Mission

Stynky and I spent a lot of time debating the forum names back when the last batch of name changes were made, so it was probably from personal messages between us.

Oh yes, definitely. I believe during the GAoP, chaplains were warrant officers like the surgeon. (All title, no power.) If you're interested in a GAoP naval officer's POV, check out the Diary of Henry Teonge. It's an entertaining read. (Not quite as entertaining as Pere (French Catholic Father) Jean-Baptiste Labat's memoirs from about the same time, but still fun to read.)

Didn't we have this conversation at some point? Or did that happen via personal message? As I recall, it was another way of saying "thread counter" on this forum according to someone who has been around since the beginning. (Probably Stynky.) Of course, I never remember it being used in that way in any of the old discussions. (Although I haven't read all of them, so who can say?) We talked about changing it to something more obvious and relevant a few years ago when we were overhauling the forums, which I argued against. While it doesn't mean anything to most people, it has a pretty long history here.

Receipt = Recipe in period-speak. And it does sound yummy. I expect William, Iron Jon and Captain Jim will be preparing that at PiP this year. :)

I was reading my copy of Dr. Professor Señor E.T. Fox's Pirates In Their Own Words and I came across this quote in the court testimony of Thomas (middle name probably Michael) Bagley, "...afterwards they sailed to the Coast near Cape Commoroome [Footnote 94: Cape Cormorin], and there in or abt the month of Dec: 1698 they found a Moorish Vessel abt 200 Tonns towing a shoare with boates, whereupon some of ye said ship the Pellicanns Company went off in their Boate and brought her off, the said ship having some Opium and Cotton aboard, and because their owne ship was leaky they burnt her and __ went all aboard the sd Moorish ship, and they sold the goods abd her to the Natives of the Coast of Commoroome, and this Examinate had abt Fifty peeces of Eight for his share..." [Emphasis mine] (Fox, p. 94-5) Now, admittedly, this is a court testimony, but I find two things of interest here. 1. There's nothing about celebrating afterwards, which you sometimes see when they take a cargo of liquor. 2. They simply refer to the opium and cotton as "the goods ab[oar]d her", which is not the way they seem to regard liquor. While I wouldn't call it proof positive that drugs weren't used recreationally (it's much harder to prove a lack of something than it is it's presence - the dog that didn't bark and all that), it at least suggests that opium was regarded as just another cargo.

There. Now you're both Old Twillians. (For all the good it will do you.)

Maybe it makes more sense to just lock the old one so no one can reply to it since other people commented on it? (I am sort of opposed to deleting threads unless there is a need to do so because it sort of contains the history of the forum in a way.)

I think on a commentary track or one of those featurettes I saw they specifically note that Parker was paying homage to Pyle in that scene (and some others, too, if I remember correctly.)

Hats were cocked every which way up until about the mid 1730s when the tricorn style took hold. (Although it wasn't called that at the time.) You see all manner of ways of cocking a hat in artwork dating from the late 17th and early 18th centuries - front, back, one side or the other, both sides, front and back &c.

In general I would agree that broad-brimmed hats make no sense on the water. (I don't even bother to bring mine any more when I go sailing in garb.) However, period images show them quite consistently being worn there. My conclusion is that there are other factors at work of which we aren't aware. (Maybe the style amongst sailors was to wear them - amongst peers, style frequently holds more sway than practicality. Maybe it was the most affordable, respectable hat for a sailor. Maybe it was the easiest hat for a sailor to procure while in port. Maybe they they put ties on the hat to hold them on. Maybe hats weren't worn when sailing. (I can't think of any images of regular sailors on a ship under sail from period. It's hard enough to find images of them in port.) Maybe something else of which I'm not thinking.)

I just went through and tried to update the images in here. (Many of which were lost when the gallery was deleted. For the record, that may have been a mistake. I know I placed some stuff in there to put into threads that now have errors in them.) Anyhow, there are some neat images in here, so I thought I'd pop it up again. Especially since it was a bit of work to go and find all those images.

Here are a couple of threads on head kerchiefs. There is some evidence, but as I said in the previous post, it is limited. This suggests they were around, although probably not as common on GAoP period sailors as we represent them today. (One note... be cautious with the older posts. We've gotten much better at accurately documenting things over the years.) Aye the kerchief! bandannas Kerchief under your hat

I'm no expert, but I think I've read most of the various accounts of Robert's crew and I didn't come away with the impression that his ships were "run mainly by black crews". What's your source for that? If you look through the images of period sailors at work, you will also find a lack of sailors wearing kerchiefs on their heads. (I believe there is limited evidence of this in period images, but it is more unusual than usual.) This may reflect the artist's bias for more formal hatware, but it is pretty consistent across various period artists.

This is a good thread and you've added a lot of interesting material to it. It was very helpful when I was writing the hat article last month.

There are period images showing officers wearing what appear to be tricorns, so he could be wearing one. Officers in the navies would have higher social status, more money and would likely be more fashion conscious.

Fashion was mostly the province of the upper classes. Sailors were near the bottom of the social ladder and some wore the same clothes day after day. (Some period accounts note that they sold their clothing when in port so that they could buy drinks, which might help to explain this.) Even so, they would have a hat; hats were considered a necessary article of clothing during the time. (This is unlike today where hats are an accessory - you must be always cautious in trying to understand society 300 years ago by comparing it with modern society.) A straw hat seems to have been primarily associated with the lowest classes, so a sailor might have one if he was really down on his luck. However, most period illustrations seem to show sailors who are working wearing felt hats either uncocked or cocked on one or two sides. I could go on, but it would be easier to just direct you to my last article, beginning on the 3rd page where I discuss this in some detail and provide loads of images from the period.

I started out wanting to use that first image for my article on hats as proof of tricorn-style cocked hats on regular sailors, but it's out of period. As I started looking at more images, I realized three cornered hats start showing up on regular sailors in the early/mid 1730s, but not really before.

In what will make no sense at all, I am posting my latest article which is all about my Patrick Hand Original™ Planter's Hat, including how Patrick made it as seen on the first page of this thread, silly things that have happened involving the hat as well as some actual, honest-to-John historical research about period hats and why cocked hats probably wouldn't be seen on the typical sailor during the GAoP. You can read it on my web page by following this link.

I think one of the more important things I have learned researching this topic is how heterogeneous the pirate society really was. I think the movies and some books tend to paint pirates as a homogeneous group and they aren't. They're just like any group of people, containing differing beliefs, opinions and ways of doing things. Of course, you even have to temper THAT, because, like all societies at any point, they are inhabitants of their time. So to really understand them, you first have to try and understand the society and then look more closely into the variety of things that happened that hint at their underlying beliefs, motives and so forth. A big part of that is digging for period resources. (The General History, while important, isn't the only thing written about pirates during the period. Fortunately Foxe will be releasing a book containing other period references soon.) (Like, next week? )

I was just looking at hats on sailors from period art for an article I wrote and I don't recall seeing any straw hats. However, they existed and are definitely seen on farmers and slaves, so why not sailors? We did have a discussion about straw hats in this thread that might contain some material of interest you. It focused primarily on whether straw tricorns were in use (which is doubtful given that period images of sailors only show officers in tricorns), but it also discussed general straw hats.

I would guess that by jaw-work he meant talking instead of doing. But it's just a guess. Coffee houses were in vogue at this time - people would go there, get coffee and read publications and journals like the Tatler and Spectator and then discuss what they'd read. Ergo, "jaw-work enough to serve a nation." Chole Black would be the one who could really address this one, but I haven't seen her around here lately.

We can do that.

I had read this before on the forum somewhere, quite possibly in a post by you. Personally, I would like to try mushroom ketchup.

It's been ages since I've seen that one, but I remember liking Rathbone's portrayal in particular. I wish they'd remake this like they started to do a while back... it would be good for my website hits.

Hey Boo! It's been too long! You should come back to Key West soon!