Sailortowns could be found across the globe during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These port district neighbourhoods were often characterized by entertainment venues, lodging houses and brothels, where temporary visitors such as seafarers and residents met. However, the vibrant and transient culture of sailortowns symbolised a lifestyle that middle-class observers deemed chaotic and threatening to societal order. In our recent article in Social History 50:4, ‘Port communities on both sides of the Atlantic: neighbourhood life and public festivities in the sailortowns of Antwerp and Buenos Aires, c. 1880–1930’, we challenge this one-dimensional view. By adopting a comparative approach to two port districts with some of the most notorious reputations worldwide, we show that although sailortowns could indeed be dangerous and rowdy places, they equally fostered urban communities defined by civic life and mutual aid, while also highlighting the distinctive features of each district.
Margins of the City
In his nostalgic and semi-autobiographical account of sailortowns around the world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Stan Hugill portrayed a colourful yet stereotypical image of these port districts. For example, Buenos Aires’ La Boca was depicted as “the rendez-vous [sic] of criminals and assassins of all kinds”, while Antwerp’s cosmopolitan and unruly character was described as that of a “free port” where “the best and the worst of the world’s seafaring fraternity” could be found.[1] Over the last decades, these images have been increasingly questioned and re-evaluated within maritime history, as scholars have argued that we need to move beyond such stereotypes.[2] Yet the everyday experiences and local populations of port communities have received relatively little attention. This is partly due to the long-standing fascination with vice, crime and prostitution in the maritime world, which has overshadowed other aspects of urban life and the people who inhabited these communities. Nevertheless, a focus on neighbourhood life and public festivities in sailortowns highlights the complexity of these districts and reveals them as more than merely maritime spaces of vice.
Fig. 1. Class of Mr. Weyler in Keistraat [located in Antwerp’s port district], 1887. City Archives of Antwerp – Felixarchief, Verzamelingen, Foto’s, sa345061.
Urban Communities
Despite their notorious reputations, sailortowns were also neighbourhoods where communal life thrived. Families lived alongside boarding houses and taverns; schools operated near docks and brothels (Figure 1); and local markets created spaces where residents and transients interacted. These elements reveal that port districts were also enduring urban communities with their own rhythms and networks of solidarity. Public celebrations made this especially visible. In Buenos Aires, carnival transformed La Boca’s streets into arenas of music, dance and collective expression, while in Antwerp festivities such as 50th wedding anniversaries highlighted the importance of family life in the very heart of the port district. In addition, community associations played an active role during such events and local authorities also contributed by, for example, decorating streets and organising elements of the celebrations.[3] These practices show how local traditions, everyday routines and moments of collective joy contributed to the social fabric of these neighbourhoods, which fostered a sense of belonging and collective identity. This was also the case in times of disaster, such as floods or fires, when sailortown communities mobilised to support one another. Such experiences were, for instance, a direct incentive for the establishment of the Sociedad Italiana de Bomberos Voluntarios (Italian Society of Volunteer Firefighters) in 1884 (Figure 2), which reflected the Italian character of La Boca and still exists today.[4]
Fig. 2. Sociedad Italiana de Bomberos Voluntarios, volunteer firefighters from La Boca leaving the station, c.1920. Archivo General de la Nación, 18782.
The broader picture
Looking beyond Antwerp and Buenos Aires, sailortowns can be seen as mirrors of the societies in which they were embedded. They concentrated many of the tensions of urban life, such as disorder and respectability, transience and rootedness, marginality and belonging. This complexity reminds us that neighbourhoods on the urban margins often played a central role in shaping civic culture and everyday life. And just as past societies struggled to reconcile stereotypes with the lived realities, contemporary cities continue to wrestle with the images and reputations of marginalised neighbourhoods. Although many port districts have evolved and taken on new roles, their legacies still influence how these areas are imagined and experienced today. For example, Antwerp’s Schipperskwartier (Sailor’s Quarter) is still known for its red-light area, set in the shadow of the redeveloped docks and tourist-friendly old harbour, while in Buenos Aires, La Boca remains a lively and colourful neighbourhood along the Riachuelo River, famous for its painted houses, tango clubs and Italian taverns. In both cases, local authorities have taken initiatives to reshape the reputations of these neighbourhoods, yet they continue to carry echoes of their past.[5] In sum, neighbourhoods like sailortowns remind us that the stories we tell about these places matter just as much as their histories.
Kristof Loockx is a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Urban History at the University of Antwerp. He has published on the intersections of social, maritime, labour, gender and urban history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with a particular focus on the port cities of Antwerp in Belgium and Boston, MA, in the United States. The article in Social History and this blog are part of his project on the effects of urbanization, port expansion and increasing mobility on the socioeconomic development of port districts, funded by the Research Foundation – Flanders, grant number 12X1822N.
Laura Caruso is an associate professor at the Universidad Nacional de San Martin and a researcher at the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) in Buenos Aires. She has published on the social history of the port of Buenos Aires and the world of port work in the early twentieth century, with particular attention to communities, hierarchies and shared values. The article in Social History and this blog are part of her research on the community, identity and history of the port district of La Boca, funded by the Humboldt Foundation.
References
[1] S. Hugill, Sailortown (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1967), 143, 240.
[2] V. Burton, ‘The Myth of Bachelor Jack: Masculinity, Patriarchy and Seafaring Labour’, in C. Howell and J. Twomey (eds), Jack Tar in History: Essays in the History of Maritime Life and Labour (Fredericton: Acadiensis Press, 1991), 179-183; G.J. Milne, People, Place and Power on the Nineteenth-Century Waterfront (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2016), 67-71.
[3] ‘Gouden bruiloft Brillo-Otwals’, Het Handelsblad, 4 June 1905; La Prensa, 10 February 1904.
[4] R. Caldera, ‘Bomberos y vecinos: Organización e intervención en las catástrofes barriales (1884-1912)’, in M. Aversa, R. Caldera, L. Caruso, L. Heidenreich and C. Schettini (eds), Cartografías portuarias: Vida social, identificaciones colectivas y territorialidad en la Boca en el cambio del siglo XX (Buenos Aires: Teseo, in press).
[5] F. Cool, ‘Gazet van Antwerpen – mythe of realiteit?’, Knack, 16 March 2001.