Mission

I can do whatever I like. (Even be irrational and possibly illogical.) Now don't bother me, I'm going to go off and grow a big, ferocious looking beard. And I'm going to shave my Connery eyebrows (I wish) so they look like Nicholson playing the devil. Yo HO!

...to go movie pirate at PiP this year! I was looking at the photo of myself from my trip to San Francisco two years ago and I think it might be fun to be a movie pirate for a change. (Whew! Glad I got that off my chest...anyone know where I can borrow some bucket boots? Size 9-ish...)

You sound like you're replying to something. ?? Basically what happened was that after some discussion among the mods, the thread got moved into this forum where it makes more sense. You'll find it here. I did remove his rant, which, oddly enough, didn't really fit the direction the topic had taken. I offered to pm the Quartermaster a copy of it so he could post it somewhere more appropriate, but since he's busy working on his own forum, he's decided not to post here as much, which he explains here. So that's what happened.

My bad. It is indeed referred to as containing opiates in my references.

Local Indians were frequently used as guides by ships. I believe every privateer account I have read mentions them in this capacity. However, they usually do not seem to be technically considered as a part of the crew. Some of them must have stayed on, but their status may not have been that of a full crew member on most ships. (Many pirate ships seem to have kept servants, guides, slaves and whatnot, despite the popular notion that they were all completely egalitarian.)

Laudenum and various other recipes featuring opium were popular medicinally at this time. I don't know that people would regard them as recreational drugs per se. However, someone who was treated with them might find the concoction to be most pleasurable and try to get at them if the opportunity presented itself. Note that the opium was diluted in all of the drugs I have come across. There were many patent medicines and pain relief recipes (analgesics) that featured opiates. If I recall correctly, I believe laudenum usually consisted of no more than 25% opium. (Recipes for patent medicines varied widely.) I have found no period references to drug problems or recreational drug use thus far. This may be because it was not regarded as a problem or because it was understood as an abusive behavior. So all that leaves you is conjecture. Smoking is rarely mentioned in most accounts, and when it is it is usually in reference to cargo being taken (tobacco). My feeling is that it was so common that comment seemed unnecessary. For the most part, it was not thought to be a harmful activity at this time; that is a modern concept. So, by extension, if sailors came across Indians in the New World smoking marijuana, they might have just regarded it as another form of tobacco - possibly one with different properties than what they were used to. They might have thought little more of it. Marijuana is technically not chemically addictive (in fact, many recreational drugs aren't), but it is slightly psychologically addictive if I remember my classes correctly. If you don't have any special association in your mind to the tobacco the Indians proffer and that which you get everywhere else, it wouldn't seem to me that there would be much ground for psychological addiction. Again, this is conjecture. I have also read modern commentary about abuse of alcohol, which at least one author claimed to be a huge problem during period. Drinking excessively is commented on in just about every period account I have read. If you want to read more about alcoholism during period painted as a problematic behavior, I highly recommend the book Hubbub: Filth, Noise and Stench in England, 1600-1770 by Emily Cockayne. She also talks about smoking, although the period evidence is not as compelling. (I don't believe she mentions drugs at all.) [Note: edited erroneous references to cocaine and replaced them with the correct drug, opium. Thanks to Sjöröveren for pointing out my error.]

Sorry, it's really not my mug. Stynky never had it, I just thought he did. (Although methinks this all bodes ill...this year I may be bringing styrofoam cups, a cotton bandana and leaving my much prized surgical equipment at home...fun is fun but this is starting to border on not fun. I don't want everyone stealing my stuff because they think Stynky's original joke was so entertaining they have to get in on the act.) (BTW, the original joke was pretty entertaining. ) Say, why has Red Jessi reason to want to shoot my mug? I think I've always been nice to her...in fact, I quite like her.

Boy, I wish I'd have known before I started reading all these period accounts. I could have given you some extra data. As I remember it, I started that list so that writers could get appropriate names for characters at piracyinfo. It seems like there was another reason, too...

Are you building on that list we made? (Foxe was quite instrumental in the creation of the post I mentioned - although that was in the other forum, not this one.)

Some of you may recall the story of the baby lion stuffed animal I had as a child from the PiP '08 Surgeon's Journal. I told this story to Grace Thatcher (who was 8 at PiP) and she was very concerned that I had lost my favorite stuffed animal. So she did something about it. This last Easter Egg page is especially for her. Be forewarned that it is not like the other pages because I wrote especially for her. I hope she can read it or Silas and Constance can read it to her. Perhaps she will learn a little bit about Mexico through Baby Lion's adventures. You will find it here: Baby Lion Surgeon's Journal Extra Page If you don't remember the whole story, you can go back and re-read it in the Surgeon's Journal which starts here. Thanks Grace! Your pal, Mission the Surgeon

I did not read the graphic novel. In fact, I had never heard of it before the hype started for this movie.

When I said 'European', I most definitely meant that. If I had meant English, I would have said so. On a related note, I once led a discussion on another forum that was designed to identify pirates of various nationalities which I later copied into this forum called Pirate Nationalities (Origins) that all and sundry are free to browse. It definitely puts the bulk of the named pirates in the English category (it is actually further split to show pirates from Wales and Scotland and so forth, so that should be accounted for when totting up the numbers.) But enough on this irrelevant aside. I think CrazyColeBlack's point is very interesting as it is contrary to everything else I have read. I thought they were slaves based on you citing your source as "Virginia Runaways “Runaway Slave Advertisements from 18th-century Virginia newspapers." If it is as you say, it is probably the most promising evidence I have seen that white criminals (and pirates were criminals) might have sported tattoos during period for some reason. As to sailors being regarded as slaves, their implied status is not relevant to my point; only their race is. The two accounts of tattooing from Wafer's account explain where the men he mentions got their tattoos as I noted in my original post. His tats came from the Indians on the Isthmus of Darien. Another man he mentions (Bullman, who wanted "surgeon" Wafer to remove his tattoos) came from time spent among "the Negroes." I figured this referred to the Africans (which could be a mistaken assumption on my part - Bullman may have referred to any dark-skinned people as "Negroes" for all I know - in fact, I believe I have seen people in India referred to that way in some sailor's accounts). Since the Africans were key to the Slave Trade, I thought it would make sense that American slaves would have tattoos if they happened to come from whereever it was that Bullman got inked. As to conjecture, ever since I was soundly berated for assuming that a mug might be used to drink coffee from (instead of a dish), I try not to conjecture about what might have happened. Instead I look for evidence from period. As I was told then, we could say anything might have happened, but this is not proof. I don't know much about the Jerusalem Cross, but I do understand that it was a religious symbol and not a secular one. So while it is evidence that tattooing occurred long ago (which I don't think is in question), I am not sure that it proves that people would have run around with tattoos to express their individuality. (I am not sure it would not, but we must always keep in mind that cultural mores were very different during period than they are today.)

Actually, this makes good sense. These folks all appear to be slaves. Those few records of period European sailors we have indicate that they had sort of "gone native" by copying the style of the Africans or indigenous Central and South American Indians. This does not suggest that it would have been acceptable among those of European descent - the real question for most GAoP piracy purists. It just verifies that people from places we already know to have practiced tattooing may have done so even when they got to the "new world." (Or they may just have had them already.)

I went to see Watchmen yesterday. What an unrelentingly dreary, depressing movie. The central dilemma boiled down to a disagreement over whether humans were animalistic and Id-based at their core and that's just the way it is (the Comedian's view) or human are animalistic and Id-based at the core and only an almost ultimate, near universal, shocking display of violence will change their views (the...er, villain's view. At least I guess he's the villain. Actually, he's of that stripe of intellectual that thinks an all-powerful, self-righteous psychotic is the only one with a view clear enough to show us the error of our ways. Curiously, this particular view had been proven wrong repeatedly throughout history, most notably at Hiroshima (as well as in many of the James Bond movies), but the movie ignores that completely.) Every other viewpoint is fairly well nullified by these two character's views and actions. (Although not necessarily directly - for reasons I'll leave for you to find out if you decide to watch this.) The characters' back-stories, while fairly well fleshed out (especially given how many of them there were), were just as joyless as the main storyline. I was hoping when the vigilante ass-kicking started things would improve, but, for the most part, they didn't. That part of the movie (mostly in the last half or possibly even the last third) was painted in just as depressing a pallet as the rest of the movie. I personally don't recommend it at all. If I hadn't been there with someone who wanted to see it, I would have left about an hour of misguided misery and angst and found another movie in the theater to watch instead. If you want the worst elements of reality in your superhero movie menu, this is the flick for you. Everyone else should probably give it a wide berth.

That thing had more endings than the last Lord of the Rings movie. If you add 30 or 40 more to the next chapter(s) you'll have gone off on as many irrelevant tangents as they did as well. You know, I might be able to have a glass liner put into it...I work extensively with a large glass company and have access to molten glass. Why don't you send it to me? I'll see if I can do it. (You may as well - you sent me every other mug that was neither mine nor yours that you have.)

Yeah, it was a comment on those tats not being GAoP - that's mostly what we discuss in Twill. I believe there is a modern Tattoo thread in the Crow's Nest forum and probably another in the Pyrate's Heart forum. I did cite a couple period accounts previously in this very thread. The exercise is finding them is left to the reader. However, my understanding from my reading and talking with those researching GAoP is that while tattoos certainly existed during this time and while there are a few (3, I believe) accounts of sailors having them, they were not a common element of the European sailor. The tattoo-GAoP pirate connection is most likely a modern idea, propagated by movies. Even the "rebel" association with tattoos is modern. In the distant past they seem to have been regarded as curios. People paid money to see those who had them. (I am thinking here of the story of the tattooed prince that Dampier brought back to England to display in a sort of sideshow fashion. Actually, as I understand it, he would bring the prince to people's houses who would then pay for the privilege of seeing his tattoos.)

And your period source for this is?

Actually, I spent about 10 years or so roughing it, camping approximately once every month or two, courtesy of the Boy Scouts, the Explorers and later my own curiosity. This included several multi-week trips where everything either had to be on your back or in a canoe (depending on the trip). Suffice it to say, I have shloads of camping experience in all sorts of conditions (including several ground tent snow encampments - which are not as bad as you are probably thinking. (There's a method to it which I will gladly explain to anyone interested via pm. Plus the BSA gives you get a neato-keen patch called a "Polar Bear" for your trouble. Or at least they used to.)) At age 21 or 22 I decided that I had learned all I needed to know from such experiences and vowed to camp never again, unless it was the key to solving a national crisis, defeating a powerful super-villain or something similarly important. Why continue doing something that results in a sore neck or back when you've milked it for most of its educational interest or challenge? So I am now a rest curmudgeon who likes minimal distraction and lots of white noise when I take to my bed. Right before I drop off into restful slumber, I sit and think of stupid things I can vow to do and not do which will allow me to make grand pronouncements similar to this one. (See? High maintenance.)

I am a high-maintenance prig. (My sister told me so.) I am averse to group sleepovers and I usually require an electric fan in the sleeping quarters.

did he just call me a flowering chimpanzee?? (Well who wouldn't want to be a flowering chimpanzee?)

Wiki dates them through the mid 17th century, noting that "Surviving morions from the 1648 siege have been unearthed and preserved at Colchester Castle..." Interestingly, several sites note that the British used these helmets in the mid 1500s. Wiki also notes that "...captured Spanish armor was worn by Native Americans as late as the 19th century as protection from bullets and a sign of their status." If the Indians were still using them in the new world in the 1800s, you would think they could have been around at any time in between, although they would probably not be popular after the dates noted.

I did warn you that it was a complete-waste-of-time site. The first page is sort of blah, but I find it gets funnier and funnier after that. Plus, after reading it, you don't actually have to see the movie! (Are you certain there actually was a script?)

Ah-ha! I have found something almost as good as MST3K! One of my favorite complete-waste-of-time sites, The Agony Booth, has done a re-cap of this movie. It starts out a little slow, but the re-cap gets better and better as you read it. Check out The Agony Booth's Recap of Night of the Lepus.

You know, I was having trouble with my BIOS, but I downloaded the latest version from Dell and now everything seems to be OK.

Well you know I'm not sleeping shipboard. (I may just get up early and drive down and back on the same day...I haven't decided yet.) Others may not be be sleeping shipboard either. Last time it seems to me that at least 1/4 of the people who were at the event didn't sleep on the ship. Plus I've yet to see an event where everyone who says they're going to attend actually does. Situations change, work sechedules get in the way and so forth. So you're probably pretty safe. (Still, I understand that it never hurts to put the info out there. )