Capn_Enigma

The "A" denotes the Amsterdam section of the VOC.

So what was used as a cap or stopper for bottles of the late 17th century?  Were cork stoppers developed by, say, 1690?

Till the late 17th century, wooden stoppers were used, soaked in (vegetable) oil and tightened with hemp wound around them.

The well known friar Dom Perignon found that stoppers like that were ejected from sparkling wine bottles and replaced them with cork stoppers in the 1680s. But cork stoppers became widely popular only in the late 18th century.

I might get enough for dying and a bit more. Anyone want to trade? 

Aw, I am glad that I am alive, thanks a lot!

Anyway, good for you!

You should consult the Wikipedia article, especially this section:

Dye

A deep crimson dye is extracted from the female cochineal insects. Cochineal is used to produce scarlet, orange and other red tints too. The colouring comes from carminic acid. Cochineal extract's natural carminic-acid content is usually 19–22%.[5] The insects are killed by immersion in hot water (after which they are dried) or by exposure to sunlight, steam, or the heat of an oven. Each method produces a different colour which results in the varied appearance of commercial cochineal. The insects must be dried to about 30 percent of their original body weight before they can be stored without decaying.[10] It takes about 155,000 insects to make one kilogram of cochineal.

There are two principal forms of cochineal dye: cochineal extract is a colouring made from the raw dried and pulverised bodies of insects, and carmine is a more purified colouring made from the cochineal. To prepare carmine, the powdered insect bodies are boiled in ammonia or a sodium carbonate solution, the insoluble matter is removed by filtering, and alum is added to the clear salt solution of carminic acid to precipitate the red aluminium salt. Purity of colour is ensured by the absence of iron. Stannous chloride, citric acid, borax, or gelatin may be added to regulate the formation of the precipitate. For shades of purple, lime is added to the alum.[2]

As of 2005, Peru produced 200 tonnes of cochineal dye per year and the Canary Islands produced 20 tonnes per year.[10][5] Chile and Mexico have also recently begun to export cochineal.[1] France is believed to be the world's largest importer of cochineal; Japan and Italy also import the insect. Much of these imports are processed and reexported to other developed economies.[10] As of 2005, the market price of cochineal was between 50 and 80 USD per kilogram,[9] while synthetic raw food dyes are available at prices as low as 10–20 USD per kilogram.[11]

As for the amount of cochineal: I guess trial and error would be best, but just a gram of it sounds definitely not enough for a bodice.

I don't know about your nipples, but mine are called pistons.

There are several books by that title. Could you specify which one you mean?

Isn't it just remarkable how decorative the results of bad dental hygiene can be? This is sooo 1610!

Mr. Leuchtag: Liebchen, uh, sweetness heart, what watch?

Mrs. Leuchtag: Ten watch.

Mr. Leuchtag: Such much?

and

Rick: How can you close me up? On what grounds?

Captain Renault: I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!

Croupier: [hands him a roll of bills] Your winnings, sir.

Captain Renault: Oh, thank you very much. [loud] Everybody out at once!

(Casablanca, 1942)

Disney needs to loosen up....

Well if you had a license for printing money ... - would you?

This .. errrm ... paper ... would not last a minute in "Captain Twill".

And lead poisoning... gotta remember folks, these people are working under a completely different set of rules... completely different.

People may not have realized back then that they were getting dumber by the minute, that their continuing nausea had the same reason as their ab(d)ominal pain or their vomiting.

However, the lead was just as poisonous and lethal back then as it is today. The only difference is that people did not realize what killed them in the end.

Firstly, continued contact with a lead pencils led to lead poisoning.

Secondly: In the Middle Ages, the lead was usually alloyed with silver, hardening the pen. This meant that paper would have to be specially treated, or it would rip under the pressure necessary to abrade the pen.

Lead pens like the one shown were mostly used by carpenters to mark the wood.

Also, the graphite deposit from the Borrowdale mine was at first mistaken for lead ore, hence the name "Bleistift" (lead pen) in German. The Borrowdale graphite, which was the only one considered good enough for writing, was primarily used for military purposes such as cannonball founding, so Britain issued an export ban.

Pencils with a wooden exterior as we know them today were only used after the beginning of the 19th century. Up to then, the writing instrument of first choice was the quill.

Carmen Electra blah blah blah...

Somebody remove this clown, please!

There are plenty of 1/48 scale figures available that can be converted into crew members.

....any thoughts gents??

I don't get it... any thoughts on exactly what?

Wages: You can't use a hull of a frigate für a schooner, at least not if you're a serious model builder. I've got 38 years of modelmaking under my belt, but before violating a hull to suit another scale, I'd rather scratch build one.

Trying to make a frigate look like a schooner makes as much sense as making a WWII battleship or cruiser look like a destroyer. The proportions do not match in either case.

White was NOT common, as Wilber says, "for it was expensive and dried an off-yellow tint."

That is incorrect. White color was very cheap, as it used either lead white (poinsonous) or chalk as pigment.

Green paint (with verdigris as pigment) does not have to be imported, it can be made easily from copper and vinegar.

Blue was very expensive, hence uncommon, as it was made from either azurite (expensive) or ground lapis lazuli (extremely expensive). If a ship's owner tried to paint but two strakes with that color, he would had been better off with gilding the entire ship from stem to stern.

Which brings us to the last "color": Gilding parts of the ship, especially the stern and the figurehead.

Whipping was a less frequent punishment on pirate vessels. The powers of pirate captains always were limited, and officers were elected from the 1680s or earlier.The entire crew tried serious crimes and usually marooned the guilty, Only the quartermaster could flog a man, and only with the crew's approval.

Jan Rogozinski, "Pirates!"

[..] a cat-o'-nine-tails (usually stored in a sack) was the typical tool of choice.

None of the cat - o - nines that we know today was ever used on a man. They are "decorative" examples of fancywork.

Each real cat was made right before the punishment from an ordinary piece of rope. Each rope consists of three strands, and each strand consists of three more strands, hence the "nine tails". It makes no sense storing the cat in a bag, as each was discarded after use.

Had a cat been used on two or more occasions, the result would infallibly have been the death of each man after the first one, due to gangrene- inducing bacteria on the cat feeding on the blood and tissue of the victims.

Like i said, I know the articles.

So s'pose you tell me, Jack: How often does a theft occur on a pirate ship? Often enough to have a man carry a whip all the time?

I don't think so.

Especially not when the perpetrator knows very well that he is finished in the pirate community if he is discovered, whipping or no whipping.

I know that, but I doubt that a whip or a cane was as omnipresent on a pirate ship as it was aboard a man- o- war.

LOL, true!

I highly doubt that historic (as opposed to hollywoodized) pirates (and not even their bosuns or quartermasters) sported whips of any sort. After all, whips were the very symbol of the hated oppression by "god- given" authorities; the very reason why a sailor would turn pirate.

Ginger for nausea.  I swear by it!

Yuck! Ginger would give me nausea! But then I'll prob'ly start swearing, so it seems that you're all right!

Patrick: I've gotta admit, I, too, am confused.

But FWIW, there are period paintings (still lifes and others) wherein musical instruments appear. Off the top of my head, there is a Vermeer painting called "The Guitar Player" from 1672, where a guitar features prominently (obviously). But it does look quite new and unscathed to me: