Gentleman of Fortune

What do you think is best... Monmouth, Thrum or Peter the Great? Kristie Bukland's Hats

Now I am not trying to open old wounds or anything but Hurricane just posted what I get out of the "hobby" most... That is why to me costume authenticity is really important. For those moments away from the crowd when it just you and other re-enactors in a setting that for a moment, transforms you back in time. Now I know that 8 hours later, I will be back in a car heading home to try and make house payments so I'm not saying that I am trying to make 2005 be 1705. But those little moments could be moments that have been shared by friends and shipmates long ago and that is what appeals to me. As you can tell by the long laid to rest threads that I have pinged for later reading that I have been digging around into the old arguments but there is one question that I have that I am just burning up to know... PREFACE: I am not trying to get your skiivies in a knot.... REALLY but since I have no one to ask except via these Forums.... Why is their such polorization between the entertainers and the living-history people. From the old threads I have read, it seems like, if you are going to entertain the public, than you fall into the street performer camp and that means you don't have to actually dress like the pirate you are trying to portay? And Conversely, why does it seem that anyone that stresses authenticity of kit is immediately branded unfit to entertain the crowds? I think that there are equal numbers of bad kit pirates who can't entertain the kids as there are authentic pirates who can't. To me, it would be more improtant that a "pirate" that entertains the crowd should look more like an actual GA pirate than someone who doesn't. At the end of the day, someone who sees a Hollywood pirate "show" is still left with a misconception of how a pirate looked. And just becuase your kit IS spot on doesn't mean you have to walk around being an ass hole pretending you are in the 1700s. Does it? Cant' one sing a rousing rendition of Spanish Ladies in an authentic kit or does it have to be dramatic self-expression pirate-ish costume to entertain the crowds? Thanks for the help... in advance!

ping

ping.... read later

I was trolling through old posts and found this thread gem. The movie is now available in DVD! I actually liked this movie... as Hurricane said it was a spoof on Space movies. I liked it alot better than Spaceballs.....

Oh no you don’t Hurricane! You are not going to bait me into some sort of “Flame War” thing. And if you are as much of an old hand at these forums as you say you are, you should know that is exactly what you are doing. I won’t take the bait… However, if you want to continue that line of discussion, you can PM me. Anyway. Back to the topic… Striving for Authenticity. I know we all “understand” that folks come in to pirate re-enacting (which I am not sure is the word I am looking for) for different reasons. And maybe I am getting into a phase were the psychology of the “why” is intriguing me more and more. I wonder if its because our society has so a low appreciation of history in general. I am assuming that most people that care about dressing up as a pirate also care about pirate history. But that does not seem to be the case. Do people get hooked because a friend says, “hey there is a killer party next weekend, all you have to do is dress up like a pirate”. And they get their “pirate” outfit and that are suddenly pirate “participants”? Or are they refugees from other re-enacting periods that are tired of marching in formation in their wool in the hot sun and figure, “I’ll do a period where I don’t have to worry about structure and accuracy”? I think I am suffering from the delusion that historical piracy, with authentic clothes and gear, is far cooler than anything crafted out of polyester and plastic. And why does it seem that you can’t entertain with authentic kit? You can’t be larger than life in a historically correct costume? Are you required to be “in period” with all the crazy dialogue stuff (that Hurricane and I seem to loathe so much) if you have a historically correct kit? I am going to go gaze at my navel for awhile….

Well, start of by posting a picture of yourself in your bio.... it will help to fantasize.. i mean visualize what would be a good costume for you.... Really, most of the Pirate Themed faires are very liberal about what they allow as "pirate" so just use your imagination! Of course, wasn't there a Pirate Ship that captured a Indian Mogols ship that was full of the kings wives/daughters? I bet they were "dancing" for quite a while after that!

Seems you have done your reasearch. I had not thought much about it though until you asked your question.... I am sort of looking forward to seeing what post show up because I would like to know too. As you said, just about everything realated that is easy to google is for War of Independence or F&I.. Ok gun experts.... what "stuff" do we need to go with it? GoF

Uhhhhh... captain.... who is beating down the other side? This IS the forum for discourse like this... there are other forums for back slapping lets all get together for pirate “one-ness” Kum-by-ya stuff… It seems your too busy laughing to actually read the threads…. So thanks for reposting a lot of what has already been said. We have already stated that there are too sides and that there are horses for courses, chocolate and vanilla yadda yadda yadda. I know that I am not going to dissuade folks from doing what they are going to do, we were just continuing the discussion as to the motivations. Part of what makes the hobby fun for some of us is the research of that snapshot in time. We like the history of it as much as we do putting on the clothing and going to the event. Some, in this post, are saying that its not just a snap shot, but a mountain of information from all kinds of sources that fit together like a jigsaw puzzle to give you a better idea of the picture. You just have to look and be willing to accept what you find. I for one am just Gobsmacked that someone interested enough to “craft a persona” and travel hundreds of miles to participate at an event spends more time researching their kit via POTC than reading Captain Johnson. No body has suggested yellow stars to be worn on the garb of the unauthentic. PLUS As I said in an earlier post, 95% of the events you go to are come one come all events. Do you know of any that are exclusive to those that rank authenticity as a goal to strive for? Not only have we hung out with the fantasy peasants, but we have shared the flagon, camp fire, and the Kum-By-Yas. You are right that no one knows “exactly”, but there are some who make a hobby out of finding out as much as they can. And they might even come to this forum and say, “you know, I have spent the last 12 years reading every will, broadsheet, diary and book. I have seen thousands of prints and woodcuts, have my library card for the Greenwich Maritime Museum where I have spent days pouring over every scrap of information they have, and still I find no evidence that earrings were part of naval fashion during 1690-1720”. And as sure as the sun will come up tomorrow, someone who has not spent 10 minutes reading an eyewitness book on the subject will chime in that “Of Course they did”, everybody knows that pirates wore earrings!” Egad. We just trying to “share some history”, but both sides have to be open minded to get anything out of it. Still we got to the same events, and drink the same grog, and everyone is still happy right?

hmmm..... make sure you get your self a good back pack to carry all that stuff. I recommend this one! It all depends das... are your going on an expedition or are you getting ready to board and attack a vessel. If you were a land based soldier on campaign you might need all that stuff but if you are getting ready for a boarding party, you would not have time to use that stuff. I would imagine that you brought just your pistol/s and your cutlass-belaying pin-barding axe and that is it. It would take too long to reload on a hostile ship so you shoot it and then move on to your other weapon. I don't think that a pirate would just be fixated on the pistol... I would imagine that all the maintainence stuff would be back in the sailors "locker" or sea bag and not get seen until it was time to clean it. just my guess....

JoshRed... my points exactly. We look at the past through our 21st century bias. A lot of what we do, say and think would have had us burned at the stake in 1700.

I'll say again that I am not trying to convert anyone... but this is the forum for discussion on authentically portraying sailors of late 17th and Early 18th so I feel invited to let my humble opinions fly.... I agree with what you are saying PP, in the sense that at a certain time, the leading minds of the world thought that the Sun traveled around the earth. It was heresy to think otherwise... now, after improvements to science technology (yada yada) we know better. So where does one base an impression of Golden Age Piracy? On the documented evidence of what existed or in the creative side of your brain that "thinks" or "feels" it should be done a certain way. That’s why there is Chocolate AND Vanilla. But I am beginning to think its all a moot point anyway. Has there ever been an Authentic Pirate event? Has anyone heard of such a thing where the announcement for the event said "pirates and pirate hunters in authentic clothing only". I don't think that it has happened... yet. As I said before, I used to be heavily into WW2 living history. The events were good, but just not "authentic" enough for the hard core types (to which I belong), so we hosted our own event at the Ft Bragg Combat village. It was a great event.... but only about 60 folks showed up for it (Compare that to the Indian Town Gap event in PA where you get 1500 folks). The ITG event is notorious for allowing anyone with the registration fee to participate. Authenticity is nice, but your $25 bucks is more important to them. I learned a lot from our little event. The first being that a very small percentage of the group doing a particular time period care enough to research every detail to be as authentic as they can be. And the corollary to that is "why bother" to put all that effort in when 95% of the other events one can go to don't give a rats ass about how authentic your kit is? And the other thing is, a lot of people that WERE striving to have an authentic impression were too intimidated by our Authenticity standards, and were afraid to go. That really shocked and bothered me. I knew a lot of folks who I was hoping that they would come and didn't. I asked them later about why they did not come and I got answers like "I have a degenerative foot disease and I can't wear period style jackboots so I didn't think I would be allowed in" and, “my tunic was made out of Swedish wool and I did not think that it would pass the authenticity inspection." Now I knew these guys and thought that there kits, on the whole, were very good and that at least their hearts were in the right place and were moving in the "I want to be an authentic re-enactor" category. But the bottom line was that the good and the bad stayed away. Bringing it back to Pirate though, one thing that boggles my mind is that why do folks think that authentic gear is any less cool than fantasy stuff? I mean if you are going to spend money on a pirate kit, why wouldn't you want it to look like a real pirate would have looked instead of some "I want to be a Jack Sparrow nock off? That I don't understand. And to your Batman analogy.... And if you are going to a Batman Faire and you have worked tirelessly to have a good Batman impression and there are guys there wearing leather thongs and red ski masks because they think its cool and its what Batman should have worn, then while they are within their right to do so, they really look nothing like batman. And if 60% of the people at the Batman Faire are wearing leather Thongs and Red ski masks, the public, who may know nothing about Batman, are going to start thinking that Batman wears a leather Thong and a red ski mask....

Whoaaa Nelly.... Let me first say that I am not trying to turn anyone to the "dark side" and convert anyone to my brand of re-enacting religion. I just want to provide some food for thought here. I think that we are constantly in danger of interpreting Early 18th Century culture and customs through our 21st Century ideas and biases. Let me splain’ We often let what we think is cool now interfere with what was common-culture-fashion-ideology in the late 1600/early 1700s. We think it is cool to wear a sash, earring, and big bucket boots because that is what we have grown up thinking that pirates/seamen looked like. We have RARELY been given (by Hollywood anyway) an accurate interpretation of what really existed. We latch on to these “myths” and don’t want to let go because they just seem soooo much cooler to us. Plus the fact that any particular event you go to you will see the vast majority of “pirate” reinforcing the fantasy which adds to the collective “group think” of what really existed. That PLUS our modern day mentality is “individuality over all”, which really puts us behind the eight ball when we are striving for authenticity. Then there is the “if I were a pirate in 1717 I would have done it this way….” To that I say, no, you probably wouldn’t have done it any other way than what was done then. You might not like hats now, but if you were RAISED up in the early 18th Century, you would have known nothing BUT wearing hats. It would have been a non-issue to the 1717 version of dasNdanger. I am stumbling for a good analogy ( I have a newborn son and a 2 ½ year old so my wife limits my computer time !)… Ahhh here is a modern one. Have you ever seen pictures of modern day cultures eating weird foods. I once saw a photograph of a man (from somewhere in Africa) eating what appeared to be some sort of caterpillar out of a can. Now this was a commercially produced “can” of caterpillars in a tomato sauce…. You would have thought it was Cambell’s Fresh Caterpillars with garlic & herbs… now with 20% MORE caterpillars by the looks of the can. Egad. Now, my young white American ass saw that picture and said, yeechh. I would never eat a caterpillar, regardless of how “authentic style” the tomato sauce was. BUT, if my same young, white American ass had grown up in Rhodesia, it probably would have been a non-issue to me to eat Caterpillars. The same thing with life in the early 18th Century. You would do, what they did because that is all that they knew of what to do. If it was not the fashion for XYZ culture to wear plates in their lips, regardless of who your great granddad slept with, you probably would not have announced it to the world by dressing up like savage from the “uncivilized” world. Throw a “class conscious” world into the mix and you really muddy the waters. It is hard to understand for most Americans because of how our society is structured. Sure we still have “classes” but the difference is that most Americans, even if they are from the lower rungs, feel that they can move up in the class system if they work hard enough or get lucky. This is not the case for 18th Century Europe and the Americas (and to a lot of degree parts of Europe today). If you were of the lower classes, you had no illusion that you were someday going to marry the Duke’s daughter and have a seat in Parliament! It’s a hard thing for the American mind to grasp but believe me its true. So, it is unlikely that a sailor would try to dress up like someone from a higher station and walk down the streets of Portsmouth. (maybe things were done differently on some lawless Caribbean Island though…. Enough for now…..

As Hawkyns says... this is drifting away from earrings and more into the philosophy of "modern interpretations" of historical pirates. Please see new thread titled "Striving for Authenticity"

I do believe that it was used later in the 1730-1780s to flair out the sides of the Justaucorps..... But it would make a wonderful pirate thong.... don't you think? GOF

Ok, I know that striped clothes existed before the golden age.... and that sailors wore them AFTER the golden age. Were stripey slops/trousers/stockings in vogue during 1690-1720? Help me here Foxe!

Jewelry The other thing is that for rings, necklaces etc, the precious stones were "cut" differently. The modern style of cutting stones with all the crazy facets is a post golden age thing.... I am not sure the timeline (I am sure you could google it).... But there I go again being a freak about shit.....

DasNDanger They have a saying.... horses for courses. I have grown up re-enacting and was fortunate (or unfortunate depending on how one looks at it) to be brought into the hobby and "raised up" in it by the so called "hardcore" authentic types. I can understand your predicament with your trials and tribulations of trying to have an authentic impression. Here is how I see the problem. MOST folks at XYZ "pirate" event don't know much about historical pirates, they just want to dress up and have fun. You can usually tell these kind of events by the fact that they have "fest" or, "faire" as part of the event name. When a women dresses as a man/male sailor for a Golden Age of Piracy event, you are being just about as authentic as you can be. When Reed and Bonny were apprehended they were not described as "two tavern wenches caught as pirates at sea". They were described as wearing men's clothes. I have read that one victim of Reed and Bonney said that they thought something about them was fishy because of their large breast so I wouldn't worry about binding them,. but I digress.... Now at a faire or fest event, who is going to attract more attention, the girl in man's clothes or the one dressed like a strumpet with her boobs hanging out? If a guy is out to party and drink wearing his fantasy pirate outfit, who is he going to spend more time with, the androgynous dude/chick or the tavern wench with her boobs hanging out? I have spent waaaayyy to much money on my pirate kit. I hunted all over the net/world for 100% grosgrain silk and had a hand made Justaucorps made for me by a very well respected costumier in London. At an "event", most people (including other "pirates"), have no clue to what it is I am wearing. I will get lumped in with the black-jean-bandanna pirates almost every time. But every once in a while, someone will come up to me and say, "wow, grosgrain silk... where the #$@! did you get that!" and it kind of makes it all worthwhile to me. But i am a freak. I don't mind the fantasy pirates.... really. Its just when they start believing that they are accurately representing the golden age (and tell the public so) that I get my panties in a knot. This is long enough.....

I think that this is part of the major "problem" dasNdanger: A pirate with an earring...not a big deal Foxe: No, not a big deal. But 5 pirates with earrings would be a big deal. Most "pirate" re-enactors do so as individuals or part of a loosely based group. Some people, like Foxe I am sure, have come into this from other periods that depend on the impression of the group as a whole, not just the individual. In other periods, it is important for your personal kit to be good because it plays into the impression of the group you are portraying. You might be re-enacting a French Machine Gunner from WW1, but you fit into a unit of other French Machine gunners and thus are representative of thousands of French machine gunners. When French Machine Gun unit re-enactors start re-creating what one out of 10,000 individual soldiers had or did, then you start to screw up the impression as a whole. Here is a better example. I used to do German WW2 paratrooper. We strived to portray a squad of your typical 1943/44 airborne soldier. One guy insisted on carrying a British Sten gun. Now he had a photograph of "a" German paratrooper with a Sten Gun in his hands. (there could have been many reasons for this soldier to have the gun in his hands but the one that our re-enactor chose to believe was that it was his personal weapon). The true reasons for carrying the Sten probably are more due to the fact that it is probably the cheapest WW2 Machine Gun to own today. Well soon after, other guys wanted to carry one too. Why spend $5k on an MP-40 when you can spend $1600 on an "acceptable" Sten? The point is, soon you can have 40 percent of your troops carrying Stens and skew the historical balance of what a typical German Paratrooper had. If you go to a public battle and display, you are telling the "public" that 4 out of 10 German paratroopers carried the Sten gun. Bringing this back to Pirate..... Yes one out of a thousand pirates might have had an earring, and 1/1000 might have worn sashes, and 1/2000 might have had bucket boots.... But the next time you go to a pirate event, look at the percentages of pirates that you see with sashes, earrings and bucket boots! Now, if you are a fantasy pirate re-enactor; more power to you, do what you wish/like. But if you are trying to sell your self as an authentic pirate from the Golden Age, you are leaving yourself open to debate/ criticism because the evidence does not support it.

The bottom line is that we as living history/fantasy/pirate re-enactors are going to do what we bloody well want to do. If someone is dead set on wearing an earring, sash, or an eye patch with a skull and crossbones on it, there is nothing that "we" can do about it. That is fair enough. I find it strange though that if someone wanted to prove that seaman wore earrings in the 16-17th centuries, we can find evidence of it. If someone wants to prove that seaman, captains, military men wore sashes in the early 17th century, we have evidence of it. But why no evidence of these things for 1690-1725? Did Howard Pyle seek out every bit of literature, painting wood cut and destroy them so that we would only have his interpretation to go by? Hmmmmm conspiracy. If you have your own boat and wear earrings and the like, no one is stopping you from doing so. But if you are trying to convince people that you are an authentic representation of a Golden Age pirate, you may be open to challenge as there is no historical evidence to support certain things for 1690-1725. I doubt that Foxe's research stops with the RN. He, like most of us use any source available to prove or disprove things related to sailing and piracy. If there is any evidence from any country involved in piracy or pirate hunters in the Americas/Caribbean during 1690-1725 please bring it forward. If someone has been hoarding away a nice woodcut of an American Pirate wearing a sash, earring, and big ol' bucket boots dated 1710 SHAME ON YOU and bring it forward!

oki

i understand what you are saying. I just think that i would l have a different perspective toward my gear and clothing if i spent 6 months or more at sea. Sure, maybe no one was "forcing" you to repair your trousers, but if they wore out, you would have to make or buy another pair from the ships store at an overly inflated price. I am sure that some sailors would cut off there nose to spite their face, however, we who live in the Walmart Age, view things differently than they did I bet. GOF

The other thing is that sailors of all time periods, seldom have "nothing to do" on a ship. If they are not taking care of the ship, they are probably taking care of their gear. If your badric is not in good shape at sea, where do you get another? Better to keep it in tip top condition so you have all your equipment when you need it. Save the distressed equipment look for the POTC3 extras call. GOF

The other thing to keep in mind is that there was no pirate "play book" in the sense that once it was decided to turn to piracy they did not follow a 12 step program. I would imagine that the pirates ran the ship like they had always experienced a ship being run. I don't think that they suddenly decided that certain positions were more deserving of extra pay and authority. Unfortunately, we seem to try to create things as we feel they should of been instead of how they really were.

I am near Wurzburg in Germany..... is anyone else closer? GOF