Caraccioli

Hey, this user ID of mine is one short of being a skull! We can't have that and this seems like a good place to add a superfluous post.

It sort of seems like a conflict of interests, but who knows? Maybe the fictional Order of the Leviathan can become the underpinnings of an umbrella organization.

The man dressed like a ship's surgeon? What does she mean? I am the ship's surgeon...the dread surgeon Mission!

Dramatic Rabbit!! Bum bum bummmmmm! (I love the phrase 'dramatic rabbit.')

Cheers! (That'll teach ya' to include me in your friends list. )

Now, about those dental worms...you really need to know more about this subject. "The belief that dental caries and toothache could be caused by worms was, at that time, still in full vigor, and it gained still greater force by reason of observations recorded by different scientists, whose affirmations could with difficulty be doubted, for at that period the great number still swore blindly in verba magistri. Oligerus Jacobaens (1650 to 1701), a Danish physician and anatomist, who taught in the University of Copenhagen, declared that in scraping the decaying cavity of a tooth that was the cause of violent pain, he had seen a worm come forth, which, having been put into water, moved about in it for a long time. Martin Six, having split some decayed teeth a short time after they had been extracted, asserts that he determined the existence of worms in __ them. (It is probably that this observer, as well as others, mistook the dental pulp for a worm, an unpardonable error, in truth, at a time when the anatomical constitution of the teeth had already been very well studied by several scientists, and especially by the celebrated Bartomoleo Eustachius.) Gabriel Clauder (1633 to 1691) not only believed in dental worms, but maintained besides that these were the most frequent among all the causes of toothache. In a certain way, to sustain this opinion of his, he relates a case in which a tooth of healthy appearance being the seat of great pain, a tooth-drawer had asserted that there must be a worm in its interior; and, in fact, on the tooth being extracted and afterward split, the little animal whose existence the tooth-drawer had divined, was found to be existing inside of it! Philip Salmuth asserts that by using rancid oil he got a worm out of the decayed tooth of a person suffering from violent toothache, thus causing the cessation of pain. The worm, he says, was an inch and a half in length (!) and similar in form to a cheese maggot. Nicolaus Pechlin (1646 to 1706), professor of medicine at Kiel, testifies to having seen five such dental worms, like maggots, come out by the use of honey, though he does not say whether they issued from several cavities or only one! Gottfried Schulz. But all this is nothing compared to what Gottfried Schulz has dared to assert, viz., that by using the gastric juice of the pig, worms of great size can be enticed out of decayed teeth; some of these even reaching the dimension of an earth worm!” (Guerini, p. 231-2) “[Carlo] Musitano [1635 to 1714], too, believes in worms in the teeth, but does not admit, as preceding authors had done, that they generate spontaneously. He holds instead that they result from the eggs of flies and other insects, which, together with food, are introduced into the carious cavities and there develop in the heat of the mouth.” (Guerini, p. 247) “As to worms, the best mode of destroying them [according to Musitano] is by using bitter substances, such as myrrh, aloes, colocynth, centaurea minor, etc., but sometimes the use of sweet substances, such as honey, is a good means of drawing them out of the carious cavities!” (Guerini, p. 248)

Phoebe rocks!

That Black Pirate definitely belongs on such a list. Alas, it's old and careworn, not shiny, colorful and within recent memory. Oh, and what about The Crimson Pirate? That list needs another overacted opus with garish non-PC outfits...

I think people make things like the Letters of the Mark look old because that's what's expected by the masses. If PoD wants to sell his letters on eBay, he's probably well advised to make them look old because I suspect most people there would want to buy that versus one that looked new. (OTOH, he could try selling it without aging and see what happens...eBay auctions are neat way to do such marketing experimentation on the cheap.) Although that was actually my original thought when I asked what paper would actually look like after being at sea for a couple of months. I can't believe all paper completely yellowed to the tea stained color in such short periods of time.

To echo some previous posters... Do aging however and with whatever makes you happiest. There's no right way to play pirate. If you don't like one way, don't do it. If you tried one way and it didn't work for you, do it another way next time. It's your stuff and your schtick. We're here to share ideas with each other, not enforce best practices or decide the way others should do something. "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." -Eleanor Roosevelt

I agree with Hawkyns that it only takes a few events to get your kit looking authentically used. I have never sought to artificially age mine. (Being a surgeon, I have the notion that my clothing would be a little less desperate looking than your average seaman, so that is probably part of it as well.) Still, if aging is fun for you and makes you feel more like the character your portraying, I don't see where it really matters that much. Now authenticity of smell is not what I'm personally going for, so I don't care a whit about that aspect vis-a-vis my character. (Keep in mind that this is from someone who prefers hotels to encampments and enjoys showering and regular daily ablutions, event or no.) People who want that level of authenticity, great! Have fun with it, knock yourself out, do (or in this case, don't do) your thing. I'll be over with my surgical junk doing my thing with the scents of Speed Stick, Ivory and Johnson's Baby Shampoo surrounding me. (Of course I use Johnson's Baby Shampoo.)

Yeah, I worked with Cutter last year at Hampton. I loaned him all my amputation stuff and he talked about amputation while I talked about other medical procedures and instruments. He was going to do a leg amputation there, but either he didn't get the chance or I didn't see it. He's a great guy - it was a genuine pleasure to work with him.

Wow, I like that waistcoat. Very stylish looking.

It's what I usually prefer to do anyhow. (Except MBTI, where I am in love with my INTJness.)

I like your results much better than mine. I think I'll borrow them - except I'll switch the primary and secondary around. (To hell with the stupid colors, I'll pick my own categories.)

I would say Joe right. You might try and find the closest city with a newspaper from that time and see what you can find there. Other than that and possibly court record from the closest place with a court during that period, I don't know what else you could search for. The few journals we have from pirates are not very specific on locations and the latitude/longitude stuff of a particular island or city between seaman's accounts often don't even agree with each. I'd say your best bet is land-based records (or an undiscovered journal. )

This was sort of interesting - it's a test to see what sort of career paths you might enjoy using nothing but colors. The concept seems a bit sketchy. The results had some good points and some bad ones for me. I'll trim all the career suggestions they gave me so as not to needlessly fill the screen with junk, but my results came up as: "Best Occupational Category: You're a CREATOR Key Words: Nonconforming, Impulsive, Expressive, Romantic, Intuitive, Sensitive, and Emotional" Uh, only the first and fifth words seems appropriate to me. Of all the things I am not, romantic, sensitive and emotional are probably near the top of that list "2nd Best Occupational Category: You're a PERSUADER Key Words: Witty, Competitive, Sociable, Talkative, Ambitious, Argumentative, and Aggressive " Better, but still off. So it's a mixed bag. If it amuses you, you can try this test HERE. Note that you have to give them some info like your email address, but from my experiment, you can type in garbage there like UncleWiggly@rabbitsa.com and it'll probably accept it.

Ah, Stranger in a Strange Land. Number 3 or 4 on my top five favorite books list. Get the unabridged version if you can find it. It contains a few scenes the make a great book excellent. I once read some, if not all, of Foucault's Pendulum. I found it quite frustrating to read, Although it's been quite a long time, I seem to remember not being quite able to follow the logic of his narrative. It seems to me that he wandered off on tangents that made the story rather diffuse. (Which kind of reminds me of the Rings trilogy, although I'm not sure that's an apt comparison.)

It can't be much worse than what's going on in the Valentine's Day thread in Twill... My hard drive crashed. So while it's being repaired, the Journel will be further delayed. I just hope I can salvage all the pics I saved from it. I do work on it every day, but the main pages are each taking a day unto themselves to complete. I have 4 or 5 more and one more extra page to complete.

Here's to my favorite tailor and great fellow thinker!

You're probably in the best place to find evidence for your area. I'd be looking through the newspapers, court documents, police records (if they have some from the periods you're considering) and similar current event scrawlings. Court docs are often a goldmine for such info. Or you could just go the traditional route and say, "_xxx_ is reputed to have _yyy_" and "Legend says that _zzz_".

I thought this bit was interesting. It's from Abraham Crowley's journal Crowley's Voyage Round the Globe as included in William Hacke's A collection of original voyages (1699). "...we threw one Man overboard. He was an old Dane, who dying in the Night, and being stiff before any Body knew that he was dead, it was no sooner perceived, but some made hast to call the Doctor and Minister to him, whilst others was busie in rifling his Chest, to get what he had saved. Yet fortune did not favour them, for they were quickly compelled to return what they took out of his Chest with shame." (Crowley, p. 41) Nothing about an auction, but I thought it was interesting nonetheless. Note this makes the fifth period account I have recording the throwing of bodies overboard. The first was in Bruce S. Ingram, Three Sea Journals of Stuart Times (Rogers account), one man on page 163 and another on page 188 (a surgeon!). The second was in Henry Teonge, The Diary of Henry Teonge, one on page 130, another on page 137, and another on page 246. The third was in Woodes Rogers, A Cruising Voyage Round the World, p. 89-90. The fourth was in Edward Barlow’s Journal of his Life at Sea in King’s Ships, East and West Indiamen & Other Merchantman From 1659 to 1703, three bodies on page 214, one on 223, the last on 276 (an officer). It may not have been preferred, but it was certainly not uncommon. In fact, I have twice as many references to tossing the bodies over the side than I do to proper burials. While scanning my notes, I also found this in Teonge: “[Dec. 9, 1675] The bo’sun’s goods are this day sold at the mainmast (Endnote 147: MS. boarson’s. It was the custom for slop clothes to be ‘sold always above decks, at the mainmast’ in the presence of the whole ship’s company. The same applied to the effects of a deceased seamen.) at an extreme dear rate…” (Teonge, p. 109)

Crowley is up for death. "...on Feb. 14. in this Year [1686], there came News from Japara to the City of Batavia, that the Javans had fallen upon a Party of the Hollanders, and had killed 80 of their Number, the chief of whom were Francis van Tack and Jerimiah Van Fleet, who (as an Addition it seems to the other Provocations) being sent by the general of Batavia to fetch 500000 Rix Dollars..." (Crowley, p. 27)

Well, you're in fine company - there are several splendid examples of womanhood after this manner roaming about these parts.