Gentleman of Fortune

I am surveying 1690-1720 buttons (mainly for Justaucorps) if anyone has some good photos (or links to ) period paintings or extant garments, please post em!

thanks

oops

hee hee hee....

your not sewing it ?

I guy on the PirateBrehtern Yahoo group summed it up best. This is a hole in the ocean to throw money into...

However....

He did have a great idea. Buy it, tow it out to sea. Have a party on it and then....

Blast it out of the water with the Kalmar Nykal.

Yes the doo rag thing Read/Bonney is also in the book "Under The Black FLag" (if i am not mistaken).

The Avery Flag is a conundrum though isn't it? I would imagine that even the Hollywood-Pyle pirate depiction have some kernel of fact that they base themselves on. Who knows?

I think that in this instance, the conscientious living historian should opt out of the earring thing until more concrete evidence is brought forth.

Maybe we will find some when they are finnished at the Queen AR and Wydah sites.

G

Historical refrence for earings?

I was once... a long time ago in a discussion with someone about weather the head scarf-doo rag thing Pyle depicts was period or not.

Anyway.

How do you interpret Avery's flag. Google it if you can't find one.

Where do find the period discription of his flag?

TO me it looks like a skull wearing a doo rag AND and earing.

What say you?

Diego...

What attached site are you talking about?

I have some links on my site to various pirate weapons. I have tried to hunt down a maker of boarding axes myself. I can't find any ready made early 18th C boarding axes (they are either non-existant or sold out).

So you might have to have one specially made.

Old Dominion Forge seems to have some nice pieces and claims to have made them for POTC.

Good luck

I can't believe it... a chick with her own hand grenade recipe.

Where were you when I went a courtin?

Your husband is a lucky man!

Thanks BlackJohn! That is just the sort of picture I was looking for.

I am beginning to think that maybe Williamsburg had them made for themselves. I have googled "fence gate weight" and came up with nothing.

I would think that technologically speaking, it would be an easy thing to have made.... like in India, Pakistan, or China.

Obviously, the shipping charges would bite because of the weight but who knows.

I will keep you posted as events warrant....

PS

Were this type of Grenade shot out of the Hand Mortar?

What I think is wrong?

To me the seem too round and uniform. Also, it looks like galvanized steel and not cast iron.

And I don't like that "neck" either.

I applaud Therions' attempts and they seem to be the only game in town. I just wanted to get some more information before I found some sweat shop in China to cast them for me...

thats all

Well if anyone has pictures of originals... don't hesitate to post them.

Is this correct?...

A round cast iron hollow ball approximately 3 inches in diameter. Slight dimple in the bottom and maybe a quarter inch hole in the top (for the wooden dowel/fuse. The thickness is approximately 1/4 inch in the top half and gradually gets thicker to about 5/8" toward the bottom?

There is no neck at the top, just a hole.

Back to the Grenades guys....

I would be interested to see an example of Grenados that were not under water for 300 years. In the Whydah picture

the grenade body is very rough looking and uneven. Maybe this is due to the technology being very basic that produced it and the article says that there is no uniform thickness throughout the body.

The ones available to us...

look like the tops of chain link fence post (or something similar). How about the "neck" on the repro.... Has anyone seen an original example with a neck on it like that?

I agree that the repros are the only game in town at this point....

The coat/justaucorps should be lined. If you look at it, its almost like two coats sewn together as the concept of a lined coat was different in the 18thC than it is now.

Sailcloth is a tricky one... and the answer, i guess is that you can't get it. Traditional (or at least the sails made and used by the Royal Navy in the 18th Century), were made out of Flax. My search for reproduction Flax sailcloth has come up empty.

I have seen where some sails were hemp/flax but even that might be difficult to find. Even in the extrememly heavyweight hemp, (17oz+) that would be considered lightweight sail by Admiralty Standards....

On the other hand, most ships a pirate would sail on would be smaller 4-12 gun sloops which would have lighter sails (than a 1-5th rate English Ship).

Don't forget to check e-bay out for material too. I recently bought 100% silk VELVET for $20 a meter (it usually sells for over $200).

Good luck, and post pics of your end result!

Awright Hawkyns...

But even a ragged pyrate would TAKE the clothes of a gentleman....

Some good suggestions so far... but I will add my two cents nonetheless.

With your long list of things that this coat needs to be, you are going to have to make some compromises somewhere.

Somebody may have already raised the question of what is this coat going to be used for? Gentleman Pirate Captain or Able Seamen going wenching?

For a Gentleman's Coat, I would recomend silk, high qualtiy wool, high quality linen, or fustian.

For Able seaman, Wool, linen, fustian, hemp, sailcloth (which for the royal navy at the time, was mostly Flax) Onasburg (a coarse linen).

Cotton, is a tricky subject. Cotton wasn't really commercially produce for clothing until after the flying shuttle was invented (@1733) and other machines to process the fibres.

Before then, it was a really crappy coarse cloth that came from India and was used for industrial purposes more than clothing. While it did exist, it was not in the quality available to us today.

It was mixed or woven with linen to make fustian for our period though so that might be a possibility.

But I would reccomend that you make 2 coats. Make the first out of linen, fustian, or Osnaburg. It will be easier to sew and will let you practice with the pattern. You can use that one as your summer weight regular sailors coat.

If you like what you made, do another for a "Gentleman" out of nicer material. A wool one would be nice and good for colder events.

You can check out my site http://www.gentlemenoffortune.com/

where you can find LOTS of resources for clothing.

Hope this helps

Well you hit the nail on the head as far as where I cut my re-enacting teeth...

And I guess most of the other periods I have done had a lot of former 20th Century re-enactors as well so they must have brought "Kit" with them.

Garb sounds... just.... so...... ???

And like you say, kit covers everything you pack in your car for an event. What do the "Garb" folks call the non clothing part of their..... kit?

For those of you following the progress of my web page dedicated to Golden Age Pirate Re-enacting....

I have just updated the site with a page on Justaucorps details. Not too much text but a lot of pictures of the one I had made from extant garments in the V &A and a 1700s coat pattern.

Here is the link to the Justaucorps page

Try Tuckahoe Trading Company

http://www.tuckahoetradingco.com/accouterments.html

They make some of the items that you mention. They are about as period correct as you could want.

I heard his real last name was Ezeakial Theackowitz.

He was a Sephardic jew who fled the old contry because of religious persecusion.

He change his name and turned his back on religion and the rest is history.

OK I AM KIDDING alright!

Does anyone else/outside of the SCA call it "Garb"?

It the scant 20+ years I have been re-enacting/living history the only time I have heard it called Garb is by SCA types.

Maybe its a medieval term for high synthetic content?

I usually hear the term "Kit" used..... meaning clothes and equipment.

Like... "I need to get my kit together for the event this weekend."

GOF

Have you seen all the build up for

Pirates of the Burning Sea?

I think its going to be a online multi player game. But seems to be stuck in the doldrums of programming.

Should be cool though

GOF

dyed wit blood.... he he he.

The question of how pirate flags were made and what they were made of probably comes up on every discussion board/e-mail list.

I think that the best answer for the question was that they were made out of any material that they had available to them. If the pirates "took" over a 8 gun sloop, what kinds of things were available to them?

Sail cloth, linen, other flags (probably wool), paint, needles, thread, tar.

A good indication would be to try to find period examples of other naval flags.

Here is one that was captured by the British(9 January 1806)

"Even for an era of enormous flags (British ensigns of the period would be 20 feet wide) this one is huge being about 33 feet wide and 45 feet long (9.8 x 14.4 metres).

"The Spanish ensign is made from a red and yellow wool fabric, often referred to as 'bunting’, narrow widths of the fabric are hand sewn together and a linen hoist strip is attached. The Spanish emblem is painted or stencilled onto both sides of the flag."

This is the only Real Pirate flag in existance.

This flag, however, is not from the Golden Age. It is dated 19th Century. There is a picture in David Cordingly's book pirates. The description is

"A rare example of an orginial 19th Century pirate flag brought back

from North Africa by Finnish seafarers and is now in the collection

of the maritime museum at Mariehamn"

To me it looks like tarred sailcloth with a painted and sewn on skull and bones (the book has a close up on the cover).

Considering that most ships would have several different flags in their stores for signaling or identification, I would assume that the pirate would try to make a flag like the ones that he was already familiar with.

Their are no gromets, but the edge has a rope sewn into a folded edge for support.

Sometimes a linen strip was sewn into this edge (that has the hoisting rope) for additional support. Gromets (as we know them) are not seen on flags till around the civil war. They did have "sewn" grommets. kind of like button holes.

Other things to consider are size. Flags were big in this period because you had to be able to see them from a considerable distance.

Also, I wouldn't worry to much about using natural fibres to make a reproduction, (unless you need to fly it on a real ship for long periods of time). Natural materials shoul hold up nicely for living history.

Here is flag construction

and a quick quote from the site

"In the 18th and 19th century, flags were usually made of one of three fabrics, although a home-made flag could be made out of most anything at hand. These fabrics are: wool, linen and silk. Later, more or less during and after the Civil War, cotton became available in weights and finishes suitable for flags. Woolen bunting, usually imported from England in the early days, is a light-weight, thin fabric prized for nautical use because of its flyability and resistance to rot from exposure to seawater. Linen was often used for the header and stars on such flags. Linen was also used for some "service" flags because of its inexpensive (at the time due to being the most common home-spun) nature. Silk was expensive and used for military and ceremonial flags. Thsese often bore complicated, allegorical or heraldic images painted on by master artists, often with different designs on each side"

I think that pirates probably started off with what ever was available and then worked their way up to a nicer flag. One of my books says that there was some lady that sewed pirate flags in exchange for rum. ANd I think UNDER THE BLACK FLAG book has an account of the pre trial procession of some pirtes that says they "had their black silk flag carried before them."

Egad... that is enough

I probably should have searched the archives but for this first but, too late I already hit the new post button.

I was in the computer games section of my BX/PX and saw several Pirate themed PC games....

before I take the plunge, does anyone have a game they reccomend?

They had Tropico, Port Royale, Pirate Hunter and maybe a few more. All in the $18 range.

Suggestions?

The crew at Pirate Brethren are making their gear ready for the 2005 season. We welcome any of you who are interested in the Authentic Portrayl of the Golden Age Piracy to stop by the Yahoo Group

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/piratebrethren/

Cheers!