Fox

Are you thinking of the Navigation Acts, first introduced in the 1650s and periodically amended and ratified, which required that only English owned ships with a certain percentage of English crew were allowed to carry goods into or out of English and colonial ports?

I'd love to say I started from scratch, but I bought the body and neck 'in the white', and all the fittings and trimmings. Basically I assembled a 'kit' from different sources. I just had to fit it all together, ream the peg-holes to fit etc, finish it, and set it up. The finish is a light violin varnish; one thinned coat and two un-thinned coats, then the whole french polished.

I was going to start a seperate thread for this, but since others have been showing off period instruments I figured here was as good a place as any. Today I got around to stringing the 17thC fiddle I've been busy assembling over the last few weeks. I turned this pile of stuff: Into this: (And the back's quite pretty too...) I may play around with the soundpost a bit, but it's got a pretty nice tone and plays well

I'm sure I've said this before elsewhere, but Mary Read (and indeed Anne Bonny) were never actually disguised as men - despite what just about every author since Charles Johnson has claimed - they simply wore men's clothes in battle because they were more practical. One woman who did disguise herself and whose name escapes me at present used a horn covered in leather to solve the "head" problem.

Martha Farley was tried for piracy in Williamsburg, Virginia, in August 1728. She was acquitted as she had not taken any active part in the piracies committed by the rest of the crew, commanded by John Vidal, which included her husband. I'm a long, long way from my source materials at present, but what else would you like to know?

The Beggar's Opera is also a great source, but not without its caveats. Off the top of my head I'm fairly sure that at least a couple of old tunes had new words written for the BO, but I'd have to check which ones. Also, the BO was added to and 'improved' throughout the 18th century, so you have to be careful which edition you use.

Thanks William, some great tunes. Just a word to the authenti-minded, a handful of them are too late for GAoP. The Faery Dance and Farewell to Whisky were both composed by Neil Gow, who was born in 1727 (and started playing the fiddle in 1740 if the legends are true). The Firth of Cromartie is attributed to his sons. Come O'er the Stream Charlie is almost certainly a Jacobite tune from the 1740s or later.

Strongly recommend that you look a little deeper into the reliability of Louis le Golif First off, welcome Petee, not seen you for an age. Secondly, I'm going to query the reliability of a book that appears to suggest that Marlborough's infantry fought in bucket boots. That's probably even easier to disprove than pirates in bucket boots. Nobody has ever denied that boots existed, but of all the quotes, only the one I query above says anything about them being worn by non-horsey types, and none at all show them being used at sea.

The really obvious reason for using boat hooks in this case is that we didn't want to go lobbing iron grappling hooks where they might damage the ship, or worse, the defenders. This was not necessarily such an issue for real boarders, but boat hooks would be a useful tool for them nonetheless. There is an account somewhere of the small boat action at the Battle of la Hogue, in which the English boats got close enough to the shore for a seaman to pull a French cavalryman out of his saddle with a boathook. If given the task of capturing a moored ship I would most definitely opt for multiple boats at night with muffled oars.

OK, this wins the prize for my favourite response The (incredibly dull now) reason for my asking is that I was listening to Zombie, by the Cranberries, which was a bit of a favourite in the 90s. After all these years I just realised that it's about the Easter Rising (being an Irish band) and not WWI as I had blithely assumed. I wondered if my oversight was the result of having an English outlook, and sought to test it by asking my colonial friends, who turned up late for WWI, and thus might not think of 1916 in the same way. Thanks. Please now resume your former conversation, which was more interesting. (Of course, if I'd ever watched the video it would have become obvious)

The book only lists the command, no illustrations I'm afraid. Since each command is an action, as opposed to infantry drill in which many commands are postures, I don't know how much use illustrations would be. Half of them could use the same illustration of a guy with an unidentifiable gun tool down the barrel. Most of the commands are pretty self-explanatory if you've ever fired a gun, or even just understand the principle.

Ok, there is no 'right' answer to this question, and I'm not doing a survey, it's just idle curiosity, as I said. What does the year 1916 signify to you? I'll explain why I'm asking later.

I might manage a snippet on Jolly Rogers for you

It's quite possible that it did survive the battle, other papers of Blackbeard's did. They're not in the admiralty papers, so if they survived they must have been in private hands. I've never heard of them surviving 'til the 40s, and if they had then one would expect a pre-40s author to have mentioned them (Phillip Gosse springs to mind), but the only bit ever quoted is the 'such a day, rum all out, 1012 days since I broke my razor' from Johnson. On the other hand, there were quite a few fires in London in the early forties, what with the whole Luftwaffe thing...

Is this what you're looking for? The Master Gunner Commands Silence Handle your rope spunge Put your Spunge into your Gun Take of your Apron Stop your Vent with your Thumb Put home the Spunge to the Breech Turn it about thrice Draw forth the Spunge. Keep it turning Strike it on the Muzzle Exchange the Spunge for the Rammer Handle your Cartridge Put it into the gun Handle your Wadd Put it into the Gun Handle your Rammer Put it into the Gun Ram home Wadd and Cartridge Give three strokes Examine with your Priming Iron Withdraw your Rammer Handle your Shot Strike it on the muzzle of the Gun Put the Shot into the Gun Handle your Wadd Put it into the Gun Ram home Wadd and Shot Give too strokes Draw forth your Rammer Lay down your Rammer Handle your Priming Iron Prick or break your cartridge Withdraw your Priming Iron Handle your Powder Horn Unstop your Powder Horn Hold up your Horn Prime your Gun, carrying the powder forward Stop your Powder horn Join your left hand to the small end Bruise your Powder Return your Horn Cover the Priming with the Apron Your Guns are now loaded, and ready to fire at Command. The Gunner says, Man your Tackles Handle your Crows and Hand Spikes Hall up the Ports and Belay them Run out your Guns Lay the guns to pass in the Ports Point straight Point to Dismast Point to Wind and Water [presumably either this command or the previous - Ed.] Handle your Match Blow your Match Take of your Apron See all things clear of the Reverse Fire. From Francis Povey, The Sea Gunner's Companion (London, 1702) pp. 43-44

I'd have thought that if he ran the QAR aground deliberately then he'd have taken anything and everything he wanted, all nicely bundled up and ready to go. Even if it wasn't premeditated he'd have had enough time to grab his sword if he wanted to before disembarking. At the very least, he'd have had to have waited long enough for the Revenge to realise what had happened and come up alongside. Such a day, rum all out... Unfortunately, Blackbeard's logbook no longer exists (or if it does, it's in somebody's attic somewhere gathering cobwebs). There's a supposed entry from the log quoted in Johnson's General History, but its provenance is far from certain, and that's all there is.

It might also be worth enquiring whether it's possible to come to an arrangement which means not paying the full whack up front. I'm not a vendor by any means, but I have had the odd commission for navigation kit from the Pub. My preferred method is to take no money up front, or a small deposit if I've got to get in extra stuff for the item. Once I've made the item I then send the buyer a photograph to let them know that it really is ready to ship, and I ship it once it's been paid for.

Of course! Precisely. In my example, folks read the poetry of Brooke and Sassoon, and watch Blackadder, and start their research with an idea of the futility and desperation of the trenches. When they then interview the veterans their questions are anchored in that pre-conceived idea and the responses come to match. In the case of Johnson, one of the things he labours as times is the democratic nature of pirate society. So, hypothetically, he goes to interview a pirate in the Marshalsea and starts with, 'Tell me about voting, did you do much voting?' The pirate scratches his ass, thinks for a minute, and says, 'Well, there was this one time when ol' Barbecue couldn't make up his mind whether to fry our eggs or scramble them, so we had a show of hands...'. Eventually this becomes the infamous 'breakfast-council' which can be found in the most obscure editions of Johnson One of the most respected maritime historians of my acquaintance is wont to remind her students to ask of every source 'how and why is this document lying to me'. Documents lie to different degrees, and in different ways, and over different things, and figuring out the how and why is the key to interpreting the thing.

True, but it still doesn't make it any more 'primary'. Whether or not we can read the 'original' made no difference to Johnson himself, therefore the information should still be treated in the same way. Whatever Johnson's sources of information were, they still went through the same processes from the original telling, through the collating, editing, note-taking, ordering, re-editing, to the publication. If you see what I mean... Johnson is a way for us to access those since-lost sources, but we should still treat them in the same way as his other not-lost sources. (FWIW, I personally tend to treat Johnson in the same way as a newspaper - not as primary source but as contemporary journalism) Yes we are (and that's because you're a Johnny Foreigner). Yes, quite. Fortunately for us, much pirate testimony is limited to what you call 'salient points' anyway - these guys could condense four years into a page or two at times. There are so many other issues at stake too, and not just deliberate lying (which is often surprisingly easy to spot). We tend to remember things with levels of importance that are entirely personal to the individual, but we can also have our memories altered fairly easily but outside influences. This can be seen, for example, in some of the testimony of WWI veterans, which changed over time to suit current trends in public opinion about 'life in the trenches', even to the extent of taking on attitudes from Blackadder in the 1980s.

Which is why I brought up the issue of definition. If, as you say, we define 'primary' as meaning 'contemporary' then Johnson is undoubtedly primary - the first volume was published right in the GAoP itself, and several of the stories are unfinished for the very good reason that their subjects were still active. However, above you seem to be equating 'primary' with 'independent', in which case Johnson is undoubtedly a secondary source, since he was not (as far as we know) a participant in or witness to any of the events he describes. In those sections where Johnson had a source that is since lost to us, that doesn't make him any more primary. It's still a secondary source whether we can read the original or not. The issue (as I see, that's not to say I'm right) is about how we use sources, and this is as true of primary sources and secondary sources as it is of 'in-between' sources like Johnson. Can we always believe the testimony given in court? No, of course we can't, but as long as we treat it properly court testimony can still be useful. Neither can we assume that everything said in court is false, so we cannot discard such testimony as worthless. It is up to the individual historian and reader to determine how any source should be assessed and interpreted. We won't always agree, but that's the nature of the beast. The real work with Johnson is to first figure out where any given piece of information is likely to have come from, and then assess how reliable that source might have been. Having done that, it may be safe to proceed with the information gleaned, provided one proceeds in the right way. For example, while I endeavour not to use Johnson too much because of his reputation and inherent uncertainty, I am inclined to believe most of what he wrote about Roberts, because he had such a staggering array of genuine witnesses to call on for his information. I am less inclined to believe most of the stuff in the second volume because his sources are so much harder to track down and because much of it is, at best, 30 year old memory. I LOVE this stuff!

I genuinely don't think that that was the intended message, rather I think it was addressing a valid point in a humourous banter kind of way. However, I apologise freely for any offence inadvertently caused by my response. (And I would take with a pinch of salt anything said by anyone claiming to be 'the most accurate pirate group anywhere' - it's quite a claim to live up to!)

I agree entirely that three is a good rule of thumb, I was really thinking in the opposite direction from your comments above - "I have three independent sources for XYZ, therefore it was common" - but you're right that an absence of the magic three does not mean something wasn't common or never happened. I have only one source describing yellow pirate flags, but that source itself states that yellow was a common colour. Here you make a good point that I meant to make in my earlier post. 'Common' and 'usual' are not the same thing. In specific cases it doesn't help much to make the distinction, but in a more generalised assessment (as we are wont to make here from time to time) something may be common without being usual. Yup, the sources may be independent, but the subjects are not. So, for example, by your definitions, Johnson's General History would be a primary source but not an independent one. I'm inclined to agree with you then that 'independent' implies 'primary', but not vice versa.

It's a good rule of thumb, but shouldn't be treated too rigidly - there are always clauses and caveats to even the best rules of thumb. For example, I have recently been looking at the social hierarchies of pirate companies, and one thing I was lokoing for was evidence of the captain not being allowed cabin furniture. Now, I have three independent sources describing the phenomenon in three different crews - Cocklyn's, Roberts', and Taylor's. So, can we say that it was common for pirate crews to restrict their captain's use of his cabin? No. Taylor was sailing master under Howell Davis before joining Cocklyn's crew, and Cocklyn and Davis were well acquainted. Taylor succeeded Cocklyn on the latter's death, just as Roberts succeeded Davis, so in fact my evidence is restricted to the practices of one group of pirates who all knew each other and at least some of whom were associated with all three crews at one point or another. We can't say, therefore, that their behaviour was commonplace in other pirate crews, despite the required three primary sources. Mission, have you seen EEBO? (And I suspect that the independent/primary question rests to some extent on how one defines 'primary source')

Ah, then you'll have to get the first round in...

Yes indeed. Several pirates chose to hunt amongst the Newfoundland fishing fleets. Many of the vessels had been set out from Topsham and other West Country ports...