally “wholly and utterly disabled” in their body. These descriptions frequently appear in the Chatham Chest pension records, which list the nature and impact of wounds received and corresponding pensions approved by the Navy Board. Disabilities were recorded using a variable scale, with phrases like “somewhat disabled,” “much disabled,” and “greatly disabled,” associated with different amounts of renumeration. The reader will occasionally encounter the phrase “disabled for continued service,” but most often the term is allowed to stand on its own or even paired with an embodied location, such as “disabled in his right arm.”

"Shipping in a Calm," by Peter Monamy, c. 1700-1725. Image courtesy Yale Center for British Art.

Disablement or loss of a limb did not disqualify seamen from continued service in a range of positions. One mariner wrote to request a new position in the navy, describing his “fitness for a Cooks place […] which Duty he shall most faithfully discharge.” Disabled seamen did often reenlist as cooks, but not solely in this position, as naval scholars have previously attested. Many petitioned to reenlist without stating their preferred position, and some documents show that they reentered in a range of places, from cook, to purser, to gunner. These positions were all warrant officers, with much higher salaries, individual accommodations, and the ability to employ an assistant or deputy. This begins to depict a system of social and structural support for both temporary and ongoing periods of disability during the service of these reenlisted seamen.

Petitioners writing in the first person usually described themselves as “disabled,” or as “Pensioners,” rather than using the term “Cripple,” in accordance with official naval categorization. Between the individual petition documents and the institutional pension records, we can see that while disability is certainly a category of self-definition for the seamen, it was also useful for the purposes of administrators, and there is not necessarily a clear and definitive divide between, say, “disabled” as an individual identification, and “Cripple” as an official one. These terms and categories were in flux, much like the bodies they were intended to describe, and they could mean different things to different parties simultaneously.

For the men and boys of the late seventeenth-century British navy, disability was a category of self-definition, a shifting and sometimes impermanent state of the body, a tool by which they might acquire new or greater sources of financial support for their families, and an indication of their service and participation within a larger social and institutional system. A denial or obfuscation of disability is a dangerous thing, past or present. Human beings have lived in and experienced their bodies in diverse ways that have not consistently conformed to established medical ideals or standards of normativity, and the experiences of seventeenth-century seamen demonstrates that disability has not invariably been received with revulsion or a rejection of individual identity and experience.

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Annastasia Conner is a fourth-year PhD Candidate and Neubauer Family Distinguished Doctoral Fellow at the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on bodily non-normativity in the early modern world, particularly centered on intersections of disability and gender. She is currently writing a dissertation entitled “Shifting Bodies: Experiencing Disability in Seventeenth-Century England.”

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