Broken Heads and Lonely Bodies: Embodied Experiences of Mental Disturbance and Distress in the Long Eighteenth-Century British and Danish Navies

Using eighteenth-century British and Danish naval records, this article explores the tensions of embodiment surrounding sailors deemed to have gone ‘mad’. Sailors were routinely exposed to the inescapable effects of the disturbing ocean environment which left marks on their bodies and minds in the form of head injuries and nostalgia ’s lonely longing for home. Maritime warfare, moreover, revealed their emotional and bodily vulnerability in ways which seemed contrary to patriotic portrayals of their masculinity. The medical and administrative centrality of the body legitimised sailors’ mental disturbances and early modern experiences of trauma but also undermined the experiences of those whose bodies were not marked in ways officers noticed or trusted. In the context of their bodily vulnerability and this external scrutiny, sailors also made sense of their own experiences through their bodily sensations, meaning that those whose distress most frighteningly manifested in feelings of bodily alienation were set further adrift. In lives so heavily marked by bodily control in the unpredictable ocean environment and at war, feelings of being disembodied deepened vulnerability.