Fox

Not really. The "13 colonies" were those that rebelled against British rule in 1776 (Boo! Hiss!), but they were not the same colonies that existed in the 1680-1730 time frame. The 13 Colonies were New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. However: Georgia wasn't founded as a colony until 1733. Pennsylvania was founded in 1681. Until 1685 New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth,Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, East Jersey, and West Jersey were seperate entities. In 1685 they were amalgamated into "New England", and regained their autonomy in 1689. Maine and Plymouth were absorbed into Massachusetts in 1691 and Maine remained that way until about 1820ish. Delaware received semi-autonomy from Pennsylvania in 1701 East and West Jersey were amalgamated into "New Jersey" in 1702. Carolina Province became North and South Carolina in 1712. Thus, between 1680 and 1730 the number of colonies fluctuated between 5 and 13, but it was never THE 13 colonies.

Aaw shucks Wait... are you saying that it's six years since I wrote anything worth quoting?

For North America you could pretty much add all of the colonies - they all experienced pirate activity during the GAoP.

Sorry Mission old chap, Captain Edward Cooke's account of his circumnavigation with Woodes Rogers is the first account printed in vol. 2, pages 1-90. The Selkirk illustration is on p. 25 of that volume, in the section on Edward Cooke.

Sadly for Barry Burg, it was not a pirate case (though I seem to recall it featured in his book somewhere). Unsurprisingly, it was a sodomy case. Much of our view of the past is tempered by the very prudish Victorian ideals of the 19th century. We imagine that filth and obscenity are a modern phenomenon because our great-grandparents wouldn't have stood for it. But if you get back beyond the mid-19th century you'll find all sorts of lewdness, swearing, public nudity, bawdy songs and poems etc.

One of my favourite quotes from a period court case: "he thrust his yard into my fundament" SB1700, it rhymes with hunt, and if you have it in Finnish it's probably called the 'K' word.

I thoroughly recommend checking out the poetry of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, for a true insight into naughty words of the late 17th century. Or indeed some of the ballads of the age. For example: Portsmouth's Return, 1682 Our Monarch's whore from France is come Since Vandom's Bugg'ring Tarse Has fallen foul on Crequy's Bum, Instead of Portsmouth's A**e So great affront would make one run From such a wicked place Where A**e has had such honour done And C**t in such disgrace Now she's return'd bright as the Sun So sparkish & so fair And brought great Charles a butter'd Bun A present from Navarr: She had not gone, but to contrive New fashions for the Court; Both how to Dress, and how to Swive, And to improve that Sport Buckley obligingly has brought Both for herself, and Friends, New swinging Dildoes, richly wrought With Satin & Velvet ends: With Furling water, to draw't up streight, And Rowels to heighten delights New-fashion'd Springs, to Scour her Twat From slimy sperm, & whites. Now Nelly you must be content Her grace begins her Reign For all your Brat, you may be sent To Dorset back again Your Hagged Carcase yeilds no delight, As Grafton of late has said Nor Jennings, nor betraying Knight Can bring you to Charles's Bed Portsmouth has play'd so damn'd a trick Mazarine is sore distrest She's taken to herself his Pr**k Bought Dildoes for the rest But Stallion Pilty swears by C**t He'll F**k with all his might For to avenge the great affront And set his Dutchess right

Really? "Don't treat me like a C..." is an oft-heard phrase on this side of the pond (often from people I'm gently correcting). And it's most certainly a period word... at least 13th century. From old Norse.

Forum rules prevent me from posting the answer (that and my English sense of decorum).

And I, this morning, have found an example of proper pirate swearing. In 1720 Bart Roberts wrote to the Governor of the Leeward Islands about a man imprisoned there. The original letter has been lost, but a contemporary copy exists in which Roberts entreats the Governor to treat the prisoner "as a man and not as a C...". Whatever letters followed the C were expurgated by the copyist, but I think we can all guess what they were.

Thankyou :)

Hey Ivan, whose the artist of that painting?

Tricky. It's quite possible I suppose, but I've never run across an example of such. In terms of bulk to value ratio I'd imagine that ornate guns were probably fairly low value when compared to gold and jewels, or even to things like spices and silk. FWIW, Henry Every and his company had so many surplus weapons on board that they used them to trade for provisions on several occasions during their cruise.

Found one with the handwriting in... This is the contract of William May, one of only 5 of Every's men executed.

Thanks Mission, I'm only actually interested in the GAoP stuff so if it's only Snelgrave that might be easier for you to type than scan. I don't actually plan to use the book, I just want to know what's in it.

Can anyone help me out by listing the contents of John Robert Stephens' Captured by Pirates, and/or Jon E Lewis' Mammoth Book of Pirates? Thanks in advance

Unless anyone else can convince me otherwise, that sure looks like straw to me.

There is (or used to be) a group over here portraying Desert Storm era SAS. Their ethos was that if the public found them they had failed.

No, William Philips was a boatswain from London and was executed at Cape Corso in 1722. John Philips was a carpenter from Devon and was killed by forced men from his crew in 1724. Just to confuse the issue, John Philips (before he became a captain) served alongside John Fenn (before he became a captain), who was not the same person as George Fenn.

There is a myth that "hello" was not used until the invention of the telephone, but in fact that's not the case. "Hello" goes back at least to the early 19th century, and variant forms of the words go back much further than that: "illo" is used as a greeting by Shakespeare in Hamlet (1603), and "Hollo" is in Titus Andronicus (1594). "Hilla" dates to the first half of the 15th century.

Extra credit for timely use of the word 'vapoured'.

Seamen were noted for their profanity - William Snelgrave wrote, for example, "the execrable Oaths and Blasphemies I heard among the [pirate] Ship’s Company, shock’d me to such a degree, that in Hell it self I thought there could not be worse; for tho’ many Seafaring Men are given to swearing and taking God’s Name in vain, yet I could not have imagined, human Nature could ever so far degenerate, as to talk in the manner those abandoned Wretches did." It would be wrong, however, to assume that it was not restricted or punished. Some Elizabethan privateering articles included the clause: "Whosoever do talk any beastly or filthy talk at his meat, he shall have a cobkin [beating] of his mess… whosoever do swear or blaspheme the name of God at cards, dice, or at his meat, shall pay a penny for every oath to the poor man’s box". And Woodes Rogers had "ferrules" made to "punish Swearing, by which we found the Men much cured of that Vice". In Henry Teonge's diary he mentions two incidents of people swearing. In the first, the potty-mouthed louts had iron marline spikes tied in their mouths until they were bloody. In the second (on a different ship) a seaman was tied in the rigging for "an hour, and had speculum oris [over to you Mission] placed in his mouth for saying to a seaman in the Captain’s hearing: 'Thou liest, like a son of a whore.'". Tracking down what pirates actually said when they swore is difficult because observers often preferred to no repeat it verbatim, but in surviving records there are plenty of "Damn you" and "God damns", and a couple of insults such as "son of a bitch".

I don't think there's anything wrong with the trousers? To my mind the only thing that is really out of place is the officer's coat. Looking through the other iluustrations from the same book that image originally came from is interesting. The artist actually seems to have known what he was about because when he illustrated Dutch seamen in another part of the book they look completely different. They look, in fact, like Dutch seamen...

Welcome, and bring your marbles.

I haven't seen it for years, but my memory of the Mythbusters pirate show was that not one of the things they did actually had any bearing on real history. If I'd seen the show in advance I'd have asked them to take my name off the credits...