What pirates did not have...

[Swashbuckler 1700]

This tread maybe useless but this is what I have always wanted to do

So lists of classical "piratical" stuff and whether it was used in certain periods ( I say only what was not certainly used you can add some stuff if you like or say if there is errors)

16th century pirates/privateers had no:

Telescope

ship wheel

cutlass

flintlocks

bicorne hats

or other like 18th century fashion stuff like coats

jolly rogers

rum

sextant or other clasical navigational instruments

17th century buccaneers had no:

ship wheel

bicorne hats

or other like 18th century fashion stuff like coats

Jolly rogers (on the most part)

sextant or other clasical navigational instruments

Gaop pirates early 18th century had no:

bicorne hats etc

sextant

[Fox]

Define "classical navigation instruments"?

[Swashbuckler 1700]

Define "classical navigation instruments"?

Well that was really bad choise of words. Often octants are related to pirates (seen that many times).... but astrolabe and cross staff were used in all these berionds....

[Mission]

Anesthesia. They had no anesthesia.

I would really like a bicorne hat, tho'. (I presume you meant tricorne, but the concept of a bicorne strikes me as amusing.)

[Fox]

That's why I asked. You seemed to imply that pirates of the GAoP had navigational instruments not available to 17th century buccaneers.

Mission, I think he does mean bicorn - think "Duke of Wellington".

[Mission]

OK, then I want a quadcorne. Or a unicorne.

I guess I should have known there would be such a thing but since it's out of the period I study, I had no idea. I had seen that style of hat on Wellington in the Sharpe movies, though I didn't know its name. Why he brought it up, I don't know. I have never seen a bicorne associated with a pirate that I can recall... I believe I have been told (or read here) that tricornes didn't really appear till the late 17th or early 18th century and then wouldn't haven't have been in as widespread use as one often finds at reenactments. (Unlike planter's hats. )

Naming all the things pirates didn't have would take an awful long time. Perhaps this is about citing the things pirates wouldn't have worn that they are sometimes credited with? (Although we then have dozens, possibly hundreds, of topics about each individual item that would fit that bill.)

[Swashbuckler 1700]

That's why I asked. You seemed to imply that pirates of the GAoP had navigational instruments not available to 17th century buccaneers.

Mission, I think he does mean bicorn - think "Duke of Wellington".

Yep I mean bicorne (so often seen in movies like potc 4) but Tricones could have been(almost) around in buccaneers time since they evolved by late 17th century from cavalier hats... and there were buccaneers as late as 1697 when tricorne was already formed in western fashion.....

[Swashbuckler 1700]

OK, then I want a quadcorne. Or a unicorne.

I guess I should have known there would be such a thing but since it's out of the period I study, I had no idea. I had seen that style of hat on Wellington in the Sharpe movies, though I didn't know its name. Why he brought it up, I don't know. I have never seen a bicorne associated with a pirate that I can recall... I believe I have been told (or read here) that tricornes didn't really appear till the late 17th or early 18th century and then wouldn't haven't have been in as widespread use as one often finds at reenactments. (Unlike planter's hats. )

Naming all the things pirates didn't have would take an awful long time. Perhaps this is about citing the things pirates wouldn't have worn that they are sometimes credited with? (Although we then have dozens, possibly hundreds, of topics about each individual item that would fit that bill.)

Sharpe good movies.....

[Jib]

I think Drake had an astrolabe. Foxe can you address this?

[Swashbuckler 1700]

I think Drake had an astrolabe. Foxe can you address this?

Ofcourse he had astrolabe. but I was meanig sextant and octant that were not used in these periods but others were...

Edited March 21, 2012 by Swashbuckler 1700

[D B Couper]

For centuries, sailing vessels carried a single white light for identification. The man on watch had to "keep a sharp lookout" for other ships. Colored side lights didn't come about until 1858. Steam vessels accelerated the number of collisions, so a government committee was formed to devise a solution to the problem.

[Fox]

Yep, Drake would have had access to an astrolabe. I can't think of any instruments that were available to GAoP pirates but not available to 17thC buccaneers, and only the Davis quadrant would have been available to buccaneers and not to Elizabethan seamen.

[Captain Edward Teague]

I am intrigued that you say they did not have rum. Difficult to say perhaps when the actual term was coined for it, but some accounts say that production of at least a rum like substance happened approximately around the proper time and place.

History

Origins

The precursors to rum date back to antiquity. Development of fermented drinks produced from sugarcane juice is believed to have first occurred either in ancient India or China, and spread from there. An example of such an early drink is brum. Produced by the Malay people, brum dates back thousands of years.[9] Marco Polo also recorded a 14th-century account of a "very good wine of sugar" that was offered to him in what is modern-day Iran.

The first distillation of rum took place on the sugarcane plantations of the Caribbean in the 17th century. Plantation slaves first discovered that molasses, a by-product of the sugar refining process, can be fermented into alcohol.] Later, distillation of these alcoholic by-products concentrated the alcohol and removed impurities, producing the first true rums. Tradition suggests that rum first originated on the island of Barbados. However in the decade of 1620 rum production was recorded in Brazil.]

A 1651 document from Barbados stated, "The chief fuddling they make in the island is Rumbullion, alias Kill-Divil, and this is made of sugar canes distilled, a hot, hellish, and terrible liquor".

Colonial America

After rum's development in the Caribbean, the drink's popularity spread to Colonial North America. To support the demand for the drink, the first rum distillery in the British colonies of North America was set up in 1664 on present-day Staten Island. Boston, Massachusetts had a distillery three years later. The manufacture of rum became early Colonial New England's largest and most prosperous industry. New England became a distilling center due to the technical, metalworking and cooperage skills and abundant lumber; the rum produced there was lighter, more like whiskey. Rhode Island rum even joined gold as an accepted currency in Europe for a period of time. Estimates of rum consumption in the American colonies before the American Revolutionary War had every man, woman, or child drinking an average of 3 imperial gallons (14 l) of rum each year.

But of course records were not all that accurately kept of things like this, these dates already seem a bit muddled and of course one should not believe all that they read online.

[Red_Dawn]

OK, then I want a quadcorne. Or a unicorne.

I've got your unicorne right here! I don't think it's period correct, though.

On a serious note, I've heard earrings were either rare or non-existant among sailors.

[Swashbuckler 1700]

I am intrigued that you say they did not have rum. Difficult to say perhaps when the actual term was coined for it, but some accounts say that production of at least a rum like substance happened approximately around the proper time and place.

History Origins The precursors to rum date back to antiquity. Development of fermented drinks produced from sugarcane juice is believed to have first occurred either in ancient India or China, and spread from there. An example of such an early drink is brum. Produced by the Malay people, brum dates back thousands of years.[9] Marco Polo also recorded a 14th-century account of a "very good wine of sugar" that was offered to him in what is modern-day Iran. The first distillation of rum took place on the sugarcane plantations of the Caribbean in the 17th century. Plantation slaves first discovered that molasses, a by-product of the sugar refining process, can be fermented into alcohol.] Later, distillation of these alcoholic by-products concentrated the alcohol and removed impurities, producing the first true rums. Tradition suggests that rum first originated on the island of Barbados. However in the decade of 1620 rum production was recorded in Brazil.] A 1651 document from Barbados stated, "The chief fuddling they make in the island is Rumbullion, alias Kill-Divil, and this is made of sugar canes distilled, a hot, hellish, and terrible liquor". Colonial America After rum's development in the Caribbean, the drink's popularity spread to Colonial North America. To support the demand for the drink, the first rum distillery in the British colonies of North America was set up in 1664 on present-day Staten Island. Boston, Massachusetts had a distillery three years later. The manufacture of rum became early Colonial New England's largest and most prosperous industry. New England became a distilling center due to the technical, metalworking and cooperage skills and abundant lumber; the rum produced there was lighter, more like whiskey. Rhode Island rum even joined gold as an accepted currency in Europe for a period of time. Estimates of rum consumption in the American colonies before the American Revolutionary War had every man, woman, or child drinking an average of 3 imperial gallons (14 l) of rum each year.

But of course records were not all that accurately kept of things like this, these dates already seem a bit muddled and of course one should not believe all that they read online.

Rum was not at least in popular in use in 16th century.

Edited March 22, 2012 by Swashbuckler 1700

[Swashbuckler 1700]

OK, then I want a quadcorne. Or a unicorne.

I've got your unicorne right here! I don't think it's period correct, though.

On a serious note, I've heard earrings were either rare or non-existant among sailors.

That is not so simple. Firstly there is 3 pictures total of them from 1690s and from 1720. In later time they were really sailorous lest say in 19th century.

here is one from 1695

next from 1720 but note these are Dutch sailors

see this tread https://pyracy.com/index.php/topic/6921-an-earring-for-your-perusal/page__st__20

[Fox]

[moderator] I think earrings (and bucket boots, headscarves, parrots, and the like) are pretty well covered on multiple pre-existing threads which you are, of course, free to resurrect and contribute to if you have anything new to add [/moderator].

[Mission]

This doesn't help the 16th century case, but I thought I'd throw it out there.

"The finest of their [brazil's] Sugars fells at 9 s. per Roove, and a small ill tasted Rum drawn from

__

the Dregs and Mulossus, at two Testunes a Gallon." (Johnson, General History of the Most Notorious Pyrates (3rd ed.), p. 215-6)

[Swashbuckler 1700]

[moderator] I think earrings (and bucket boots, headscarves, parrots, and the like) are pretty well covered on multiple pre-existing threads which you are, of course, free to resurrect and contribute to if you have anything new to add [/moderator].

To summary my stance towards earrings:

Yep those pics are quite good sourse for earrings. They seems to be the Dutch style since there those pics of Dutch. see this pic in this tread https://pyracy.com/in...al/page__st__20 . But it is good to note that it seems to mainly Dutch style and there were indeed some Dutch pirates but real popularity of earring seems to be quite small. Also this kind of earrings are different that those Hollywood's or Pyle's hoops. Still it really well plausible that some pirates had earrings and since there is these pics it is not completely myth. Two different artists have put earrings to sailor so it is certainly not artistic error and thus good evidence.