Jocko

Aye.... I've found a site that has a large collection of plans for ships... Check this'ere site: http://www.instantboats.com/boats.html Jocko

Avast there, Mates!! Before ya start callin' Mr. Maitz a crook , I think ya might not be realizin' who he be! Which also mayhaps the reason why I's asked him the question in the first place! Don Maitz is the artist who put many a cover on the No Quarter Given Pirate-zine .... as well as many a decor betwix the covers... For those of you not familiar with those things, surely you've 'eard of Captain Morgan's Rum??? Don Maitz be the man who created Captain Morgan's image that's used on all the bottles, ads, etc... Therefore, since he is so active within the "No-Quarter-Given-Piratical Community" (say THAT 10 times fast!), I figured that he'd be a good one to ask about tattoos, to be sure ..... I can understand his wanting to protect that which puts food on his plate and as I said to him, if'n he wanted to create Piratical-images specifically for tattooing - not only would I be GREATLY appreciative, but I'd also most likely be first in line!! Good fortune to all ye on the same quest as I - for that "perfect" Piratical Tattoo! Jocko

Ahoy mates, As of late "life" has gotten in the way of me postin' and such... However, today I just managed to get on here and check a few threads... Interestingly, I have recently been discussing with Don Maitz about tattoos. I asked him if he ever was asked to, and did he, create images specifically for tattooing... Although he said that he had been asked before, he also told me that he was unsure of the legalities of the whole thing. He wanted to know about being paid royalties every time someone had one of his images tattooed on themselves and he asked the question "Are these people willing to put a 'copyright Don Maitz' on their bodies underneath the tattoo?" I asked some people I know who are in the business and the bottom line is that there is no way to control who gets what tattooed where... Look at Harley Davidson - How many people have that logo tattooed? I seriously doubt that Harley Davidson gets anything when someone has it done. One possibility that was mentioned was that Don could sell images to a particular shop as flash and get a one-time payment for it. Anyhow, its a shame - for like some of you, I too have been searching for just the "right" piratical tattoo.... no luck yet... Jocko

If'n any of ya sea dogs be wantin' ta build yer own ship I've got some information for ya. I just been talkin' with a fellow from the U.S. Naval Historical Foundation regarding where a Pir.....eh...gentleman of fortune might find plans to build various ships, etc, and word was sent back as to the following: "The most comprehensive source of sailing ship plans is a company called Taubman's Plans Service International 11 College Drive Jersey City, NJ 07305 (201) 435-5205 Fax (201) 985-0438 The company does not have a web site. Mr. Taubman's latest advertising indicates that he is offering his 139 page plans catalog, plus a catalog of British plans for $10 via priority mail." So... I'm hopin' that you scurvy lot will all go out and get yer own plans so that next summer, as I look out on the ocean, it be full of sails! :) Jocko

Welcome! Welcome! The only thing here that might make you sick is an excess of rum! Jocko

Hey there Stynky, I too am facinated a bit with hats (among other things)... One of the things I'm interested in is how to go about making a tricorn out of leather or some such similar material... I've seen 3 or so movies in which a character or two was wearing leather-like tricorns... I thought that they'd hold up much better in poor weather... I also thought that they'd take much more of a general beating than the felt-like cousins... What say you? Jocko

Evil Tiny, I's be wonderin' wheres you shoved off to? I's still like to be hearin' 'bouts you and your crew, I's do... Jocko

Aye... I've been known to...er... "taste" rum now and again....and again... I'd definitely like to be hearin' more 'bout you and yer crew, I's would... Jocko

Please forgive a poor sod for askin', but how much of a difference are we talkin' in price for a custom sword :) versus a "cookie-cutter" ? The oth'r thing I'd be wonderin' is how does one go 'bout gettin' a custom sword made? You said that you spoke with the own'r of a comp'ny that makes swords... but not all of us should be so lucky... In fact, I don't think I's know of any stores/comp'nies anywhere near by where's I be livin'.... Yer 'ssistance is much 'preciated, it tis... Jocko

I'll have to consult me books, I will... I've got quite the bunch... are any of'ya interest'd in a particular pah-rrt of da c'ntry? Jocko

Question then.... How does one go about locating trustworthy and knowledgeable instructors?? Jocko

Ok... I found *A* excerpt of Ocean Born Mary... Its almost exactly the same as the ones I have in the Holzer books... and most importantly it names the ship and the pirate.... I'd be curious to know if any of you have heard of either "The Wolf" or a pirate/privateer named Don Pedro who was supposedly an english nobleman??? Enjoy the tale!! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ocean-Born Mary Mary Wilson was born at sea on July 17th, 1720 (according to the old calendar), soon after her parents set sail from Londonderry, Ireland, aboard the ship, the Wolf. As the ship neared Boston harbor, it was boarded by pirates, led by the ruthless--but very young and handsome--Don Pedro. Don Pedro learned that there was a newborn aboard, and offered to let the Wolf and its passengers continue their voyage, unharmed, if the Wilsons would name the baby "Mary," after his beloved mother. The Wilsons eagerly agreed, and Don Pedro honored his promise. However, before his own ship of ruthless (and now unhappy) pirates sailed away, Don Pedro returned to the Wolf with a length of Chinese silk. He told the Wilsons that the fabric should one day be used for Mary's wedding gown. And so it was, when Mary and Scotsman Thomas Wallace married, in Londonderry, New Hampshire, just before Christmas in 1742. They quickly had four sons and a daughter, but Mary was widowed soon after the birth of her last son. Word of the tragedy reached Don Pedro, still young but now eager to take his fortune and settle far from the call of the sea. He had his men row up the Contoocook River to the 6,000 acres of land he'd been granted by the King of England. "Don Pedro" was actually an English nobleman, previously the "black sheep" of the family, but his wandering days were over. Don Pedro had his ship's carpenter build a fine mansion on a hilltop in what is now known as Henniker, New Hampshire. The beams and detailing in the house are uniquely like a ship. When the house was completed, Don Pedro went to Londonderry and begged Mary to live with him--as his housekeeper, since she still mourned her late husband--and Don Pedro supported Mary and her children in grand style for many happy years. However, the fortune that Don Pedro had earned, was also a curse upon him. One night, men came to the Henniker mansion under the pretense of visiting with their old friend, Don Pedro. Mary and her children went to bed, unaware that tragedy would soon strike. Mary heard a curse from outside her window, and then a groan. Recognizing the voice of Don Pedro, she rushed to the garden and found him alone, dying with a pirate's cutlass in his chest. Before he died, he told Mary where he'd hidden his gold, and he asked her to bury him beneath the hearth in the home they'd shared so happily. She honored his wishes, and lived a long and comfortable life, never leaving the Henniker home. She barely touched the treasure buried in her garden, because Don Pedro had left such a fortune. One of Mary's hobbies was painting, and the American eagle and stars she painted over the front door of the home, can still be seen there today. Inside, her landscape murals also decorate many rooms in the home. After her death in 1814, her spirit remained in the house. In the early 20th century, the home was opened to the public and visitors often saw her rocking chair sway gently as she let them know she welcomed them. Mary has been sensed near the hearth she tended carefully after it became the final resting spot of Don Pedro. Two state policemen saw her one night, crossing the road in front of her house. Hans Holzer, the famous ghost expert, has conducted two different and successful seances to contact Mary. As recently as 1963, she put out a blazing fire in the house, while the owners watched in amazement. On many Halloween nights, Mary rises from her grave in Henniker's Centre Cemetery (twelve rows back from the front gate, and marked with a special plaque), and rides a magnificent horse-drawn coach to her home. Everyone who has seen Mary's ghost, comments on her red hair, green eyes, and magnificent stature, at about six feet tall. She is, by all accounts, an astonishingly beautiful woman as a ghost, just as she was in life. Her home is now privately owned and definitely NOT open to visitors. However, Ocean-Born Mary remains one of America's most famous and beloved ghosts.

Ok... I found one of the many excerpts I have regarding the Country Tavern in Nashua NH... One point of interest is that My wife and I were married in the restaurant... We had been living in Nashua for quite some time and ate brunch at the Tavern every other Sunday... We had become quite friendly with the Manager at the time, Bonnie Gamache... So, when we decided to get married and we were looking for a place, the Country Tavern came to mind... Anyhow, here's the excerpt... ---------------------------------------------------------------- The following account comes from two of Arthur Myers' books on hauntings, a chapter in "The Ghostly Gazetteer" and the Introduction of "A Ghosthunter's Guide." Country Tavern Nashua, NH Over the past 250 years, Elizabeth Ford has shown herself to be an exceptionally warm, loving person - both when she was alive, and since she died at the age of 22. She was murdered by her much older husband, a sea captain. After a long sea voyage, well over nine months, he had returned to find his wife with a baby. Obviously, it was not his. They lived in a house that had been built shortly before, in 1741, in what is now Nashua, New Hampshire. Local legend has it that Captain Ford seized the baby, and locked Elizabeth in a closet for three days. He killed the baby, and buried it beside the house. When he let Elizabeth out and told her what he had done, she went into a frenzy. He stabbed her to death, and buried her elsewhere on the property. For more than two centuries, the place remained a private house, and common rumor was that it was haunted by the ghost of Elizabeth. But these stories became much more prevalent a dozen years ago when the house became a public place - a luxury restaurant. It is called The Country Tavern, and is a couple of miles north of the Massachusetts state line. An adjacent barn was combined into the house. What had once been a private ghost story over many generations now became a phenomenon that was constantly observed by workers in the restaurant, as well as hundreds of customers. Elizabeth became locally famous. She was a beautiful young woman, tall and slim, with delicate features and long hair down her back. Oddly enough, although she looked very young, her hair was white. Elizabeth was most often seen looking out a window of the restaurant that had originally been the barn. But she ranged all over the place, and had a sense of playfulness and comaraderie that endeared her to many of the restaurant's staff. When I heard of The Country Tavern's interesting reputation, I called there and spoke with Meri Reid, a member of the family that owns the place. After consultations, she called back and said sure I could write about their ghost, and could I possibly bring along a medium who might be able to get rid of Elizabeth? Apparently, the owners would just as soon have Elizabeth vacate their property and head off for the wild blue yonder where they felt she belonged. I brought along an excellent, spiritual medium named Annika Hurwitt, who lives in Gloucester, Massachusetts. One of the first people I met at the restaurant was Bonnie Gamache, a manager. She was one of Elizabeth's closest living pals. She told me of waiting on a family named Fox, who had lived there a few years before. They were having a family reunion at the restaurant. "They told me stories about Elizabeth," Bonnie said. "I thought it was a lot of baloney. The mother said that one of her sons used to play ball with Elizabeth. He was there at the table, now 35, and a lawyer. He said yes, the story was true. When he was a child he could see Elizabeth and so could several others of the ten children in the family. He told me that when he was small he would roll a ball across the floor and Elizabeth would roll it back to him." The family related an incident that happened when they were moving out. They had piled into a station wagon, and a moving man told Mrs. Fox that someone must have been left behind. She counted heads and responded that everyone was in the car. He replied, "But I just heard someone say, 'Please don't go.'" Bonnie went on to tell me: "The woman would dust the mantel and then turn around to dust the table, and something she'd just put on the mantel would now be on the table. And there were other little tricks that Elizabeth would play on them. I thought they were kooks at the time, till I had my first experience with Elizabeth. That was when a coffee cup came flying off a shelf and smashed against the wall between the heads of another waitress and myself. It flew a good six feet. Scared the hell out of us." The ladies' room seems to be one of Elizabeth's favorite hangouts. A high point of the folklore of the place is the lady who had her hair lifted mysteriously. Bonnie Gamache was a prime witness. "I was here when the lady was in the ladies' room," Bonnie told me. "I heard an ungodly scream, and this woman came flying out the door, white as a ghost. She said she was standing in the bathroom in front of the mirror, brushing her hair. She had very long hair down her back. She thought she saw something behind her and she turned around and looked, but no one was there. All of a sudden the hair came up off her back and went up into the air, as though someone were holding it up there. That's when she screamed and came flying out. She was very angry; she thought we were playing some kind of a 'Candid Camera' trick on her and was threatening to sue us. When I told her about Elizabeth, she loved it. She went back into the bathroom and waited about half an hour for Elizabeth to come back, but she never did." I had my own problems with Elizabeth. I don't see ghosts, but they play games around me. I've had enough pulled on me over the years to believe in poltergeist activities. One of the spirits' biggies is fooling around when I'm taping someone - either in person or on the phone. Elizabeth went wild during the couple of weeks I worked on her story. I could be taping in the restaurant, or from my home to the restaurant, or to someone else's home, and if I were talking about Elizabeth I learned to be happy if the tape was left unscathed. Sometimes it would be blank. Sometimes the words would be sped up, or slowed down. Sometimes the tape would jam - in front of my eyes - and then suddenly start up again. Elizabeth had fun too with the restaurant's customers. Meri Reid gave me an indication as to why the owners would just as soon see the last of Elizabeth when she told me this story: "When we first opened the restaurant we had an incident," she told me. "There were four businessmen sitting at a table, and two of the plates that were in the middle of the table suddenly slid across the table and landed on the floor. Naturally, there was some consternation. The waitress went over to ask if there was a problem. They said yes, the plates had just slid across the table and onto the floor. The waitress replied, 'Oh, that must be our ghost, Elizabeth.' And the four men stood up and walked out." (This reminds me of a similar case, in which a restaurant in Cobleskill, New York, The Bull's Head Inn, had a resident ghost, thought to be a lady - a Mrs. Stacy - who had lived in the building when it was a home. Mrs. Stacy hated liquor. The restaurant owners had been indiscreet - they had built the bar in her bedroom. Not a good idea. Kathy Vedder, the manager, told me: ("A customer and his wife were sitting at a table in the main dining room. When he put some butter in a little dish, the dish picked right up off the table and flew across the room. The man turned white as a ghost. I picked up the dish and put it back on the table and kept walking, remarking as I went: 'Oh you know, these old buildings.' He just stared at me." (That's what I call cool.) The Contact The day I brought Annika Hurwitt to The Country Inn a large group of observers had gathered there. I guess you could call it a ghost rally. Most of the staff had come in, even on their day off; I had brought several friends; Annika had at least one friend present, a psychotherapist; and there was quite a delegration of regular customers. Annika's friend had a new coat, and Elizabeth stole the belt - in the bathroom, where else? But she brought it back - after everybody had searched the restaurant for half an hour. She rematerialized it - in the bathroom. Annika went into meditation, and told us she was in contact with Elizabeth. "This woman," she said, "was very much in love with the father of the child. What she's doing, she's like the mother animal constantly looking for her young. What we need to do is let her know that her child has passed on and that she can only unite with the child in spirit." In fact, Annika felt that the baby had reincarnated more than once. "What Elizabeth must hear," Annika said, "is that even though we can see you and feel you at times, you are not in your body." She said she would try to move Elizabeth to higher spiritual planes, to help her give up her earthly attachment. Through dowsing the surrounding land, Annika determined that the baby was buried underneath a huge tree next to the house and that Elizabeth was buried under a tree farther out in back. "She thought the baby was there, in back," Annika said, "and that's why she kept looking out toward that tree. She assumed her husband had buried them together, but in fact, out of his maliciousness and jealousy, he had buried them apart." The Seance Annika held the seance, and said that Elizabeth had gotten the message, that she was in another world, and should no longer try to hold on to this physical world.. A few days later, I called the restaurant and talked with Bonnie Gamache. She said there had been no further signs of the ghost. "I love Elizabeth," she said. "I've spent a lot of time with her, and I feel that she's my friend. She gives me comfort. I'm here by myself a lot, and I've never felt that I was alone. The morning after the seance, I went into the ladies' bathroom and told Elizabeth how much I was going to miss her." She had avoided the seance, feeling she could not bear to say goodbye to Elizabeth. Six months later, when the manuscript for the book was completed and I was preparing to send it in to the publisher, I called Bonnie again to see what had happened. "It's been real quiet," Bonnie told me. "I don't think she's here anymore. I wish we had never held that seance." I mentioned that Elizabeth was presumably better off now than in her long earthbound situation. Bonnie began crying. "I know," she said. "But I didn't even get to say goodbye to her." The Sequel - an Interdimensional Friendship Have you ever read a novel and felt downhearted when it ended? Have you wished you could stay with the characters to whom you had become so attached, wanted to find out what happened to them after the story ended? Well, there is a sequel to the above story. The above account was a chapter in my book, "The Ghostly Gazetteer," which came out in 1990. About three years later, I got a call from the TV show, "Hard Copy." They wanted to do a sequence on a case from my books, and asked for suggestions. My first choice was The Country Tavern, because the central figure, Elizabeth, was so loving and attractive. Annika and I showed up on the appointed day, to find the restaurant crawling with cables and cameras and TV technicians. We hadn't been there more than five minutes when Annika whispered to me, "Elizabeth's back." A few moments later I saw Bonnie Gamache and told her what Annika had said. She smiled with delight and said, "Oh yes, she's back." Annika meditated further, and said that Elizabeth is no longer an earthbound spirit. She now knows she is dead, and has been on to higher spiritual planes. She just likes to visit her old earthly haunt. Annika said that Elizabeth comes back for two reasons: Her friends at the restaurant miss her, and she likes to demonstrate to them that death is not oblivion, that life goes on. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'll try to find the excerpt for Ocean Born Mary... I have several Hans Holzer books which have accounts of him and Sybil Leek visiting the house in Henniker NH. Just have to find them... I've been to the house myself, not in it - just outside... Jocko

Have any of you heard about either Ocean Born Mary or The Country Tavern? Ocean Born Mary has to do with a pirate taking over a ship bound for the colonies and making a deal with the captain's pregnant daughter that she name the child Mary if it turns out to be a girl... The haunting is in a house in Hennicker New Hampshire.. The Country Tavern is currently a restaurant in Nashua New Hampshire but back when the "events" happened it was a private home to a ship captain who went out to sea for 10 months and returned home to find his wife had given birth... he ended up murdering her and the baby and burying them in separate locations on the property... If you all are interested I can post the complete stories with all the details... including the pirate captain's name, etc... Jocko

I thank thee! ALL of thee!... I appreciate any and all help that I can get.. I shall do just as you said... I have recently discovered a gun shop not too far from my home which I will, on my way home from work, stop in... thanks again... Jocko