Mission

You call it a soundhole. (Sounds sort of naughty, doesn't it?)

Ed Foxe's Period Sailing for Dummies? Boy, I'd like to attend that. The "How people thought" discussion would be an interesting one to take on. You'd could get into explaining all the different vermin, medicine and how it affected personal appearance, the wearing second-third-fourth hand clothing among the hoi polloi, period societal class structure, the political situations, the multi-various wars between the European countries, the concept of apprenticeship from youth (7 years as a slave, basically), work-ethic, the ever-present dirt and filth, waste disposal...my God, but there's a lot of stuff you could do.

It's not the height of the socks that I don't like, it's the fact that the tops slip down revealing bare knees. (Scandalous!) The garters help, but I'd rather hide them under pants.

Hey Michael, could I wear pants like that and be appropriate? Then I wouldn't have quite so much trouble with my damned socks.

J/k. I actually have to take people's business cards (if they have them) or write names down or (most likely) ask Michael for people's names just so's I can get them right...or at all. You meet someone interesting at an event and think "I'll remember that!" and then five minutes later you meet another someone interesting and think "I'll remember that!", completely and utterly blocking out the first person's name and then you meet another someone interesting...etc. The surgeon's journals are as much a memory aid as they are anything. Plus it's fascinating to go back and re-read them and realize how much great stuff happened that I'd forgotten.

Mark and Jennie Gist. (Don't you read the surgeon's journals? )

Except me. Silas, you ought to add your boy's names to the muster. You could be a seaman at 14 or 15 (or so) and a powder monkey if you were younger.

Done. I put you in fantasy clothing since that seems to be where you best fit. I also added an entry under jewelry. (The girl in the photo presently on your front page looks sorta' like Zooey Deschanel.)

Raphael Mission - Surgeon, impressed against his will - Monroe, MI

That it probably the unconscious reason I like them. I had hamsters for years. I think such a thing would neat in my pirate living room.

No, just two things that go great together. Hey, is that candle in the sphere behind you one of your products? How much does that cost?

It is good, but it does seem a trifle long. We're naught but...(sorry.) Of course, I don't have to sign them anywise, since I am the surgeon. However, please permit me to offer the create-yer-own-articles from my Do-It-Yourself 1000 Word Pirate Report by way of supplement. The way this works, you can pick one of the articles from the set of four listed which you most want to use for your crew. The different articles choices are separated by ';'s here (Like some of the old Mad Magazine articles from which this idea was basically stolen.): Hmm...re-reading that (it was written several years ago), I feel compelled to say...sorry again. Nice job, William. What are we going to do with them once they're decided?

I think he's right here. That spiral design on the handle comes from hammering in heated wire. Ah. My ignorance of period metalworking is showing. So...anyone know someone who can do that? That would be a blacksmith, I think?

Wow, this one is really awesome: Bow before your Lord Callenish! Gentlemen... Not even remotely a gentleman... You would attack the defenseless undead! (Hey John, you get to repair the bars next time. That damned gibbet seems to be a lot less durable than the one I bought for Bucky for some reason. Plus you also get to deal with the ramifications of an undead Becky roaming the lands, searching for brains...) :: Oh, BTW, I'm sure you guys won't mind, but just a heads up...I may use that photo on Becky's page on my website once I get some photos of her at PiP to go with it. It's pretty LOLable. :: Two things that go great together (and I don't mean the pipe):

I did not. I ended up buying this one off eBay: It came from England, wasn't too expensive and dated from the 1750s, so I am really happy with it. Not quite the saw Woodall drew up, but close enough. The pelican is another matter, though. I've never seen one for less than $500. I don't have the impression they were as common as bone saws. Surgeons generally avoided pulling teeth except as a last measure.

"There's damsels in distress out there...and we got all this beer! We'll free them from their condos and bring them over here. We'll show them his gold records, We'll play his music loud, We'll party just like Bubba does, We'll do the old man proud."

Why? Aren't you paying attention to the length of my posts? Actually, I would think the surgical aspects of your character would be of secondary importance to the story-line you've laid out, which is most interesting. Knowing a little about the position of the physician (the term doctor is too vague) in society and whatnot should be enough to get you started - the intricacies of surgery can be learned later if you decide to go that route. Have you attended an event and talked with some folks there about their characters and dress? The may inform your character design choices as much as anything.

Did she break any more bars in her on-going attempts to escape and eat Jessica's brains when she is all alone at the house? (I didn't make her, you know - she's a very quiet undead.)

How do you figure this? Hmm...you're right. How about Steamship Piracy is a hybrid offshoot of piracy?

In Spanish the word is vosotros (masculine) and vosotras (feminine). so you could use that. I need to plan to attend this event in the future. I've wanted to ever since Mary Diamond posted photos of it from a few years back. That and Ojai are on my wanna' list... If only Duchess would abduct me since she has a little plane.

I don't see why you couldn't do a Steampunk outfit in Key West and at PiP - anything seems to go and people not on this forum show up in all sorts of crazy outfits, although many of them seem to be tourists, not event re-enactors. Or are you talking about organized skits and incorporation into the midst of the event? That would seem to be hard to make work as the core theme of the event is piracy, leaning in a historic direction (especially from the POV of the fort). Steampunk is more of a hybrid offshoot of pyracy and in no way based in history, so the fort folks may not like it as Captain Sterling says. It's a historic fort and I think part of the rationale for use being there is the historic angle.

I am interested in having the dental pelican in this thread (post #132) cast: http://pyracy.com/index.php?showtopic=1499&view=findpost&p=372814 I'd be willing to do the final machine and filing work on the part once it was cast. If it works, I might be interested in buying a bunch of them.

Here's a fine dental pelican from an eBay auction that the seller took down for some reason. (I really wanted to bid on this, although the price had already gotten too high for me by the time he closed it.) The seller explains: "Antique dental pelican, 1600's An exceptional early dental pelican from 1600's, all wrought iron, in perfect condition with its original patina, great design and an engraved elicoidal decorative line on the shaft. Lenght: 14.5 cm" I would actually be interested in having one of these made. My guess is that it was originally sandcast and hand filed and drilled.

I personally think Godwin is pretty reasonably priced given the quality of their stuff. Compare them to eBay and you'll be grateful their stuff is so cheap. Now their wait time on the more complex pieces is a bit irritating, but you really don't need all that junk anyhow. (Spring-loaded fleams were just starting to become popular at the end of the Golden Age of Pyracy. New techniques in medicine appear to have been very slowly adopted, so it's likely most sea-surgeons wouldn't have such things.) However, being a surgeon-turned-pyrate, you don't need to have a lot of stuff if you don't want it. You're in transition, right? Plus, someone who left a ship to join pirates may not have been able to take all his medical gear. (I'm figuring there were at least three boxes of stuff, one or two of which would have been large and heavy. See the thread On Making a Medicine Chest for more on that.) The upshot is, you could easily explain that you only managed to escape with a few necessary tools and leave it at that if you wanted to. Ah, the doctor/surgeon explanation isn't that hard to research, the details are just tedious. But since you seem interested and I am feeling expansive... Basically, in England there were four "branches" of medicine (for lack of a better term coming to my mind.) At the top of the heap were the Physicians who dealt mostly in theory. They would be the ones most likely to be called doctors, although I don't see the term used very much in the period literature. (But it is used occasionally, so it's not wholly inappropriate.) The physicians rarely got their hands dirty, they just prescribed treatments, cures and drugs. (Dr. Dover was a physician - apparently a fairly earthy one.) Next on the totem pole were the Barber-Surgeons who did get their hands dirty. They performed the surgeries, but were supposedly prohibited from making the drugs in England. There was an uneasy alliance between the barbers and the surgeons in the B-S guild and...well, there's where I recommend further research if you're interested. At sea, a true Physician would be less useful than a Surgeon since he didn't perform operations, so if a ship only had one medical person, it would almost certainly be a surgeon. A sea-surgeon was also allowed to make the drugs because he was often all the ship had. Sea surgeons got great training, but were paid much less than those with land-based practices. Third were the Apothecaries who made the drugs. Their trade was necessarily land-based. There were constant fights between the Apothecary and the Barber-Surgeon guilds over responsibilities and (of interest to us), who was responsible for making up the surgeon's chests during period. Physicians would often prescribe medicines to patients who would go to the Apothecaries to get them filled. Fourth were everyone else. There were all kinds of untrained folk healers and patent medicine makers roaming England. Somewhere out there is a whole book full of so-called "quack" medicine advertisements that is sort of interesting to look at. However, these people often filled in the gaps between the common people and the lofty Physicians. All the guilds hated them because they didn't pay guild dues and the genuine quacks (as opposed to tooth-pullers and bone-healers who actually did some genuinely good work) sullied the reputation of an already sullied medicine. See how long that was? That's why I didn't explain it.

That would be SOOO cool! You should do that Silkie!