Red_Dawn

This one's cute and timely.

The fast-paced sport of

Thanks, guys!

ok, ill start.....

tis my opinion and not based on actual facts, i'm too lazy to look stuff up tonight.

ITS A TV SHOW, NOT REAL LIFE- ITS RIGGED

I know, I shouldn't get so ticked off at a show.

What this show does is evaluate an equal number of weapons for each side. They then run simulations of how well each combination of weapon works. The side that gets the most kills is the winner. After that their fight choreographer comes up with a battle in which each combatant uses every weapon. There are always problems with this final fight. Warriors shake off major injuries and weapons don't always work the way they would in real life.

Emphasis mine.

That could explain a lot. The pirate could've won, just not the way it was choreographed?

To light a grenadoe, slow match could have been used in this scenario. Other than the legend of Black Beard, i have not heard of anyone else carrying it under their hat. Carried in a can designed to contain lit slowmatch, its a matter of transferring the "cherry" of one match to the next, igniting the grenadoe. It happens all the time on a cannon line. PSSST- hey mate, me linstock is out can i have yer cherry? Sure, here ya go. Voila- second linstock is lit. Timely? No, but imagine a dozen of these things being flung at you from a group over the course of fifteen or thirty seconds.

A lit match could be carried in a match case which was a metal tube with holes in it to let air in.

So it's possible for him to have an already-lit match on his person instead lighting it from scratch. I might've thought better of the fight results if they had used a match case instead of the hair matches.

The pirate was inspired by Blackbeard. He had the burning slow match on the hat (and the black beard).

I don't know. It didn't look lit or even smouldering to me until he was using it on the grenado.

If these two ever actually met I would expect the pirate to take cover until the knight was in range and then blast him with a blunderbuss and that would be that.

I like that better, though it would've been too short a fight for TV.

A match case like the one below was carried by grenadiers on their baldrics. Not sure when these came onto the scene but heres some pictures of what they look like:

Nice pics. Thanks!

This isn't for research, but it's been bothering me for months.

My eldest sister is helping one of our sisters out with her kids. Sometimes she'll watch Deadliest Warrior when the kids are asleep. One day she told me about a fight they simulated between a pirate and a knight.

Wikipedia's explanation for what's going on.

I know these may be fighting words on a pirate forum, but we both believe the knight should've won. But while sis is hung up on the pistol that still fires after being in wet sand (you'll see it near the end of the video), I'm all het up about what I call the Quik-Lite Grenado^TM.

I mean, just how long does it take to light a grenado? Yeah, the pirate in the video has wicks in his hair like Blackbeard, but they're not smouldering wicks. Unless fire-lighting technologies were more advanced than I thought, it must've taken some time to light it, then the grenado. He should've had his head smashed to paste before then.

Seriously, that grenado bugs me, and if you can give me a good estimate about how long it takes to light one in the real world using the technology they had back then I'd appreciate it. Thanks!

I got Lost Treasures of the Pirates of the Caribbean by James A. Owen and Jeremy Owen. My niece, nephew, and sister gave it to me, and it appears to be a children's nonfiction book. I'm afraid to read it for fear of a possible lack of accuracy.

Thank, capn'rob!

I believe that the majority of fishing in the 17th Century in the Caribbean would have been subsistance or for sale from the fisherman to his local community.

This is more or less the size of business I had in mind, though the info on the salt cod industry might come in handy some other time.

Would the local fishermen fish for anything specific, or would they just cast their nets and sell whatever was edible?

The Conch Fishery in the Caribbean was Pre-Columbian. The Conch Shell Horns were used for religious ceremony and pieces of shell were used for jewelry. In archeological digs pieces of Conch Shell were found that appeared to be used as scraping tools for canoe making and bowls and such.

Does that mean it was just a native thing at the time? There goes my idea in post #3. As for conches as jewelry, I've read they make some lovely pearls.

Fish can be hyper-cute, too, especially if they're tiny!

You may need to be more specific regarding the era and locale for the particular catch and method of fishing.

*insert forehead-slapping smilie here* Sorry about that. The time would be roughly late 17th Century to about 1710. The location is around Jamaica and Haiti.

Fishing Conch on the Bahama Banks would be so different than fishing around an island that's a younger volcanic peak such as St. Martin.

Ah, so there's conch fishing in the Bahamas. That'd be fun, having my characters capture a boatload of snails!

What were people fishing for commercially in the Caribbean? Was it just fish, or were other edibles like squids or crabs fished for, too? How did they catch them? Did the fishermen generally own their boats, or were they usually hired by the boat owner? Did they sell directly to the fishmongers or through middlemen? Anything else I might need to know?

Thanks!

Am I bad for giggling at this? Once again, truth is cheesier than fiction!

Sadly...I was told another story about this event...but of course, there is nothing to back it up except family tales and such...like the time my Grandmother told me that our ancestors owned the deed to Rhode Island - yet the document was destroyed when used to make an apple pie. This is the stuff you always take with a grain of salt... (Damn, I'd be living on Mansion Row, on the cliffs, right now).

Rats! And it sounded so plausible.

actually another very important difference between a baroque guitar and even a small parlor guitar from the 1920s is that the baroque guitar as no raised finger board and the fretts are made of gut tied around the neck.

So would a guitarist need to retie the frets every once in a while?

1677: RECORDS AND FILES OF THE QUARTERLY COURTS OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

From the files of the SALEM Commissioners' court, Dec 5 1677, at Salem:

"Hana, wife of John Mason, was fined or to be whipped for drunkenness, and abusing by words and offering to strike Hen. West, a tithingman. Richard West deposed that he heard an outcry at Mason's house, " the Rogue will Kill me," and going in found it was John Meckene who was much in drink.

Peeter Joy was there and Goody Mason, all drunk, and Joy, after the uproar, owned that he struck Mekene twice. Henry West testified that Mr. Samuell Gardner came along looking for his man and they went in together, whereupon Goody Mason tried to strike him with an andiron, call- ing " thou West, thou Harry, thou Deuill," several times.

Someone took the andiron away from her and then she took up a chair. She was very much in drink, not being able to stand upon her legs, but fell down. Mackene and one Humphry Wilhams were also observed to be much in drink. Urged by Mr. Gardner to do his duty as tithingman, deponent requested assistance of Joy, as he appeared to be the soberest, but he refused.

Sworn in court. Constable Samuell Beadle, Jon. Cook and Walter Skiner deposed that they saw John Makene drunk that day. Goody Mason's bill of cost. John Bly mentioned. Peeter Joy, for refusing to assist Hen. West, tythingman, for drinking, and striking Mackene, was fined, which Mr. Hasket was to pay."

Am I bad for giggling at this? Once again, truth is cheesier than fiction!

Not to get off topic, but...oh, what the hell...

So...seeing this I can't help but wonder; would it be PC for me to wear a mask like that at an event? It would be so cool and we have period evidence...sort of. (Don't even bet I wouldn't do it. You'll lose.)

Maybe we could bring this back on topic by asking if it's good etiquette for a surgeon on call to enter the front door of the tavern, especially in this get-up.

"Don't mind me, I'm just here to see the proprietor's younger son. Keep drinking."

P.S. If you do this, Mission, you better show us the pictures!

Born 1571. Captured by pirates aged 12 (ie 1583). Taken to the West Indies where he remained for 12 years (ie until 1595). Entered the seminary in 1595.

Yup, doesn't leave him any time to have sailed with Drake, unless he went on Drake's circumnavigation aged 6, which seems unlikely, and his name doesn't crop up to my offhand knowledge in any document relating to that voyage.

Guess that's another case of a saint's story getting embellished as time goes on.

Incidentally, the bit about being captured by pirates and taken to the West Indies for 12 years also raises a big list of questions!

I know, but everything I've seen about him focuses on his religious life, for obvious reasons. They don't say whether he did some piracy in that time or if the pirates just dropped him off in a port and said, "You're on your own, kid."

This could be interesting, both because I have Catholic pirate characters and because I'm Catholic myself.

I remember getting excited when I learned about Blessed George Gervase, who one source said traveled with Francis Drake, and another source said was kidnapped by pirates. So I asked about him here. To my mild disappointment, he was merely a kidnapping victim and not a reformed pirate.

Finally figured out how to use the copy and paste codes at the Daily Squee.

I'm getting more information here than I know what to do with. I'll have to print this topic when it starts winding down.

Primary source information (court documents, diaries, travelers accounts, etc.) show that people of both genders would go to taverns to get together, dine, party and drink pretty much as they do today, and as they did in England at the time. Out of period, later in the 18C, there started to be more of a sense of "delicacy" about ladies being in taverns, but that was a minority of people influencing the accounts, and doesn't represent the majority. And it certainly doesn't reflect what more common folk considered normal.

So the idea of a woman simply there for a drink or other fun isn't that farfetched (though I suspect the governor's wife wouldn't go to the dockside taverns).

Women could be prodigious drinkers, have multiple drinking partners, run up dept for their drinks, attend taverns with and without their husbands, get into trouble pretty much the same way men could, etc.

Emphasis mine.

That includes fighting, right? Like catfighting, or beating up that persistant jerk who thinks that when a woman says no nine times, try a tenth?

Perhaps one of the reasons we have a hard time wrapping our heads around the idea of society imposing a stamp on our behavior is that we're much more like the transient society of a dockside pub. When you don't stick around for long, it isn't as noticeable when you're a regular brawler, or get the serving maids pregnant. And probably a lot harder to haul your body into court to sue you for whatever fees are involved as compensation.

Does that mean if a sailor gets permanently banned from a dockside tavern, he has to do something epic? I could gladly work with that! (Where's an evil grin smilie when I need one?)

I first raised the point that bars in different places would be different and I stand by that. A bar by the port would most likely be more rough-and-tumble than one in the city center. Still' date=' even the louts in the slummiest of establishments would behave differently if it contained both sexes (and not all of them were to be paid for after hours activities.) For the most part, a man can't impress a female by behaving like someone of no character at all. (This is not to say that everyone in a drinking establishment would be doing such, but some almost certainly would have. Probably more than less if our society is any indicator.)[/quote']

Even now, this isn't always true. It's still a sweeping generalization. I have known male friends in my own world who have quite a bit of money and have been crass and vile and walked out with the prettiest woman in the room, even though there were insulting and degrading to them. I have rarely seen men act differently than they ordinarily would, even to get some nooky.

The more things change...

Good points, Elena. Thanks!

But my pirates have multi-national crews as well (because most crews were like this) and they knew where to go ashore... There were ports like Port-de-Paix, Hispaniola, where the governor preferred to close his eyes and open hands to receive the protection tax from the pirates, there were British ports where a ship wearing a Dutch convenience flag was welcomed...

Blind eyes and fake flags. Got it.

There is a Spaniard (in wartime) who speaks English with foreign accent and he says he is a Venetian merchant sailor hired on a Dutch (or British) ship when asked...

Lying about their nationality could work. I'd be sorely tempted to make them blow their cover for laughs, though.

Yes but those are baroque guitar. It doesn't sound or look like a modern acoustic or classical guitar at all.

I found a bunch of YouTube vidoes of baroque guitars. They're higher pitched than the modern guitar.

And concerning the lyrics Grymm posted, I've been told that political satire and bawd songs were popular in Paris. Assuming I was told right (and understood right), it looks like this was an international phenomenon.

Long, long ago, I attended a lecture on period travel which included a portion on taverns. Respectable women were not entertained in taverns like the men were. Taverns were, essentially, men's spaces. Even when traveling and a stop was made, the women stayed in the coach and food was brought out to them. If a woman was working in the tavern, she wasn't regarded as respectable (this could be a broad definition by upper class standards). Since women owned taverns, "respectable" might mean weather someone was in trade or not. I'll be going to another one of those lectures about taverns on Monday and will try to nail down some details.

I think I get what your saying, though do you mean respectable women in the socio-economic sense or in the moral sense? Also, I take it from this paragraph that the non-harlot workers (serving wenches, musicians, etc.) would get hit on a lot by the patrons.

They're 'on the job', and they've still got their hair up and their heads covered.

Well, dang, it almost sounds like the only way to tell the workers from the working girls was by how many tankards they carried!

Seems like people are focusing on the harlots a lot. Now how about a little more on the violence? Pub brawls, one-on-one fights, large cranky bouncers...that kind of thing. Or maybe some other tavern no-nos.

My infant nephew lying in the bassinette and trying to chew on his cute little Halloween socks while his feet were in them. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture, so I'll link you to the 2nd cutest thing I saw today.

This thread's sure taking some interersting turns.

... would the average visitor to a port side tavern know which ladies are for sale and which just work in the establishment (or are they the same?)?

Working girls wore blue aprons when looking for business.

You guys made me think of another question: did ordinary women ever go to the taverns for a drink (or a flirt, or whatever)?

In Port Royal, prostitutes wore their hair down. Ladies wore them up. Simple enough, eh. Wish they would do that today.

I heard something about the Nice Girls kept their heads covered, but I might've heard wrong.

Thanks again, guys! This definitely helps.

I don't have my pirate library with me at the moment here in Oregon, but if I recall, there was a tavern, inn or pub for every 70 people or so in Port Royal at its height. The women had a mouth on them that was far fouler than any truck driver you could imagine in our times. They were brash, bold and complete, well whores. Drinking was to regular excess and the town didn't hold to the same standards of London at the time. It was in its entirety a seaport in its mores and activities. Again, bare with me, recalling this from my rum soaked mind at the time. There was constant crime in the streets, brawls in the taverns, gambling and thievery. There was no standing law there. The militia (in the town's prime) were a few regulars with the rest townfolk. It would have made the Wild West look like a day in Disneyland.

Doesn't sound like a place you'd find Capt. Feathersword! ;) Seriously, though, would this be typical, or would other ports be the same but more subdued?

I am still waiting for the famed moment in Port Royal when the buccaneer tapped the keg of red wine in the center of the street and invited others to partake. And if they didn't he threw tankards of wine at them, even if they were of the upper station of society. Now there's a moment to re-enact.

I think I'd like to see that, too.

Another question comes to mind. Were the taverns closed on Sundays or was that a more modern convention?