OK...so I guess everyone is as ignorant as me :))

it just seems odd to me that there are so many paintings of sailors with clean shaven faces but beards under their chins plus the reference in Paddy Doyle (and somewhere else that I can't remember) to shaving under the chin as though it has a particular significance to sailors yet none of my sporadic researches have turned up any explanation. I know that it was a 19th century fashion but wondered if it had some sort of religious connotation (quite a lot of Nantucket, Quaker whalers seem to have it) or a mark of marital status (like yellow hose centuries earlier).