SAILORS were once known for spending their leisure hours in brothels in foreign ports. Okay, they were not just known for it. They actually did it. That, for better or worse, was considered compensation for hard work and long hours at sea. Things have changed dramatically. Now men in the Navy have much less incentive to visit these fleshpots. On many naval ships, as much as 40 percent of the crew is women. And, there is plenty of opportunity for sex with shipmates. News flash: The typical naval vessel is becoming more and more like your average college dorm.

In his interesting and candid article “Co-ed Crew: Reality vs. Taboo,” in Proceedings Magazine of the U.S. Naval Institute, Capt. Kevin Eyer writes:

[I]t would not be unusual for you to be glad, believing that your Navy has grown up into a service no longer sullied by raw, alcohol-fueled lust. You may reasonably think that the Navy is a professional and sober organization in which the worst elements of human weakness have been stamped out. Certainly that is the image that leadership jealously promotes and guards.

But you would be naïve to believe this mythology. You see, human nature has not changed, and water inevitably finds its own level. So, even despite the Navy’s ever-increasing efforts to legislate morality (or perhaps because of it) sailors have discovered new ways in which to be, well, sailors. Over time, they have largely replaced those historic foreign dalliances with that which is more expedient and close at hand: sex with their shipmates.

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