Oops

Certainly I did. Not every sailor is a topman; there are fo'csle hands, waisters, afterguard, and officers too. I suppose even topmen might have saved such things to go ashore in.

I don't think anyone would dispute that. If a certain item never existed in the period, obviously it couldn't be stolen by the period's people. Now you're talking about something completely different; saying that fancy stuff that IS period can't be worn by common pirates, because landsknechts didn't wear the fancy clothing of their own period. But pirates were in fact seen wearing some items that were on the cargo list for the Providence, a plundered vessel. Taffeta ribbon, for instance. And pirates were not at the bottom of a social hierarchy, as you say landsknechts were, but were outlaws who in some cases chose their own leaders. So no parallel exists with German soldiers from a different era in another place. I have seen many depictions of pirates very well dressed, but I would not trust those depictions since they were not made by eyewitnesses nor, so far as I can tell, were they based on eyewitness descriptions. Nor, for the same reason, can I trust most of the depictions of pirates plainly dressed. Every time I see a pirate picture in a book there's never more than a caption and, if I'm lucky, the name of the collection it came from. No basis for me to judge authenticity there. Me? I'd take the money. But the question isn't what I would do, but what pirates did. And we can't just throw out the evidence reported by eyewitnesses of what pirates wore at their hangings or how Bartholomew Roberts dressed for his last battle because we personally would have done something different. You're welcome.

Pure gold, Petee. Thanks for the work. Since this was a cargo boat, these boots might have been meant for sale to landsmen, rather than being worn by a sailor. For some reason, I can recall more film and artistic representations of bucket-booted Dutchmen than bucket-booted Englishmen. Were bucket boots more popular in the Netherlands than elsewhere?

Somewhere, maybe in Alister McGrath's biography of John Calvin, I read that the average Puritan was "no ascetic" because "he found it a serious hardship to drink water when the beer ran out." I believe McGrath misinterpreted the facts. Beer was drunk not merely for fun in those days, but because it was much safer than water, which was often contaminated with cholera and God knows what else. Nevertheless, while the Puritans could be plenty ascetic about some things, they saw no shame in drinking beer in moderation. I don't know the Puritan stance on drinking wine, although I know that John Calvin, whose theology was the foundation of Puritanism, approved wine drinking in moderation. But note that "Sunday blue laws," which forbid drinking alcohol on Sundays, are a New England Puritan invention.

Hi, Pub Management? Daniel here. I screwed up my ability to post. My old e-mail address, derby@joplin.com, expired some weeks ago. I decided to change it to danimal@pyracy.com, but when I changed it I couldn't get my validation e-mail. So here I am, reregistered under the appropriately embarrassing nickname of "Oops." I sent off an e-mail yesterday to pyracy@graysail.com, but I don't know if it ever got there. Is there anything to be done to revive my old account?

Er, hi. This is Daniel again, but I've screwed up my regular account and can't post from it. Thus I am appearing temporarily under the humiliating moniker "Oops." I note that this thread started with the claim that pirates cannot justify unusually fine clothing by saying they stole it, because, as with German landsknechts, their superior officers would take it from them. The Davis/La Buse incident suggests that the very opposite was sometimes true with pirates; the pirates would demand that their superior officers yield up their finery to the men. Foxe wrote, I would point out that there was far more clothing to steal than just the crew's own clothes. Clothing was also cargo. And the clothing in the seamen's chests was sometimes surprisingly good. As it happens, I have inventories of two prizes that show some of the clothing available to be plundered, from J. Franklin Jameson's Privateering and Privacy in the Colonial Period. The merchantman Providence was taken by a privateer en route from Falmouth, England to Virginia in 1673. Here are the clothes that she had aboard (I exclude clothes plainly labeled as women's, since the vast majority of pirates would not have worn this). 13 pairs of French falls (collars) 11 pairs plain shoes 6 pairs men's woolen hose 12 pairs Irish cloth hose 2 old hats 2 new shirts 20 pairs worsted hose 1 coat (worn) 1 doublet (worn) 2 pairs breeches (worn) 22 pairs men's French falls 4 pairs pumps with heels 12 pairs boys and girls shoes 30 men's plain shoes 24 pairs men's French falls 10 pairs men's plain shoes 40 pairs French falls and wooden heel shoes for men and women 18 pairs men's plain shoes 2 pairs boys' plain shoes 66 low crown black hats 3 gowns 2 Jasto Corps (justaucorps) 4 stuffe coats for men 2 stuffe vests for boys 2 boys' little coats 2 children's coats 2 scarlet parragon (double camlet) coats 2 children's parragon coats 1 boy's coat 5 coats and breeches for men 2 men's cloaks 12 men's white worsted hose, rat-eaten 23 low crown black hats 16 pieces of taffeta ribbon, several colors 20 pieces black taffeta ribbon 1,728 coat buttons 3 straw hats [items below are marked as having been taken from the seamen's chests] Chest 1 2 pairs children's hose 144 breast buttons 1 silk neck cloth 1 demity waist coat 1 old shirt 1 coat 1 pair breeches Chest 2 12 pairs men's white worsted hose 5 foul shirts 3 pairs foul drawers 1 pair fine gloves 2 stuffe coats 1 pair breeches, waistcoat and jacket 1 waistcoat and jacket more 1 pair new and 3 pair old shoes 1 pair yarn stockings 3 neckcloths 2 pairs hose Chest 3 6 men's coats 1 stuffe pair breeches and doublet 3 pairs cloth breeches 1 old doublet 2 pairs Irish stockings 3 pairs children's hose 5 boy's hats 1 periwig 2 white tiffany hoods 2 pairs of gloves 3 bands (collars), 1 laced 2 pairs of sleeves 276 buttons 1 child's silk cap How much of this was "fine" is not clear, but such items as fine gloves, a lace collar, a silk neckcloth, a periwig, scarlet double camlet coats, and tiffany hoods certainly sound pretty fancy. We may note, as a contribution to the Never-Ending Debate, that there are many shoes but no boots. The Dutch merchantman Willem was taken by privateers in 1745 while en route from Amsterdam to Curacao. It did not have nearly as much clothing as the Providence, but unlike with the former ship we have some idea of its value. Item Value 504 men's and women's gloves 126 pounds 1 pair silk stockings 2 pounds 5 shillings 6 pairs embroidered vamps for shoes and slippers 6 pounds 2 pr. stockings & 1 pr. mittens 5 pounds (!) 1 pair fustian breeches, 6 pairs sleezes, 2 pair cotton stockings 12 pounds Total value of clothing: 151 pounds, 5 shillings. Note the value of the gloves comes to 10 shillings a pair, more than the price of a whole kersey jacket from the Navy slops! I would guess that these were pretty good gloves. *I assume Foxe is speaking figuratively when he says "four men and a dog." Johnson's General History usually reports considerably larger crews than four men aboard pirates' prizes.