Jackdaw

The shop I use is usually Morrisons where I buy Vinegar Salt Curry sauce Gravy .................sorry , thought you said items for fish and chips! HaHa! me hearties! caught you out with my very old seafaring joke!

Hi If you were thrown onto a desert island by some despicable pirate types and were only allowed to take one possession, a definitive reference book on pirates ( oh, the irony of it! ) which book would that be ?? Thanks Landlubber

Hi I'm still trying to find some authoratative reference works on pirates /pirate activity in the Azores about 1700 to 1750's, can anyone guide me in the direction of something worthwhile to read. I know it wasn't very much used in the GAOP but there must have been something going on. Thanks for any help

One of the quotes did say it was beggars who started " rolling their own ". I don't know how much tobacco was but I guess having hauled it all the way from the growing areas it was going to be a luxury item in Europe, so was probably only generally available to the wealthy. I'll see if I can come up with some primary sources.

I did a bit of searching on this forum and got the impression right or wrong that cigarettes were not around in the GAOP but wikipedia says The South and Central American cigarette used various plant wrappers; when it was brought back to Spain, maize wrappers were introduced, and by the seventeenth century, fine paper. The resulting product was called papelate and is documented in Goya's paintings La Cometa, La Merienda en el Manzanares, and El juego de la pelota a pala (18th century) And I found this is from Brittania Concise Encyclopedia Early in the 16th century beggars in Sevilla, Spain, began picking up discarded cigar butts and wrapping them in scraps of paper to smoke, creating the first European cigarettes and then I found this timeline, which if you are interested in the dreaded weed is fascinating , it catalogues in some detail the rise and fall of tobacco, check out 1614 in Spain. Pirates must have been smoking early cigarettes all through the GAOP surely, and probably all over the place http://www.tobacco.org/resources/history/Tobacco_History17.html I think it looks pretty conclusive on the face of it, I haven't been able to follow up any of the references but interested to hear your comments. Looks like y'can started rolling yer own, Jim Lad Jackdaw

.... sorry I meant that Bourbon was of course a French colony at that time, not Portugese as I stated in the above .... whoops

Hi I'm interested , as stated in a previous post, about Oliver Lavasseur . Thanks to those who have offered information to date I've spent a lot of time researching the net and would be interested to know of any of his activities in the Atlantic or if there are any accounts, contemporary or otherwise, on his trial and subsequent hanging at Bourbon ( Reunion ). I'm not interested in the subsequent hunt for his treasure. I suspect there isn't a published or known account of his trial and hanging so if anyone can give me some idea of how pirate hanging would have proceeded in Bourbon, a Portugese colony in the 1720's I will be most grateful, I know about other hangings but not how the Portugese may have done things Excellent forums, enjoying reading the posts Thanks Jackdaw

Thanks!

Thanks but couldn't find him Help Cheers Jackdaw

Hi I'm looking for serious in-depth academic info on this man aka La Buse, Buzzard and if the internet is to be believed Nozzle ( what ??!! ) I've trawled the web and get the usual short biogs ( and, yawn, repeated short biogs ) but nothing of any real consequence. I'm interested in finding contemporary accounts ( newspapers, trial transcripts etc ) or academic books or papers etc about his life, trial and hanging. The subsequent treasure hunt is of limited appeal to me, but interested if the supposed throwing to the crowd of the cryptogram sparked a piratical rush to find the treasure. It must have caused a bit of a stir at the time if true. Thanks for any info you can offer ( I've seen all the obvious googled stuff on the web ) Jackdaw