Mission

I'm afraid pics will have to wait - my internet connection is a bit slow. Besides, memory is fleeting and if I don't get this stuff down, a lot of it will all be gone. Sunday morning as I was peddling my bike into the fort, I met Reggie - Israel Cross on the pub - and his now bride-to-be whose name I will find out before I do the webpage version of this (the internet is running really slow or I'd look it up now. edit: Krystian) Yes, Reggie popped the question this weekend and she said yes, so he's on his way to wedded bliss. Actually, he was on his way to Disneyworld. They were leaving the fort and heading for Orlando, presumably to celebrate their engagement away from the bunch of overripe pirates in the fort. I wished them the best and peddled on. Once inside the fort, I set up my surgeon's gear for the day and was immediately inundated with tourists. It was a brisk day of doctoring. While I'm doing that, over in the fort, I wanted to mention a couple of things that had been going on all weekend in the background so's I don't forget them. Across the way from us was the Key Lime Pie factory, who were selling chocolate-covered slices of key lime pie on a stick. Business seemed a bit slow for them, so I kept talking them out to various reenactor women and then buying them one. They were $3 of yummy, semi-frozen heaven. I ate four or five of them this weekend. You will probably notice my waistcoat buttons popping off in the photos from today. Also across the way from me was a woman preparing animal pelts. I never got the chance to sit down and chat with her, but it was sort of interesting to watch her scraping the hides all day long, sometimes with assistance, but usually not. A very neat slice of living history. Deadeye brought a young lady over to meet me by the name of Mad Maeve who was just beginning to do an apothecary impression. She wanted to chat with me and pick my brain on how to do it properly. Poor Mad Maeve... I am nearly hopeless with the medicines from this time period. All the prescriptions are written in abbreviated italicized latin which is only occasionally misspelled so I have shied away from it as much as possible. She asked me several questions about what would be used in different situations and I was surprised to learn that I actually knew a bit more than I thought I did. While we were gabbling, I started showing her bottles from a home medicine kit that I had acquired from eBay that contained nice, clear labels and she became quite fascinated. She started asking me what they were for and I just shrugged my shoulders since I'd never looked them up. This made me realize there were a whole bunch of them that I had left in my shipping crate. They are inside of a very old Cuban cigar box, mounted in metal clips. She greedily took the box and started examining the contents closely. While she was doing that, I asked about her. I discovered that Deadeye had brought her to FTPI last year. She fell in love with the sport and decided upon the Apothecary role. It's a good choice because I only know a few people who do that impression. I asked why and she told me that she had always been interested in herbal medicines and this was a chance to expand her knowledge on the topic and get involved in the pirate reeancting thing. She had a slight accent that I couldn't place, so I asked her where she was from. Originally. "Northwestern Massachusetts; we have a slight accent, but we can still pronounce our r's, unlike those people in Boston." I learned that she had left Massachusetts 8 years ago and come down here with someone because it was they wanted to go as far south and as they could to get away from the snow and ice. They thought about going to live with some of her family in South Carolina, but she told her mate that if they were going as far south as they could, they shouldn't stop there and they wound up in Key West. She had never been here before she moved here, which I found interesting. She wandered off and returned with an herbal book and started to explain my medicines to me. For example, Arnica was an ingredient to reduce swelling; Calengila (I doubt that's spelled right, sorry, I'm operating on fewer cylinders this morning than usual.) is actually Marigold and it is used as a styptic and to make an ointment for abrasions and burns.Capsicum was actually cayenne pepper and was put on the gums for temporary toothache relief. And so on. She showed me her little medicine box and explained some of the things it contained like honey, wormwood and other such things and revealed how they were used. It was a good thing she came over to pick my brain about her role because she taught me a lot. While I was talking with her, one of the guys who was cooking came over and asked if he could use my bone saw to cut the breast bone of the pig. After asking, he looked at me, then looked at William and asked, "Why's he grinning like that?" I told him he could only perform this operation if I could help. So we strode (he was a strider) over to the spot in the fort wall where they were preparing food and unceremoniously dumped the pig out of it's ice chest onto the chest lid. It was already gutted - the breast bone needed to be cut from inside the pig's chest. So he started sawing away and I watched. Then he asked me if I could hold the pig open while he sawed, which would have meant I couldn't get photos, so I yelled at Devlin - who happened to be going up to the fort wall parapet to watch the battle and got him to take photos while I assisted on the operation. Eventually he got it to where he was happy and I followed Devlin up to the fort wall to watch the battle. While I was absent, the guy decided to cut through the entire pig and he used the bone saw to chop it in half. He had nothing but praise for the saw (which was my Chad Azevedo hand-crafted replica of a 1680 saw) and boasted the it allowed him to "cut through the pig's leg joint in 24 seconds." More props for Chad. Well, I want to get over to the fort before everyone leaves. I get to stay until Wednesday, so I promise I'll get everything down before I leave.

Oh, man. I'm totally going to regret the morning here, but I wanted to get a few things down before tomorrow because I'm sure I'll forget parts of them when I awake, so here goes. I totally fell off the wagon tonight because Beowulf had brought Glenfiddich 12 yo. and it was Sunday night at the event. Among other things that happened.... I said to Captain Jim or madPete, for reasons I don't exactly recall, "Fate bitch-slapped you." After spending several minutes chatting with Commodore Cutter, Spike, Jaded Jettty, wife of Commodore Cutter among several others, we were called over to watch Cannibal Chrispy's rap which is not suitable for children and involved a prop, in the form of a woman with large... extremities. And a message to fellow twin Mae who should TOTALLY have stayed because this evening was SO MUCH more fun than last night and she could have been the one to straddle the red hog or at least helped me convince Brig to straddle it because nothing I would say would convince her to do it, including asking Jack to help me. Where WERE you in my moment of need? And that's all I'm going to post because I have to go sleep this off. (We were smoking really good cigars too, Mae. You could have been a parr of that. You could have. Next year take Monday off, dammit!)

That's better. Now I'm going to tell you a story out of sequence in the hope that it might save a human life. When the Mercury boys dropped me off at the condo on Thursday evening, they had helpfully brought the groceries up with them because I had my monster hardcase suitcase and my black carry-on to wrestle with. Unfortunately, they didn't bring all the groceries, which I know was an honest mistake, because they didn't actually take or eat any of the things they left behind in Keith's car. I really wouldn't mind this much, except they had brought me the eggs and laundry soap, but left the coffee, bread and the I Can't Believe It's Not Butter Light (to which your surgeon is absolutely addicted and will not even reveal how much he consumes because he doesn't want to hear all that nannying nonsense about how bad it is for you.) The real crime here would have been the loss of the coffee. Had I had no coffee in the room, they might have had to send paramedics to my condo with IV bags of caffeine when they realized they hadn't seen me for two days. Fortunately some previous tenant had left behind a can of Folger's French Roast, which worked for the nonce. So I didn't worry about enough to actually remember that the groceries were in Keith's car. For newbs, Keith is event organizer Lily Alexander's husband and he is the runner for the event. If something is needed to keep Lily from completely losing her marbles, he goes and gets it. (Keith is as calm and easy-going as Lily is intense and strictly organized. I think they're a good match in that way. But I digress...) So the bread, coffee and butter stuff sat in Keith's car for two days before I thought to ask him about it late last night. He told me he had it and would give it to me before I left. Which he did as I was leaving for the evening. Now bread and coffee can pretty much deal with the trunk of a car in the glorious Florida sun and heat, but the I Can't Believe It's Not Butter Light - not so much so. In fact, I could feel the liquified contents of the sealed plastic tub rolling around in there when I picked it up. But I threw it in the fridge anyhow. (I am a bachelor, if you haven't already figured that out.) Wanting breakfast a bit ago, I wondered what to use to cook the eggs in. I couldn't use the melted and reconstituted ICBIB Light, now, could I? Haven't you been paying attention? I am a bachelor. So if this starts to sound like the missing verse of the poem Jabberwocky, please call the paramedics. I am staying in the Shipyard Condos. Thank you. Returning to the condo, keeping you all up-to-date and showering, I then proceeded to head for the fort. At the gate were none other than the crew of Bloody Historical. They demanded my papers and wouldn't open the gate. They adopted threatening poses, with Keith Iritsky sticking his sword through the chain links by way of thread. (For those of you who don't know how a sword works, this is a damned-fool way to use it. All I had to do was stay a few feet back. Unless he suddenly opened the gate and ran me through.) The evening before, when I was returning from Cafe Sole with Mae, Lex and madPete, Jana had made an astute observation when we were fishing about trying to get our passes for the gate. "It doesn't really matter whether you have it or not. If the people at the gate know you, they're going to give you a hard time either way." Then she looked at me significantly. I can't imagine why. Anyhow, they finally let me in (I did have my pass), and then parked my bike. I toddled in to the fort and wandered about making small talk before the auction started. One of those people was Rusty Nell, Cannibal Chrispy's wife. She is one of those incredibly genuine people and I hadn't seen her in years, so we hugged and she filled me in on her recent doings. She was just finishing up her first official music CD. She explained what style of music she plays, but I can't really remember that bit. I believe it was American folk. She told me that on her 40th birthday, she took stock of her life and asked herself if she was ever going to finish anything she started. Being involved in the Second Life online universe, as I have mentioned in a previous Journal, where she was a singer, and having a library of ten years worth of songs she had written, she decided to finish that project by making her first music CD. She cautioned me that it was a lot of work - not just going in to a studio and recording. (As if I would ever decide to make a music CD.) Her Second Life fans apparently paid to be in her virtual audience (including the ever-fascinating Patrick Hand) and she used that money to bootstrap her CD project. She has leaked some of her songs out and they have made it onto FM radio in places as far away as England, Germany and Australia. I will post links to her CD once I learn of them. I spotted Tury, who is Maria de Los Angeles's friend and started to chat her up... erm, get info on her for the Journal, but we didn't get very far before Scarlett Jai started making a speech about the importance of the auction and the people at the fort and raising money to fix the place up. One of the things I learned is that the fort was due to receive a whole bunch of their American Civil War artifacts back that had been recovered there in the late 1960s and early 70s. I guess when they were recovered the park system decided to send them all over the state for any other American Civil War era forts that had a museum. Now they were getting a bunch of them back including one of the few, if not the only, water desalinization machine from that time period. After that our auctioneers Chrispy and William Red Wake were introduced and the auction got going. The first thing that was auctioned was a painting Don Maitz had made of someone who (for copyright reasons) Cannibal Chrispy called "Captain Organ." Don is the guy who painted the original Captain emM... Organ, so this fetched a pretty high price of $300. And things went along from there. It was one of the better auctions I've seen for raising cash for the Friends of Fort Taylor, who help keep the fort in good repair. They got $10 for a pair of turkey legs and the same amount for, I kid you not, a pair of frozen goat balls. Now, before we go on, I want to give you an aside about the goat. He is going to be cooked tomorrow for the Sunday Night Feast (formerly the Pig Roast, now the Pig and Goat roast.) This is a wonderful choice of meats given that many privateers and pirates stopped at Juan Fernandez Island which was well stocked with goats. They would kill and salt goats to replenish their supplies and the men would have fresh goat while they were staying on that island to cure the scurvy-ridden and replenish their wood and water. Some forward-thinking captain had left a bunch of live goat on the island in the 16th or early 17th century and the goat did what came naturally and populated the island. They also provided the marooned sailor Alexander Selkirk - the model for Robinson Crusoe - with dancing partners. (Just dancing. As far as you or I know.) So pirates and goat go way back. Flash forward to earlier this year. I like to say silly things (which, if you are reading this, you already realize) and I started talking about how I was going to bring a goat to the event this year. I do this to exasperate Lily Alexander. (It really doesn't take that much effort, but I consider myself an artist.) This idiot joke planted the kernal of an idea in either Lily or Scarlett's mind and now we're having goat for dinner. (Too bad your vegetarian surgeon can't try some. I'd really like to. Seriously.) So that's where the frozen goat balls came from. They are, no doubt, a delicacy in some South Pacific Island where the natives worship iguanas. Speaking of iguanas, they, like the goats, have been fruitful and multiplied. When Cannibal Chrispy and I were walking back from the battlefield on Friday, he pointed several out to me on the fort wall. I had a hard time seeing them because there are rust spot on the wall and many of them are a rusty bright orange! Mae later told me that this is because they are in heat. My the thing you don't learn! She also told me that she had rescued a frog, which promptly got frog goo all over her hands. She did this because she had accidentally knocked an iguana off a tree while walking on the Mae Snake trail. (Those of you who have been reading along with me for years will recall that Mae used to work in a place that specialized in reptiles. She told me last night that she has a large snake which she rescued from a guy who smoked a lot and didn't feed the snake well. She reported that the snake is now fat and healthy. I guess when you're a snake, being fat is healthy. After this weekend of Key West restaurants, I have a feeling that I am going to wish I were a snake. But we are Waaaaaaay OT now.) The one thing I wanted to see in the auction was my original 1972 Pirates of the Caribean Condemned to Chains Forever Snap Action! skeleton model went for. It is a complete kit in a somewhat damaged box. All the model parts are still in the bag and all the original instructions and advert docs are still in there. Diosa bid $50 for it. Then nothing. So I bid $60. She bid $70. I bid $75, because that's what I'd paid for it. I wanted to fort to get it's value, you see. I won it. (And I have no idea what to do with it now. I'd like to build it, but I can't stand the thought of taking it out of the original packaging. What a geek I am.) I asked Diosa why she was bidding on it and she told me that it was because she was a Disney collector. Later on, Iron Jon told me he had had all the POTC Snap Action! model kits. I was instantly jealous as I had only had three when I was a kid. These models were actually the reason I became interested in pirates, as I have explained in detail on my webpage. The action went long and an awful lot of money was raised. It was better than any previous Dead Man's Chest auction I had seen. We all cheered at the end of it and then Scarlett Jai announced that she was going over to Ole' Zach's Pub. Mae and I decided to go and check it out. There was some very disorganized singing going on in there. It was all candlelit and several people were sitting around listening to Dutch sing rambling sailor songs from the stage area. When Dutch finished there would be silence. A guy sitting off to the side would occasionally start a song and peter out after a few verses as he seemed to either run out of or forget the lyrics. Mamasabi and Wasabi came in and things picked up a bit. They had brought the Brigand's official songbook with them and were trying out various melodies from that. Then the Brigand's themselves appeared and things really sparked. I don't want to diss anyone else who was singing, but you can really tell the difference between folks who do it for a living and folks who do it for events. Still, sailors probably would have been more like the latter, so it was kind of neat either way. I am still listening to some of the songs this morning yet in my head. From there we went back to the Mercury crew site where several people were sitting around chatting. Stynky appeared and then it got sort of loud. He brought out the best in Silkie, Captain Jim and Adam Cyphers when it came to rowdiness and volume. (If there is a problem and Stynky is around, it is probably his fault.) Mae and I went back to the Tavern where she started playing her finger cymbals (which probably have a name that she told me but I don't remember) along with some of the music. After doing that for a while, back to the Mercury camp where it was rowdy. Mae and Adam Cypher's wife (I think) got cold, so William wrapped them in the Mercury Flag which is made of wool for some reason. It's probably because it's period correct knowing William. Then Scarlett Jai came over and, very nicely, asked us to please shut the hell up. I was getting really tired by this point, as last night's posting indicates, and decided to call it a night. After a brief stop to pick up my slight toves, I brillig'd my bike and manxomed to my condo, turning left at the Tumtum tree. Now I must go galluphing back to the fort to refill my brain with new stories. So you on the flip side!

Once aboard the boat, we all took seats except the young gentlemen who fidgited and proceeded to run around like wild men. You have to place some of the blame for this on the pirates - Devlin in particular - who were mock sword fighting with the boys on the dock. Young boys + pirate sword fighting is more potent than an energy drink. We finally got out to sea, which was beautiful. It was a model day for sailing; the sky was blue with brilliant white clouds, the sea was fairly calm, there was a nice fresh wind and the sun was shining. Reaching Tank Island (across from Mallory Square) was apparently the cue for the crew, in the form of Janet, to go around and ask everyone where they were from. Her pat response to whatever you said (Phoenix, Baltimore, Detroit, Fallujah) was, and I quote, "Cool." (It had a slight uptilt on the L - not quite enough to rate an exclamation point here, but enough to know that whereever you were from, well, it was a fairly good thing in Janet's opinion. It became something of a catch-phrase for Stynky and I.Stynky: "I'll let you fire my gun when we get near the fort.'" "Cool. (Slight uptilt.) I've never fired a black powder hand weapon before." Stynky: "Cool. (Slight uptilt.)" Random tourist: "I think I'll go use the restroom before the battle." Stynky and I: "Cool. (Slight uptilt.)" &c. (If Janet noticed what we were doing, she was too polite to say anything.) This is what passes for entertainment for Stynky and me, from which you'll gather that the two boys had a better developed sense of humor. She was also offering drinks around, of which the boat had a good variety and store. Most of the pirates were firing their weapons, so we tended to stick with water and sodas. (Yeah, I know, "Pirates!", but safety first.) The captain, whom Stynky had yesterday named 'Wet Willie' because his name was William and... well... Stynky. (You know?) He plied around the area in front of the fort for a while where the poor, land-bound battlers were stuck trudging about, dragging and preparing cannons, yelling orders at each other and sweating. Meanwhile, on the Sarah, we were sipping cold drinks and Janet was bringing out chips, salsa and hummus, which one of the boys camped cross-legged in front of, eating all the ships and nothing else. The rest of us, when we could get around him, were slopping salsa all over the deck. Finally it was time for the battle, so Captain Wet Willie tucked our craft in behind one of the other boats preparing to make a run. Stynky had prepared his gun for firing and explained the workings of it to me. I asked him about the frisson or the hammer or the halyard or something and he said, "All you have to do is pull the trigger." This is why I don't remember what I asked him about because I realized that all that info was going to be useless to me - Stynky was just showing off his knowledge of the gun or something. One of the crew members said we would fire a broadside, making me asked what the signal was going to be. Stynky said the guy didn't really mean broadside, he meant were were going to fire as we pleased which made me wonder just how good of pirates this crew was. They had a tiny little brass cannon tied to the top of a cooler with bungee cords that was about 1/4 to 1/5 the size of our blackpowder hand weapons. I said something to Stynky about it being cute. "Wait till you hear it," he replied. The sound it made gave our guns inferiority complexes. The gun barrels may have drooped a bit after it fired it's first shot. The little cannon was loaded with some kind of monstrous shotgun shell - at least twice as big in diameter as a normal shotgun shell - and then the guy operating it would hit the end of it with a mallet. Color me impressed. We fired of several rounds with Stynky giving me and Frank opportunity to fire. Captain Wet Willie stayed in radio contact with the land-based operation just like during the golden age of pyracy. After several passes and many rounds of fire, he told us the pirates had won. The tourists on the boat cheered. (We already knew the pirates were going to win because they had explained that in every meeting that had taken place that morning. Well, OK, everyone else already knew it. I had been too busy taking pictures and watching the end of the Mercury trial at the fort.) After the battle, everyone relaxed and started drinking Yuengling which their internet page tells me is the oldest beer in the United States. (And I always believe everything I read on the internet, so it must be so.) There was wine and some other beer options, but the pirates were firm in their preference and poor Janet wound up having to retrieve a second case. The crew also relaxed and they even allowed Captain Henry Belanger steer the ship for quite awhile. (And I'll bet you thought the 'Captain' monniker was just a pirate name affectation.) We made our way back into port, which was marred only by the two young jackanapes, who, filled with chips and several sodas and fresh from watching gun fire and running around with their plastic swords couldn't possibly be made to sit still for four seconds. We cheered Captain Wet Willie. Stynky, who had given him that nickname, wanted to give him a new one, a better one, but he seemed quite taken with that one, so he didn't press the issue. Back on land, I sidled up to Stynky and said, "You know what we're close to?" "No" "The Rum Barrel restaurant." Now, those of you who read last year's Journal will immediately recognize this as Stynky's breakfast nook of choice. We went there for corn and crab chowder every day during the event. It's good, it's filling and it's affordable (for Key West.) He was immediately sold. He said, "I've missed escaping there for breakfast each morning, but the food in the fort is really good this year so I haven't had to do that." The other four pirates were sold on the idea, so we stopped off at Devlin's car to drop off all our weapons and headed off. On the way, I asked Captain Belanger how it was that the crew let him steer the boat. He told me that back home, he was actually a professional ship's captain with a license to captain 100 ton ships. He operated in North Carolina, ferrying people back and forth from the coast to an island called Cape Lookout. He talked lovingly about this island and I eventually discovered that he and his family had land there. One of the stories he told was that when hurricane Irene had hit the North Carolina coast, it had wiped out every house in the area where his family had their place except their house and the house on either side of them. Talk about lucky! He also explained that they had a rare group of wild horses in that area (at Shackleford Banks, actually) called Banker Ponies which he assured me were only 10 hands high. I put this information in here, mainly because I think the term "10 hands high" sounds cool. Captain Belanger had a great history in back of his pirate name, that I didn't make notes on, so I may get it all completely wrong. Indulge me. Several generations ago, a wealthy family by the name of Belanger owned much of Cape Lookout. They had a single daughter who started see a man named Henry... OK, this is where I should have taken some notes. Let's call him Henry Whiplash because the family thought he was a mountebank. (Another point on the cool word scale! Huzzah.) So Henry courted the girl, whom we'll call Alice. (No notes.) Eventually they married and had a large family and their family inherited the land. Captain Belanger explained that he had taken his name from those two people, in part because the great grandson of Henry 'Whiplash' had been best man at both of his weddings. At the Rum Barrel, most of us ordered corn and crab chowder because Stynky and I had been yammering on about it so much. I say most, because Zatara did not. She ordered a salad (she had to 'watch her girlish figure') for which Stynky ragged on her mercilessly. He told her she at least had to try it or she couldn't be in the club. He looked to me for verification of this fact and I just gave him a stunned mullet look. (I was off my game - all that time at sea really takes it out of you.) After lunch or whatever a 3 o'clock feeding is called, he asked me if she could be in the club, having taken a dainty spoonful or two of soup. I continued to give him a stunned mullet look and he gave up on me as a hopeless loss. On the way back we were accosted by a young man who said he was a fellow pirate and he needed some doubloons for drink or something like that. (He was not in garb, he was in a lime green T-shirt and shorts as I recall. I'm afraid I took no photos of this chap.) He said we were all brothers together and we should help a brother out and so on and so forth. Finally he said, and this is the reason I even mention this here, "Parley, mother-f-ckers, parley!" Among the things he thought he understood about pirates, that was clearly not one of them. The one good thing that did come out of this was his comments about drinking made me realize I had left my mug back in the Rum Barrel. So I turned around and trotted on back to retrieve it. I would lose my head if it weren't attached. (My mother told me so at one point.) Having lost the group, I decided to go over and check out Mallory Square docks and see the sunset people. When I first came to the island back in 1992, it was one of the key things I wanted to experience. This had reputedly been started by a bunch of hippies on the island who would come down to the dock and snap their fingers in appreciate of nature's handiwork. When I first saw it, the dock was a bit of a shabby looking place and there was all sorts of disorganized-looking street performers lining the edge of the dock and any other space they could capture, using ropes and chains to mark their territory so that the other street performers didn't encroach upon them. Since then, the dock has been massively overhauled with the addition of concrete and fancy paving blocks and a whole new wooden boardwalk section appended to it (the section where Danger! Charters operated from, actually.) The street performer have to apply to the city for space and they may even rent them for all I know. It all seems so clean and neat. But I took several photos which I will share in the webpage version of this journal. Well, I'm hungry, so I'm going to get this one posted and finish up the rest of the day a bit later.

(This is probably going to be a short entry because I am dog tired.) Our job at the boat dock was to encourage the tourists passing on the boardwalk to take the Danger! Pirate! Cruise with us. Zatara was a natural at this. She could call out to people in that carnival barker sort of way that demanded your attention. She also did this thing where she would just stand there in the middle of the sidewalk and point at the little Danger! Charters World Headquarters shack. People would look at her, look a little puzzled then look at the D! C World HQ and continue looking a bit puzzled. Sometimes she yell out, "Made you look!" and laugh. She explained to me that she had been in charge of bringing people into a booth at events and that this pointing thing was her classic garden gnome ploy. (She also mentioned that she had had a hat the looked like a garden gnome's which she wore while doing this.) The rest of us paled in comparison to Zatara, so we kind of milled about, looking a bit sheepish. As I mentioned in the previous entry, Frank seemed sort of reserved, so I asked him where he live. Key West. He had come to Key West six weeks ago from New York City because "I fell in love." When he got here, however, the girl gave him the cold shoulder. So he started figuring out what to do with his life now that he was here. Frank is a writer, copy-editor and English tutor. He had just written "a frank article on what it's like for a writer/editor to newly arrive in Key West," which they published on the front page of Solares Hill. He explained that he went from week-to-week deciding whether he would stay here or not. "I live on peanut butter and coffee - kind of like being in grad school again." When I asked him how long he'd been reenacting, he laughed and said, You're kidding, right? About 18 hours. I just threw this outfit together when Jai asked me if I could help out." One o'clock rolled around and we all trooped out to the boat, proper. The staff explained the rules of the ship, noting that we should all sit down as the boat was pulling away from the dock and we should watch our heads as the boom of the sails had to be hauled around every time the ship turned. There were two young boys, about 8 - 13 years and they could not abide this sit down rule, running all over the place while the rest of us sat and watched. (Boys will be boys.) We cruised around for a little while and then things started happening on the battle field in front of the fort. So the boat angled in towards shore so that we could fire our guns and add to the battle. Oh, man, I'm just nodding off here. I promise I'll finish tomorrow morning. .

I arrived in camp today and noticed there was yet another meeting taking place. (There are a lot of meetings this year.) Since I wanted to talk with either Scarlett Jai or Lily Alexander about getting on the Danger! Charters boat with Stynky and Scarlett was running the meeting, I decided to listen in and wait for an opportune moment to interrupt. As I stopped thinking about the moment that would be best to interrupt and started listening to the meeting discussion for a bit, I realized that this was the boat planning meeting. If it were not for blind luck and other people's willingness to make allowances for me, I don't think I'd ever get to do anything. The say God protects fools and little children and I am equal parts if both, so I guess I just get lucky this way. Scarlett was explaining the rules and duties of the pirates on the ship and... ohh, look! Something shiny! I wandered around the meeting and took several pictures of those paying serious-minded attention to Scarlett once I had expressed my preference for being on Stynky's ship in the completely wrong part of the meeting for expressing such things. Then I went over to the place that was the dance hall last night and watched the tail end of the Tryal of the Mercury crew. Quartermaster William Red Wake and Captain Jim were exonerated of all charges not long after I wandered in, so I took a few hopeless photos of that and headed over to the table where the twins and Alexis were sitting. I pulled several dirty shirts out of my bag for Mae to clean. (Mae is doing the washerwoman bit as you may recall.) This was not entirely untoward on my part as she expressed interest in cleaning something other than the same two pieces of cloth over and over again. (I hope she doesn't use too much starch. Or maybe they hadn't found the great starch mines of Africa yet, so that would be period incorrect.) I wandered back over to the meeting (which was still going on) just in time to learn that we were being broken into groups to brainstorm just how much lumber a Maromota monax (aka groundhog, land-beaver, whistle-pig (seriously!) or woodchuck) could throw, toss or 'chuck' if he could chuck wood. No, we were actually trying to figure out how to arrange a carpool to get all the crew members over to our assigned ship, which is second in difficulty only to determining what variety of pizza toppings will make a large group of people all happy at the same time. I had rented a bike as I (hope I) mentioned in the previous post, so I just volunteered to ride. I left the other five people in our group - Stynky, 'Handsome' Devlin, Captain Henry Belanger, Zatara De LaVega and Frank to figure the rest of it out while I chatted with Deadeye, he who restores Becky's clothing. (Huzzah!) Someone was asking if the boots he was wearing were the ones he got in 2008. He explained that he had gotten those boot several years before that from his jousting troop. (Of course he belongs to a jousting troop!) None of the rest of them could fit their calves into the boots. Since he could, he was given them and then made fun of for years afterwards because he had such skinny calves. (I don't get it either. Jousting troops - go fig.) He told us that when he first joined the troop, he didn't know how to fall off a horse. Then he corrected himself. "Falling off wasn't a problem, it was learning to land." I had actually run into Deadeye at the very beginning of this post when I was walking into the fort when he was carrying two bags of trash. I asked him about this and he informed me that he had seen the fort personnel doing it yesterday and thought it would be a good idea to take that over rather than make them do it. He's that kind of guy. I also learned that Deadeye has a son who is going to be a chaplain in the Marines. "Think about that - it's the toughest job in the unit. You're the only guy who doesn't get a gun when landing on a beach." Admittedly, I had never though of that. His son had come to visit him awhile back and he had took him on a tour of the fort. Deadeye said that his son had asked him to tell him everything about the fort, so they spent 7 hours touring the place. That's a lot to learn about the fort! After they finished, his son repeated it back to him, which drew a group of tourists who wanted him to show them the stuff he was describing, so they took several more tours through the fort, spending all day there. Our group began to filter out of the tent and I decided it must be time to go to the boat, so I mounted my buck and ran into Captain Henry Belanger and Zatara De LaVega who were walking to the boat dock. (Not literally ran into them, you understand. That would hurt.) They hooted at me and said I was going to get there too soon and I answered that I was going to stop by my condo to pick something up on the way, so probably not. But, of course, that didn't take so long and I ran into them again and they hollered at me again, so I doubled back and walked my bike which gave me the opportunity to talk with them for a bit. They are both involved with the Beaufort Pirate Invasion. Zatara told me she was in charge of event fundraising. Color me impressed. Volunteer event fundraising is no easy task. She was apparently quite good at it, raising thousands of dollars for this year's event. She was actually too good, because the event coordinator has since told her that she is to do nothing else for the event but fund raise. We arrived at the Key West Custom house, behind which was apparently the ship we were sailing on with Danger! Charters. I believe she was called the Sarah, although I may be wrong on that point. I split off to park and lock my bike because the boardwalk that apparently led to the Danger! Charter boat dock had such serious-looking signs explaining that bikes were strictly prohibited on the boardwalk. So I wandered about until I found an inconveniently located bike rack. Once on the boardwalk (stopping only briefly to purchase a Key Lime Ice Cream scoop), I spotted Zatara, Henry and Frank over in front of the tiny shed that served as the Danger! Charters world headquarters. (Well, I assume it is their world headquarters. If it isn't, it should be.) Right across from the shed was, you have probably already seen this coming long before me, the larges bike rack I have ever seen. No bikes on the boardwalk, my eye! Frank was a very quiet sort of person, so I decided to chat with him because quiet people always have such interesting stories to tell, if only you can get them to tell them. Such was the case here, but I am out of time to type. The Dead Man's Chest auction is this evening and I have a horse in the race, if you'll permit me to mix metaphors. So you'll have to wait to hear about Frank, the boat trip out and why I never made it back to the fort before now.

I went into the candle-lit port where the dancehall was located and the Brigands were playing. Spotting Mae and Brig, I wandered over, but they were busy. On the way, Diosa grabbed me for a dance. (She apparently claims I asked her to please, please dance with me, which is a lie as all you regular readers will instantly realize. Don't believe anything she says in her blog about this.) She showed me a pretty simple dance which involved locking arms and doing a half or three-quarters turn and then switching to lock the other arm and repeat the process. It sounds simple, right? It was simple. I fouled it up repeatedly. (I have censored myself from using the tired cliche 'two left feet' while writing about this, but I suppose you get the idea.) Still, I managed to finish the dance without breaking any of my or her toe bones (phalanges and metatarsals for you surgically-minded) and she went off to tell everyone I had been dancing which, naturally, none of them believed. They know me. A little while after that, the twins spotted me and Mae led me to the dance floor. Jana had another dance that she had made up to show me. I had watched her and Brig dance this dance and gotten completely lost in the details of it (as is my wont when it comes to dancing - I approach it like an engineer.) I am going to try and recall the steps which she eventually managed to coax me into doing properly by repeating the instructions every time we did them. First... hmm... first... well, I think you held hands out in front of each other, turned in a little to the right, bumped left hips, pushed back, turned in a little to the left, bumped right hips, pushed back. repeat the first move and then... Hmm. There was whirling around, which I liked because it was easy. I believe you do that three times. Then there was another move that you did three times that I can't recall. Mae is a belly dancer in a group called Fire Belly and I'm sure she looked every bit as graceful as a sylph of a woman can look doing such an intricate step with the rhythmic equivalent of a water buffalo. Alexis and Brig assured me that we looked great together and it was much better than when they had done the dance with Mae, but I highly doubt that. I know she didn't have to keep repeating the steps for Brig because I watched them and took photos. It was quite exhausting and I can see how Mae remains a graceful sylph of a woman, even when paired with aqua bison. That was actually the last dance for the evening, so we stood around debating what to do next. Either Brig or Mae decided to show Alexis the yellow fever restroom of the fort, which is purportedly haunted by the victims of that disease who were in the fort sometime in the 19th century. So someone grabbed a lantern off the table and off we went to the bowels of the fort. (Heh. Literally.) On the way, I started to realize just how crocked the twins and Alexis were. It started with a tale about M.A. d'Dogge from 2008. Mr. d'Dogge was apparently put in charge of taking photos for the Archangels on that trip and he had taken a whaleboat full of them on his digital camera. He is a really good photographer from my experience. While we were walking towards the bowels of the fort, the twins were talking to each other and eventually got on the topic of M.A. d'Dogge tripping on the very brick path we were on. They started tittering about this, then giggling and eventually they were laughing so hard that Mae had to sit on the ground. From what I was able to extract from the laughter-filled conversation, Mr. d'Dogge had tripped over a rock or something and started stumbling forward and couldn't stop. So he kept running, bent at the waist with his camera held out in front of him, building momentum with each step. Eventually he ran into a wall which is when Mae collapsed to the ground in gales of laughter while trying to tell the story. They loudly assured me it was one of the funniest things they had ever seen. The result of the Dogge hitting the wall was that he smashed his camera which you either have to view as a tragedy or, in the case of the twin, the most absurd of comedies. The Archangel photographer thus lost tons of photos which he had to later try and retrieve from the remains of his camera. It sound awful to me, but when it is told through peals of amusement from twins, you have to join them. (I'm pretty sure there's a law to that effect.) We made it back to the yellow-fever historied rest-rooms, encountering Spike (not the rabbit one) giving his ghost tour along the way. He was telling stories of Harry Smid photographing things in the fort and finding ghosts in the images with ponderous seriousness, which was only somewhat marred by a group of giggling twins and their friends. Eventually Spike decided he needed to go somewhere far away from us and headed upstairs to talk about the spirits inhabiting that part of the fort. Mae and Brig insisted that Alexis, being a FTPI virgin, had to go back into the restroom and sit on the third pot from the end. This she did with equanimity. Mae was mightily impressed. She might have even reverently said, "You rock." although I doubt it. It was something like that. With that bit of business accomplished, we wandered along the inside of the ramparts (or whatever they're called) of the inside of the fort, passing several cannons along the way. Someone (probably me) said we should recreated the infamous Mae on the giant cannon scene, which she agreed to do, but didn't on account of running into a guy not playing a digeridoo with his friend. He insisted he could imitate it, though, and went over to one of the gun port windows and sat down and proceeded to do so. He was pretty good, but I've heard a real one while I was in Australia, played by a professional, and he lacked the depth and resonance. He did keep talking about how he had to get he proper tone and, most pointedly, the vibration. "You have t tune into the vibration. The vibration is key." He swore he was not drunk or high, although I can think of no other explanation for such behavior and commentary. We all then trooped into Ole Zach's Pub, which was empty and unlit and sat around and started chattering. This is when I noticed the twins were giggling a lot, joined by Alexis' throaty laugh. Shana announced that her cup was broken - meaning it was empty - and that, despite the fact that her dad referred to her as 'Camel-bladder', she had to go pee. So she and Alexis staggered out of the pub and headed for the source of more alcohol, although I can't possibly see how they would have needed it at this time. This left Mae, not-digeridoo boy and his friend and madPete in the pub alone. We talked for a while longer, but the conversation flagged without the other tipsy twin, so we decided to go find them. On the way, something happened that I would not ever put in the Journal if it hadn't been for what followed. We passed a group of people, madPete swears they were three girls, who said in a demure voice to us "Meow.' There was a pause and then someone farted. (I never thought that word would appear in these Journals, but now it must.) Then a girl in the group giggled and they sped by us. Mae was stunned into silence and asked us if we had hear that. madPete and I laughed and she ran back to her camp and started explaining that something had happened and that the group at her site should ask us what it was. So the sent an emissary to us (we were standing a couple feet away looking for Mae and Alexis) and they asked us what happened. We explained it and then Mae started giggling and saying she couldn't believe it. Camel-bladder and Alexis reappeared and Mae insisted we retell the story, so we did and the girls started laiughing, more at Mae's amazement than anything. Then we all stood around and talked extensively about this amazing occurrence for a while until we were joined by Silkie McDonough who started making worried noises about our discussions waking The Captain. (As if we were the only people in camp talking and the group ten feet away didn't exist.) Finally she sent us off back to the Pub, saying we should all go, except she didn't. Silkie was trying to get rid of us on behalf of The Captain, who had never even stirred as far as I could tell. Back in the Pub, we were joined by some other members of the Archangel crew whose name I hope to get before I put this in webpage form and we talked long and serious about things of great weight, most of which made Alexis and the twins giggle, particularly when madPete would suddenly, for no reason related to the conversation say, "Meow." Alexis was sitting on the table at one point, explaining how the room was starting to spin, so we advised her not to close her eyes, which she did and that announced that she wasn't going to do THAT again. She finally layed down flat on the table and stuck her legs, which had been dangling off the edge straight out in front of her which caused Mae to comment that she looked like a stiff witch. "Like in the Wizard of Oz?" madPete asked and then added, "Meow." which caused everyone to start laughing again. I figured something out while we were in there. Mae refused to say the word "fart", which is why we had had to tell and retell the story so many times. "Why can't you say that?" I asked her. Brig piped up with, "Because it sounds stupid when we say swear words in our little voices." By way of example, she upped her voice about three octaves and said "F-ck!" causing everyone to start laughing again. madPete said, "Well yeah, when you say it like that." To which someone added "Meow." Now, I was stone cold sober throughout all this - like Dian Fossey, I was just observing the behaviors of the Archangels in their natural drunken element (and madPete too, who is, technically a Mercury crew member.) Usually drunk talk gets louder and dumber and louder and more crass and louder and impossible until you finally either have to start drinking to enjoy it or leave. But that never happened here. Even when they're drink they are little and cute and come in a set. No one wanted to leave, but we began to worry about Alexis passing out (which always made her laugh her throaty laugh when we said it, proving she was still with the living.) Brig kept complaining that her head was getting heavy because, "my head always gets heavy when I'm drunk." She titled it back and to the side, propping it on any convenient shoulder and saying she was tired, but she didn't want to miss anything. Then someone would say, "Meow" and everyone would start tittering again. I guess it never gets old. Finally I announced that we must get everyone into their respective beds and we all headed out. And that was the night. I came back here and started wiring the first installment. Breakfast today, for the record was fine. madPete and I went ot Croissants de France and neither of us had a croissant. We talked of sailing ships, a sealing wax and cabbages and kings and then I rented a bike because I tore the absolute hell out of my feet yesterday walking on the coral (My feeeet!) yesterday and I came back here to empty the rest of the contents of yesterday from my head so I could fill it up again today. I'm hoping to get out on one of the ships with Stynky today (Danger! Charters), so we'll see if that happens. Till later on, then!

There were a number of animals visiting your surgeon's table at the fort on Friday. A woman who announced to me "I am Mrs. Ford and I am 90 years old!" brought her large dog, which I petted and found to be incredibly soft. A couple who were about a 1/3 that old brought a little teddy bear sort of dog called a brown Pomeranian that sat up in its owner's arms like a fuzzy Buddah and allowed itself to be fawned upon by every female pirate in the joint. But the the day's Most Interesting Creature Visiting the Surgeon's Table in Skin prize winner was a large lop-eared bunny named Spike the Pirate Bunny who was, I kid you not, wearing a little black pirate hat. Mrs. Ford's dog was far to large to get on the Surgeon's Table, but the Pomeranian and Spike were just right. So they were set down and put next to the Mission the Surgeon Bear and everyone took photos. Spike ('Who, BTW, was not related to our Spike the pirate. So far as anyone could prove, of course.) sat on the table and sniffed the Mission the Surgeon Bear's head which everyone took upwards of twenty photos of, including your author. With that excitement over, Spike the Pirate Bunny left the building and we resumed the normal pirate surgeon's patter, believing him forever gone from our lives except for the inevitable photos which will appear in the webpage Journal. However, that wasn't the case - Spike had left us a secret gift. He had been sitting on the blacksmith's nipper I used to explain finger amputation with. When a group showed up and I started to explain them, there -right in the middle of the place where the round hole of the nipper had been, was a neat, round puddle of yellow bunny juice - right smack in the middle of that hole! Fortunately, the leather the nippers were sitting on was treated or something it didn't soak in. There will be a photo by way of proof, trust me. Throughout the day, I spent a little time sitting with Iron Jon at the Mercury table, talking of this and that. I don't know if I've mentioned this before or not, because I don't recall knowing this, but Iron Jon was in military service. Jon is an sort of giant, affable guy. with a bunch of tattoos peeking out from the wrists of the sleeves of his shirt. He nearly always has food set out at the table - fruit, cheese, bread - which is just one more reason why I like him. He told me that his dad had been a American Civil War reenactor in the 60s, which, as far as I know, was the very beginning of the reenacting movement. "They used to fire real civil war guns back then," he explained to me. He showed me a piece of his dad's old kit that he had adopted into his pirate persona. His dad passed in June this year. "I've been going through his stuff and finding all sorts of neat things that I can use in pirate reenacting." Speaking of interesting people, I should mention Captain R. Hood, my interesting neighbor from last year who lives on the island before I start telling you another bunny pee-type story. Capt. Hood greeting me warmly upon arrival and announced that he had some bottles for me. He had mentioned this last year, but kept forgetting to bring them down to the fort and I had completely forgotten the whole thing. True to his word this year, he brought over a box of 20 or thirty old glass bottles. (This is a good thing because the bottles in my surgeon's chest keep breaking during UPS transit. I really should pack them better but, well, I never do.) The bottles came from a neighbor of his who had tried - and failed - to sell them at a garage sale. So he gave them to Capt. Hood who now gave them to me. He also brought a pair of medical books for me to check out - one from the armed services from the 50s or so and another one called, The Barefoot Doctor's Manual, which was a translation of a Chinese medical book. The first book contained all sorts of procedures for surgery, although they were much too modern for my use. The second was a quite fascinating. It also contained procedures, but it had a listing of various Chinese herbs and their uses in the back along with helpful line drawings. I instantly recognized some of the names from the various scripts in the period surgical manuals. Period medical books are hopelessly arcane when it comes to medical recipes because most of them are in abbreviated, and sometimes misspelled, Latin. I may have to invest in a copy of that book. Capt. Hood also showed me a tiny compass that he explained was a feng shui compass. (I don't know what that means. It was a very small white compass with Chinese characters on it.) He told me he had traded some unusual piece of 50s or 60s hardware he had in his possession "in the original box!" with a guy who owns a shop on Stock Island. "You should check it out - he has all sorts of interesting things. I've asked him to keep an eye out for interesting medical pieces for you." However I inspire such fast friends as Captain Hood, I couldn't say. Speaking of gifts, William Red Wake had brought me a really cool little wooden mixing bowl that I will use to encourage myself to make a proper plaster box for my reenactment kit. William also said he had met a woman who made period correct dutch medical mixing pots (called galley pots, I believe) and that he would forward me that web site. (I put this in here to remind him. ) While we're talking about people, I also met a very forward woman calling herself Alamadea (I hope I spelled that right) at the surgeon's table who was wearing a silver nose piece. I asked her if she had had syphilis. (It eats the inside of the nose, you see.) She laughed and assured me that had not. She had lost part of (or perhaps all of, I don't recall exactly) her nose when she refused to join the crew of a slaver ship. Then she asked to some islands - I believe she said the Cormorants or something like that - where she had lived for a period of time. I made some flip joke about the islands because of their name, but her companion told me that she had actually lived there for several years which is why she had included it in her character profile. (It's good to work with what you know when concocting a story. That makes it easier to remember. Curiously, later that day William was explaining the history of the Mercury crew and his role and he told me that his character had lived in Jerusalem for a while because he had lived there.) Alamadea had a wild-looking grass of palm-type woven hat on which her companion assured me she had gotten in those islands she had lived at. I asked her about all the frizzy, dried, curled strands on the hat and she explained that they collected the bugs before they could get in your hair. "Then you just shake your head and all the bugs fall out!" As the daylight begin to fade, I folded up shop and went looking for my fellow twins Mae and Brig. I had promised the entire group with them that they could have use of my shower at dinner on Thursday night and all the girls wanted to take me up on that offer. Mae, Alexis, madPete and I also had a standing date for Cafe Sole for that evening. After some fussing and a few false starts, we finally got underway. Brig, her daughter Kiera, Alexis and Jack's mom (whose name I have to yet to get stored properly - sorry, Jack's mom!) all wanted to use my shower. So we did that. Kiera wandered around my condo in amazement, flipping the lights on and off, wandering out to the balconies and looking over the rail, announcing with wonder each feature of the place. "Look at this kitchen, mom!" she said after turning on the recessed can lights over the kitchen. Brig said, "You'd think she'd never been in a house before!" with a laugh. She then sat Kiera down with an orange which Kiera proceeded to devour with gusto. Kiera eats with great animation and as many funny poses as can be imagined. Alexis showered first and once she was ready, we headed out leaving custody of the condo to the rest of the girls.For some reason Mae had brought the ivy head wreaths they had worn during the parade we never actually walked in last year. I asked her why and she said simply that "We might need them. Maybe for the dance." Ah. OK. Anyhow, they left them here - I am looking at them right now. I think Shana and Jack's mom (sorry!) left them in offer of trade for my hair brush which is nowhere to be seen. Jana parallel parked Jack's car. (We were in Jack's car. If I ever though my back seat was messy, I know have reason to be proud of my car-housekeeping efforts.) She got into a space that I would never have even attempted. It was a good spot, about a 1/4 block from the entrance to Cafe Sole. I said as much, but had to add the caveat that when Red Jessi had driven us to Cafe Sole in 2009, she had managed to get a spot right outside the door somehow. Red Jessi exudes such confidence, that I've no doubt whomever was parked there before she arrived sensed her coming and ran out and moved their car. But I digress. This is 2012. We had a great dinner, as always, which should surprise no one because, as you all know, Cafe Sole is my favorite restaurant on earth as I am fond of noting to anyone who will listen. (Say, go back into that sentence and count the prepositional phrases will you? I think I'm over my limit.) I insisted they order wine even though I am not drinking. Everyone oohed and aahed over it so much that I finally had to take a sip. (I don't count it as a black mark against myself and my promise since it was just a sip.) It was exceptionally smooth and rich. I am not enough of a wine person to loftily announce that it had bouquets or hints of this or that, but it was a fine sip of wine. Our waitress was an actress trained at UCLA, which she assured us was a difficult program to get into. (Which I've no doubt is true. I think Spielberg and Lucas both attended UCLA. I'll look that fact up when I have more time and get back to you.) She was in training and she did a fine job. She was quite animated. I asked her if she was going to take up acting while in Key West and she said she was going to try and do that and get into a band (she sings) now that she had landed a real job. Here's to her, hoping she succeeds. After dinner we drove back to the fort, passing by that amazing house with all the gaudy Christmas lights that I love to look at. I was glad we were driving because I wanted to get back to for the Buccaneer's Ball that was going on for this first time this year, but I wished we were walking when we reached that house so I could get some photos. It's gaudy in a bright new, fascinating way every year. Mae had talked about doing a Christmas lights tour on Saturday night, but I have the uneasy feeling that that's not going to happen. Alas. I do so love looking at Christmas lights. When you add the incongruity of Christmas lights in Key West, it makes it all the more fascinating for me. Speaking of the ball, we were assured by someone walking by that it was going on full swing when we pulled into the parking lot. We started to take the Mae Snake trail over to the fort from the parking lot, which was absolutely stupid given that the Mae Snake trail goes away from the fort and off towards the battlefield. I kept mumbling that we were going away from the fort on a dark, overhung trail without a flashlight where there were tree roots and Mae snakes, but everyone blithely ignored me and kept onward. I finally realized that I had forgotten my backpack and I told everyone I needed it, so we all trooped back to get it and decided to take the normal path instead of the Mae snake path so that I would stop mumbling. Mae snakes successfully avoided. Now, that ball. I am not a dancer. There is a very good reason for this, revolving mostly around my natural inept clumsiness, but the twins insisted that I go. Who am I to refuse my fellow twins? I went. I managed to avoid getting on the dance floor before the rowdy band finished their set. Then everyone dissipated while the band went on break. I toddled over to the Mercury crew tent where the guys (Paula has still not showed up, so it's just 'the guys') were talking seriously of weighty matters. (Insert elephant joke here.) Iron Jon produced a bowl of peanuts, (How can you not love this guy?) which we quickly drained several times. Eventually we started telling Patrick Hand stories. Patrick couldn't make it this year due to lack of funds, which make your ship's surgeon, and proud Patrick Hand Original™ Planter's Hat wearer very sad. My favorite Patrick Hand story was one told by William. Patrick had gotten very drunk (which will surprise no one who knows him at all) and sort of passed out, mumbling to himself. He was outside his tent and William & Co. were quite concerned. How would they get Patrick into his tent? William explained that Patrick is "deceptively tall, lanky and yet heavy." I'll let him explain. "We all stood over Patrick like he was some kind of engineering problem. Everyone offered suggestions. 'We could roll him into his tent.' I said. Patrick mumbled loudly, 'Don't roll me! I don't have any money on me!'" The music started again and I reluctantly decided to go and face the music. (Ha!) But that story, and the drunken twins, will have to wait because madPete is here and we're going for breakkies. Cheers!

Someone this evening asked me what the twins were like when they were drunk and I had to admit that I didn't know because whenever they were drunk, I was even moreso, so I could remember clearly. Well, still sticking with my intention to be sober for a full year, I am pleased to report that I know know. But you'll have to wait to find out because that happened at the end of this evening and I must do this sequentially or there will be no hope of my ever remembering it all. I got up bright and early after a restless night. How can you sleep in properly when there is pirate fun in the offing? I wanted to get into the fort early enough today to make the Battle Planning meeting at 9 am so that I could be in the battle even though I wasn't actually going to be in the battle. They've gotten even more safety conscious this year. I even had to put a safety ribbon on the surgeon's weapon of choice. (The clyster syringe for you newbies.) I awoke at 5am, however, which was far too early for the battle planning meeting, so I wandered about the condo, editing yesterday's post with things that hadn't occurred to me while writing and continuing to work on the surgeon's article for December on Period Pirate Christmases. I wanted to breakfast at Blue Heaven, but they didn't open until 8am. (Key West proper doesn't really do mornings. 8am is pretty early.) So I forced myself to work on images for the article and adding random thoughts to the journal while nervously tapping a foot and drinking coffee - which made me nervously tap my foot even more vigorously. Finally it got late enough and I rushed down to Blue Heaven and wolfed down an asparagus, spinach, white cheese and shrimp omelet. (Yes, of course it was good. No, I can't be more specific about the white cheese because it had the sort of name that was invented to confuse poor ship's surgeons who were really more interested in getting to stupid battle planning meetings.) I also wanted to get a bike so that I didn't have to walk all the way to the fort on foot, but they didn't open until 9 or 9:30, so that didn't happen. (Seriously, they just don't do mornings.) This was a bad thing as I may remember to tell you later. (Or not.) Once inside the fort, I ran into Israel Cross and his girlfriend whose name I do hope to determine before putting this together on the web page because I forgot it. (I'm sure no one is surprised.) She was very nice. She seemed to know a whole lot more about me than I did about her, which was slightly alarming. I asked him if the battle planning meeting was going on and he assured me that it was "Just the captain's meeting, which doesn't concern us. Once inside the fort, I found that it may not concern Reggie, but it sure concerned everyone else because it looked like at least half the camp was at the battle planning meeting. This either means that everyone mutinied and started their own crew. (A crew of one!) or people just didn't have anything else to do, so they decided to attend the captain's meeting. I can't think of many places where people would willingly attend a meeting, but this appeared to be one of them. Of course, I'm one to talk, because I went right over and bent an ear. OK, that's not completely accurate. I went over and took pictures and pretty much ignored what was being said. Regular readers of my surgeon's journals will immediately recognize this as Pirate Surgeon SOP. I am actually proud to say that I have learned next to nothing at the last four battle planning meetings I have attended because I was more interested in digitally capturing the moment for posterity. After that, I went over to the Mercury encampment and started to unload the surgeon's gear. I had packed the surgeon's crate in a cardboard shell this year because, as I learned last year, UPS charges me a $30 penalty for not having a package wrapped in cardboard. Tack that on to the normal shipping charges and you're talking about over $100 to ship the surgeon's tools each way! Oh the things I do for my art... The first thing I did was get out the gift I had gotten for the twins to con...vince them to continue editing my articles and journals for me. These were two bears wearing the outfits they had had on for the parade last year, made by Trudi Dufrense. They were amazing and the twins gushed over them marveling at the details like the fully boned bear corsets. I also trotted out the surprise third twin bear that Trudi had made for me without telling me. We got some nice photos of that which you'll have to wait for the webpage journal to see. The Mission bear was most detailed and even had a bloody surgical apron. He sat on my table all day with the idea that I would use him to explain operations to kids. (It's less threatening to explain how you cut off a teddy bear's arm than a child's arm. I guess.) As I was unpacking the surgeon's chest, the battle planning meeting started, so I went over to take more photos and pretend to be paying attention to what was being said. I also got a form from Lily Alexander that said I was going to fire a black powder weapon - which I wasn't - so that I could go on the battle field and take photos and carry my clyster syringe into battle. I then tried to give her the form back and she wouldn't take. I tried twice more and she still wouldn't take it, so I finally gave up and decided to keep it until I saw an opportune moment to slip it into her official-looking papers when she wasn't looking. In the meantime, I finished setting up my surgical tool table and prepared for the public, who arrived in short order to hear about period surgical procedures. There were several groups who were interested and, sometimes, interesting, so that was fun. I encountered two different sets of vacationing veterinarians this year, who sort of recognized some of the tools on the table and made approving comments after the presentation. I the slow periods, I got out from under the awning I was sharing with Iron Jon and wandered about the campsite taking photos of some of the other interesting displays in camp. I wish I could remember exactly what those were, but I took the photos so I wouldn't have to remember, so you get no more information on that front in this text-based version of the Surgeon's Journ Eventually it rolled around to battle time, so I stuffed the necessary surgical instruments for fiield surgical treatments in my new lether doctor's bag that Fayma had gotten for me, and headed out for the pirate side of the battle field. I had already decided by then that I would NOT be showing up in time for the battle planning meeting tomorrow, even though I figured that would disbar me from being in the battles. I refuse to be driven by the clock while in Key West. This is one of the reasons I like coming here: time doesn't matter to me. Curiously there were several bizarre displays at the end of the battle field. I asked what they were and someone told me, "Art." No offense to the artists, but it was the kind of art that can only be described as being 'interesting', by which I mean 'bizarres and kind of stupid.' I will post photos when I get arrund to doing the web page journal properly. There were a few people watching us form up from the path along the fort side of the battle field, which I later learned were the artists. The female artist became what I can only describe as irrationally angry with us, wanting no discussion or soothing from our part because she was afraid we might wreck her art. Someone - it may have been Wasabi - named the area she had marked off with a wedge of rope as 'the devils triangle' into which we were not to trespass for fear that we would ruin the 'art.'"Avoid the devil's triangle!" he kept hollering out. This wasn't enough for the agitated artist and she eventually stormed off with her bike, muttering under her breath. Very strange. The battle itself was limited to cannon firing on both sides and a spate of small arm firing from the side wing. We weren't allowed to have swords on the field of battle for some reason this year, so what we could do there was a bit limited. There were several rounds of back-and-forth cannon rounds and small arms shot from the pirate side. There was a small advance of both sides and then some people went down allowing me to rush... well, no, that's not really fair... amble over to them and try and treat them with the clyster syringe and/or the bandages. I effected several Mission Miracle cures, especially when the wounded saw the clyster syringe coming out of the bag. I did manage to get Israel with it, even though I suspect he enjoyed that whole bit more than he should have. As a joke, I also took the (apparently) dead flag bearer's flag and covered her with it, which got an "Awwwww!" from the folks watching the battle field from the fort wall. I don't think anyone got photos of this, so you;ll just have to imagine it. Whew. My eyelids won't stay up and my mind is turning to mush - it was a long day. Tomorrow morning I'll finish this narrative and reveal such fascinating things to you as I can recall, like *Why you should never put a bunny pirate on your surgical table. *The details of how your surgeon got all the women up to his room and into his shower. *How Alexis got named 'Stiffwitch' *The way you get the ship's surgeon to dance. *And, of course, what the twins are like when they're drunk.

So the journey to my sixth Key West pirate celebration started out with me forgetting my hat. Naturally I had to go back home and get it. (On my way to Searles in 2010 I forgot my wallet, but I just had someone bring it to me. The Patrick Hand original hat is another matter entirely.) It's a good thing I got it, because it was the star of my trip. Usually two or three people comment on the ol' Patrick Hand, but this time no less than 8 or 10 had something to say about it. At this rate, when I hit my tenth KW Pirate Fest, I'll be staving off comments with a... stave. There was a large group of what can only be described as hippies - patchwork vests, long print dresses, accoustic instruments in old black cases plastered with stickers, dreads - like a storybook hippie group - waiting at the gate on the flight to Atlanta. I took this to be an omen. (Of what, I don't know. But it was an omen.) I took photos that probably came out really crappy because I was trying to take them without the hippies noticing. I don't know what a pack of hippies might do to you if they saw you taking their picture, but I didn't want to be wounded before I even got to Key West! (Then again, they probably would have made peace signs. Make love not war and all that - although this group was far too young to have any connection to the original movement so the mantra may be different.) The flight from Atlanta to Key West was full of boisterous tourists, decked out in the what I'm sure they felt was the finest of gaudy faux Caribbean island wear. The lady sitting next to me was with her father who was clearly making his first trip to Key West. They talked the whole way down about the plane, the funny little screen in the back of the seat, whether it would play the football game, &c. (What football game? I have no idea. I only watch football for the commercials. In February. Sometimes.) I buried my head in the The four years voyages of capt. George Roberts until we got to an altitude where I could use my laptop and work on my golden age of piracy Christmas article. When the seatbelt light went out on the tarmac, I got the Patrick Hand Original™ out and the woman sitting next to me became all curious. I explained that it was a 16th/17th century planter's hat, used to keep the sun off the heads of the planter. This led to a discussion about the event going on at the fort and she became very interested and told her dad about it. Wanting more information, I produced one of my business cards and suggested that she could find links to the Fort and the FTPI website by looking at the first page of last year's Surgeon's Journal. She said she was going to try and come out and that I should not be embarrassed if she yelled out my name. So I'll be looking forward to that. OK, one last rambling observation on getting to Key West and I promise to stop. (I've been told never to include this in the Journal, but it fascinates me, so I can't resist. Skip the next two paragraphs if it annoys you.) We all gathered around the airport's luggage thing and several folks jammed right up against it so that no one else could see the luggage or get to it even if they could see it, despite the fact that this would not make their luggage appear any sooner than if they hung back and waited for it to appear before rushing forward. (It's tradition.) Standing near me several feet away was a very anxious-looking girl. She said she didn't know what her luggage looked like. I made concerned noises. "I'm on vacation. I'm de-stressing. I'm here to unwind," she replied apprehensively, as if it were some sort of hopeful defense. She was actually wringing her hands. "You don't seem to be de-stressing." I commented. "I have anxiety issues," she confided. (What?! No!) I asked her why she couldn't remember it. She said she had mainly looked the inside of it, not thinking about the outside. There is a queer sort of logic there, I have to admit. We nattered on for a bit, me kind of teasing her into relaxing and she rewinding herself every time a piece of luggage that could have been it come out of the mysterious luggage feed. "What color is it?" I asked. "Black." "Ah, there's your problem. You should never buy black luggage. I didn't." Just then my black carry-on, which I had gate checked in Atlanta, appeared. "Annnnd I'm about to make a liar out of myself." I said as I stepped up and grabbed it. People began to drift away as they got their luggage. Finally it was only a few, including she and I. I spotted my bright blue hardcase. As it made the round on the carousel, people grabbed everything before it and left. Suddenly she got all excited and said "I think that's it!" It was the one right behind mine - the very last piece of luggage from the plane. Loaded with luggage, I made my way to the exit to find Captain Jim and madPete standing on the curb in full garb. "Why didn't you guys come in and help me?" I asked. I never got a good answer to that one. Our non-captain Quartermaster William Red Wake was driving, so we loaded everything in and got on the road. I asked if we could stop at a grocery store, which they agreed to do. (This is what crewmembers do for each other, especially when dealing with the ship's surgeon who might be operating on them with sharp, crooked knives some day.) I was the only one not wearing garb. "At least you have your hat!" madPete offered brightly. In the store, Captain Jim took upwards of 5000 pictures of me getting groceries. Look forward to a whole series of photos in the webpage version of this journal featuring yours truly shopping for eggs and such in excruciating detail. (I know, I know, you're already holding your breath waiting for that one. Stop already or you'll turn blue.) We then had to get my condo keys, which turned out to be a problem because there were no condo keys. Fortunately the owner of Compass Realty was in the office with a plumber trying to figure out if they should use dynamite to remove the cement pad that used to have a shower atop of it. (He thought this was pretty funny. He even showed me the concrete shower stall pad, which had several holes the plumber had drilled in it hoping that would cause it to break apart.) When I asked him why they had a shower in the office, he answered, "We thought we might need it some day." Ah. He was a really nice guy and he made five or six different calls on my behalf before determining that they hadn't put my keys out like they were supposed to. So he went in the back and got them. Our carload of pirates then graciously took me to my room, helping me bring up the bags and groceries, with Captain Jim capturing the event for posterity. (Actually, he probably didn't, but he should have. We'll need a whole new series of pics for the website journal right about here.) I was pleased to not that the pull shade that I mounted last year was not only still here, it was already pulled down! Yet another valuable contribution to Key West courtesy of the Mercury ship's surgeon. Since everyone was in garb, I threw on my stuff and we headed back out and made our way to the fort. Lily Alexander was at the gate and she graciously checked me in. The fort is chock-a-block full of canvas from what I could tell in the moonlight. There is a lovely breeze this evening bringing in cool, fresh air. (This is good for the health according to some period surgical authors. Unless people start getting sick, of course. Then it is bad for the health.) The Mercury crew was set up near the flagpole on the row of inside tents this year. Our group consists of William, Captain Jim, madPete, me, Iron Jon and (I think) Paula. (I didn't actually see Paula, so I can't confirm this yet.) We intently discussed how my display should be set up for the weekend, although my heart wasn't in it. Tomorrow would sort itself out and I was more concerned with getting dinner since I hadn't really eaten much since breakfast. When I broached the subject of eating, no one wanted to go. So here I was in garb, thinking about going off to eat by myself. If you have to do it, Key West is certainly the place. Of course, I had to be hugged by a dozen different people and you all know how much I love that. What's worse is that since I've been doing these journals and nattering on about my Patrick Hand Original™, lots of people know me by name, or at least my hat, but I don't know them. Oh, I sort of know them and I even recognize that I have written about them, but when it comes to cold recollection of names... well, let's just say I use all my spare memory cells to house information about 17th century surgery. I finally got near the exit of the fort when I ran into none other than Jana, one of my fellow twins. "Third twin!" she called cheerfully. She was with another girl, whose name is (I hope) Alexis. Alexis is one of the many friends of Shana and Jana who somehow got roped into accompanying them to Key West. (They often bring a spare girl to these events for some reason. I suppose if one of the twins is unable to complete her weekend at the fort, the extra girl can take over.) Shana lives in central Florida and Jana lives on the Georgia coast. I asked Alexis where she hailed from. "Maryland." "Maryland? However did you get to be friends with these two?" As it turned out, they met Alexis through the on-line game version of Lord of the Rings two years ago and had been Facebook friends ever since. They had only met twice in person, this being the second time. How about that? As it happens, they were heading out for dinner, Jack, Shana and Kiera (Shana's 4 yo daughter) were waiting in the van for Alexis and Jana, so we headed for the parking lot. On the way, Jana stopped to use the rest room. "Where are we going?" I asked Alexis. " Some Italian place that has a z in it. No one can remember the name." "Ah, Abbandonza." "I think that's it!" "I can get them to go someplace else. I have influence." I explained confidently. "More influence than Kiera? She wants mac-n-cheese." "Looks like we're going to Abbandonza." I answered. No one has as much influence as a four year old. Riding in the back of the bus (Jack has a white bus that's disguised as a van), I sat between Jana and Alexis. Alexis is the type of person who has to wear a seatbelt, even when she's in the back. This meant she kept digging around in the seat for it and apologizing to your ship's surgeon for grabbing him. I offered to give directions, but Shana and Jack seemed to want to use the GPS system rather than the Mission Dead Reckoning system. As a result, we got there without any wrong turns. It was a nice dinner. We met up with Jack's parents, who haven't been here since 2007. They were decked out in 2007 PiP T-shirts. "I found them at the bottom of the drawer and thought they'd be appropriate." Jack's mom explained. In the restaurant, I sat next to Kiera, who was playing Life on someone's phone. She kept calling out the color that the arrow pointed to on the virtual Life spinner thingee. "I got married again." "Again?" I asked. "Yes," the announced firmly. Where does the second husband peg sit in the virtual Life plastic car? I though the back was for the kid pegs. As we were leaving, Jana took several photos of the restaurant, 'so she wouldn't forget the name.' I was slightly wounded. The Mission Dead Reckoning guidance system may be a bit dodgy (and sometimes perhaps moody, quarrelsome, hard-to-use and possibly dysfunctional), but the Mission Key West Restaurant name map is pretty reliable. Back in camp, I ran into Chad and Cannibal Chrispy, who was sporting his gigantic new cannon with a rifle butt that Chad had made for him. He let me hold it. It was only slightly more heavy than my hardcase luggage. I quickly returned it to him. Not something you wanted to run across the battle field with. It had a beautiful seal cast into the top of it, which Chad assured me he had built into the mold for the gun. A very interesting and stylish piece. Still not something you wanted to run across the battle field with. I ambled around and talked with several people who said things witty and interesting that I will probably wish I had remembered. Things like William regaling us with the story of the slave auction of Reggie back in 2000 and... nine? During the proceedings William thought the price was too low, so he told me that Reggie would make a fine surgeon's assistant. I apparently indignantly shot back, "I know for a fact that this man has no surgical training!" William replied "Neither do you!" Yep, don't remember a bit of that. I was drunk as a lord. Or finding Captain - wait, no Commander - Cutter and asking innocently if he was Deadeye. (I wanted to find Deadeye so's I could thank him for putting Becky's dress back on here. I was sure that dress would be long lost by now. Finding her clothed in the gibbet this year made my heart sing.) I do remember encountering Rachel, who identified herself to me last year as Sawbones Sarah, and her boyfriend Blackheart Charlie. They were talking about the full moon. (Yes, it's a full moon. And no one should be surprised.) Rachel wanted to get a photo of it. I explained that this rarely worked - I have several times tried to take photos of the moon while at this event and never been able to capture it properly. In fact, sometimes I have missed it entirely and wound up with a photo of black nothing. (Uh huh. Drunk as a lord then, too.) By way of proof, I took a couple of shots, all of which came out blurry. Still, she wanted to try it with her tripod, so she went about setting it up. While she was doing that, I talked with her husband. He explained that in the Northern latitudes, when a storm was coming, the moon would often have a ring four times as big as the moon in diameter around it - like my pictures, only moreso. "It's the reflection off the ice crystals," he noted. Rachel got her tripod set and took several more shots, although they also looked a bit blurry. Her husband rubbed his chin and philosophically noted that some things can only be fully grasped by the human eye. (This is my new excuse for all future journals as to why I don't have pictures of the things I am describing. I will even rub my chin philosophically while writing that.) He also told me she always bought Canons because they were the best camera and could take the most abuse. I regaled him with how in 2010, during the Key West Holiday parade, I had stretched my arms up high to try and get a photo of the parade from that angle and dropped my Canon on the asphalt - yet it survived and is still working. Rachel took a couple more shots, all with the encampment in the frame - she called the encampment "the Christmas", which I quite liked. Having had enough, I decided to wander back here. My blood sugar was running low, which is astonishing given the amount of Italian food I had had. On the way down the long, winding road out of the fort, I heard my name being called. I stopped and waited for my pursuer to catch up. It was Gwen of the Valhalla's Pirates. "Thank God you've got your hat. I can always recognize you by it!" Score another point for the Patrick Hand Original™! I didn't recognize her, so she said she was the girl whose name I always forgot in the Surgeon's Journal last year. (This does not narrow it down very much.) I explained how I usually relied on Facebook and crew websites to fetch me up names. We then talked about how wonderful Facebook was - thanks to tagging I can often find people's names without having to ask Michael Bagley. (He knows everyone and can remember most of their names.) I opined that it would be even more useful for me if people tagged photos with their pirate names. She told me that she actually had two different Facebook accounts because she wanted to separate her family FB friend from all those cleavage shots. "I've never saw so many pictures of my cleavage as when I started reenacting. So I thought I better separate the pirate and family stuff." Wise advice that we would all do well to follow, to be sure. When we reached the end of my compound, she headed for Duvall to find her crew, who had left before she had managed to get into the fort from the airport. I toddled over to my condo with the pull-shade. I love that pull shade. I think that's enough for now. Tune in tomorrow when there may be more piratey stuff to discuss.

I don't think they would bother carrying it at all. The way I read Labat he is suggesting it be built out of the materials at hand. (Remember, you're in the Caribbean where plants grow like...weeds?)

Some notes on sleeping arrangement from The four years voyages of capt. George Roberts when he shipwrecked on St. Johns in 1721 or 22: "They [the natives helping him on St. John's] then made me and the Boy drink some of the [goat's] Milk they had brought in the Calabash [a hollowed out, dried gourd used as a cup]; and seeing my Feather-bed [from his ship] swimming about on the Sea [because the ship had wrecked], Two of them swam off, and saved it, and laid it upon the Rock to dry." (Roberts, p. 179) Curiously, they later removed all the feathers from the feather bed because they had gotten wet! This is from when Roberts came down with a fever while stuck on the island several days later. (This was also about the time the natives decided to pluck the feather bed.) "... Mr. Franklin [a Welshman staying on St. John's] told them, That I should be much better, if I lay better; and Domingo [one of the natives] having a Cotton Hammock, which his Father had of the Pirates when they were at this Island, he ask'd Mr. Franklin whether that would be of any Service to me, who told him it would, and bid him carry it down [from the town of Fuurno, which Roberts had been unable to reach from the place where he shipwrecked], and shew'd him how to hang it." (Roberts, p. 244) Later, when Roberts reached Fuurno, he found they had made a rather interesting bed for him, which he describes in some detail. "...so I was lay'd on the Bed, which indeed was extraordinary, considering the People and Country; for there were four Posts drove into the Floor, in the Form of a long Square, and four Pieces of Wood tied to them with Banana Cords, which form'd the Head, Feet, and Sides of the Bed, and three or four Sticks laid across, and tied at each End to the two Pieces that made the Sides of the Bed, over that was lay'd a Hurdle made of large Cane Reed, being the same Sort which is brought out of Portugal, &c. over the Cane Hurdle was good Store of dry'd Banana Leaves, laid after the same Manner as the poorer Sort of the Native Irish do their Beds of Straw, over the Banana Leaves was laid a Banana Mat, and on that two white Cotten Cloths as Sheets, with a thick blue-and- white Cotten Cloth over all, as a Rug or Quilt. I have been the more particular in describing this Bed, because Beds are not usual there, they all lying on the Ground, and, as he told me, it was of his Brother's Contrivance, who had liv'd some Time at St. Philip's, and had been once at St. Jago [santiago, Cape Verde], where he saw those Sort of Beds there, used by the Branca's (i.e. Portuguese) inhabiting there..." (Roberts, p. 256) I call that a banana bed - and I think the much beloved ship's surgeon should have one while he is staying on shore, tending the sick.

Nothing new or shocking here, but I thought it worth sharing. It's from The four years voyages of capt. George Roberts when he shipwrecked on St. Johns in 1721 or 22: "[The natives] asked, Whether we could not make a Fire? they said, They had nothing to strike a Fire with, neither had they any Fewel to make it with; one said, He had Steel, Tinder, and Cotton, and some of the other asked me, If the Wood of the Wreck would not burn? I told them yes, very well; at which, an elderly Man bid some of the young Men swim off, and bring some of the smallest and lightest pieces of Boards which were swimming about in the Water, which they did..." (Roberts, p. 178) The wood didn't burn very well, as you can imagine. (They don't mention if they tried it again when it was dry.)

St. Jago (West Indies/Santo Domingo/Dominican Republic) Issued Amsterdam: 1676; by Meurs From the first Dutch Edition De Americaensche Zee-Roovers Amsterdam, 1678

Here is something from Père Jean-Baptiste Labat's book The Memoirs of Pére Labat 1693-1705, translated and edited by John Eaden (1970). He is describing his buccaneer holiday. "Here I had a large ajoupa built. An ajoupa is a hut made of light poles covered with balisier [Heliconia bihai] and cachibou [Asplundia insignis] leaves to keep out the rain. I sent the pig and other things I had prepared to the ajoupa at daybreak and, most important of all, the wine to be cooled in the river." (Labat, p. 52) If you do a Google image search for an ajoupa, you'll find all sorts of different structures, most of which share the sloppy-looking roof design that Labat hints at. This seems like the best example I saw with a quick glance:

Well they used turpentine quite extensively in various medical treatments... (There's a piratey scent for ya'.) Somehow I doubt it caught on with the fops and ladies, though.

Tineye.com is my new favorite toy. I have a feeling it is going to save me dozens of hours. I owe you another one, Duchess.

That's a wicked cool website! I have a feeling this image isn't as vintage as zazzle thinks it is. It definitely has a modern feel to it. However, it's also very evocative of drunken pirates in the foreground. I probably won't use it since I can't figure out its copyright status.

Wow. How ever did you find that? Now should I buy it with the hope that Signet actually gives the title of the cover art or not? (Because I was looking through the original art from Kidnapped! this morning on archive.org and that ain't part of it.)

This is Edward Cooke's account what was captured out of the Spanish treasure ship Nuestra Senora de la Incarnacion Disenganio during Woodes Rogers' privateering voyage in the arly 1700s. I have translated the things I could figure out in the list. There are some spices listed at the bottom and gum elemi, which is a plant resin used in some medical prescriptions. But mostly there's cloth - lots and lots of cloth. "The Cargo of the Acapulco or Manila Ship, taken in the South Sea by the Duke and Dutchess, private Ships of War belonging to Bristol, and call'd the Batchelor Prize. ALlejars [cotton muslins, made in plain weave, also mixed with silk or other fibers] - 82 Pieces Atlasses [silk, often with a cotton back - used to make dresses] - 52 Pieces Basts [long, strong fiber contained between the outer bark and the inner woody core of various plants and trees] - 188 Pieces Cottoneas - 291 Pieces Calicoes colour'd - 6603 Pieces Ditto white - 4372 Pieces Counterpoints, divers Sorts - 206 Pieces Coffaes [some type of muslin] - 206 Pieces Chints [chintz], divers Sorts - 24289 Pieces Chint Sashes - 24 Pieces Chelloes [coarse cotton cloth] - 362 Pieces Charradorees [possibly cacharado - a plain woven linen fabric from Spain] - 18 Pieces China flower'd Silks - 5 Pieces Damasks - 120 Pieces Dimities [probably wool and silk fabric].- 460 Pieces Diapers [no, not what you think - white cotton or linen fabric patterned with small, duplicative diamond-shaped figures] - 77 Pieces Elatches [Elatche - East Indian cotton and silk cloth with check patterns] - 3106 Pieces Fans - 5806 Pieces Gurrahs [plain coarse India muslin] - 1180 Pieces Ginghams - 263 Pieces Guinea Stuffs - 235 Pieces Humhums [coarse cotton cloth] - 105 Pieces Handkerchiefs Pieces — 38 Ditto single - 157 Pieces Long Cloth - 2577 Pieces Mulmuls [fine, soft muslin] - 55 Pieces Neck-cloths - 123 Pieces Nillaes [striped blue cloth of cotton, silk or a blend] - 580 Pieces Niccaneas - 8020 Pieces Photees [fine variety of Indian cotton] - 152 Pieces Pelongs [possibly 'Pellon' - a sort of baize] - 1236 Pieces Paunches - 16561 Pieces Palampores [hand-painted (stenciled) cotton fabrics] - 4053 Pieces Petticoats - 265 Pieces Quilts - 14 Pieces Romols [probably Romal - East Indian plain silk taffeta] - 548 Pieces Ribbons, divers sorts - 6823 Pieces Ditto flower'd with Gold and Silver - 481 Pieces Silk Stockings - 4310 Pair. Silk raw of China - 28502 Pounds. Ditto thrown - 11990 Pounds. Ditto sewing - 1370 Pounds. Ditto Bengal - 61 Pounds. Ditto sleve - 6581 Pounds. Ditto Fringes - 194 Sooseys [mixed cotten and silk, striped] - 115 Pieces. Stockings Cotton - 1084 Pair. Sannoes [white calico] - 425 Pieces. Sattins and Tafvaties, divers sorts - 7008 Pieces. Ditto flower'd with Gold and Silver - 192 Pieces. Silks divers sorts - 511 Pieces. Silk Sashes - 341 Ditto of Calico - 544 Silk Gowns - 37 Tanbes [copper plates?] - 454 Musk - 5957 Ounc. Cinnamon - 9719 Pounds. Cloves - 1182 Pounds. Benjamen - 3300 Hund. Bees Wax - 152Pounds. Gum Elemia - 120 Pounds, China Ware, several Chests and Jars, Several Parcels of odd Things." (Edward Cooke, Voyage to the South Seas, Volume II, p. vii - ix)

I am trying to figure out something about this image - who drew it, when it was drawn, what it's called or anything to help figure where it's from. It's all over Zazzle - suggesting to me that it's a public use image - where they explain that it's a "Vintage illustration black and white pirate fairy tale story image with pirates drinking and carousing on the deck of their pirate ship." A pirate fairy tale story? Anyone?

Oh, hey, TJ, I didn't realize you were part of our crew. I haven't looked at the roster in ages. No offense meant. (Hermes is still a poncey name, even though I got the joke. ) On a naval ship, I would be a warrant officer. On a pirate ship, I would be a pressed man and of less consequence to the pirates than one who had signed the articles in most matters. So we really have no officers other than the Quartermaster and the fictional captain as I understand it. We do have a lot of people of knowledge pitching in at various events and sharing. From the events I've seen, there a several roles people regularly take. (And there are a lot of Mercury members I've never met, so this is just from my POV.) Michael has inspected weapons for firing at several events, so he might be the ship's master gunner. Mark Gist frequently does navigational equipment so he might be a navigator. (A lot of little kids at events seem to call him the captain though. ) Kate Bagley and Jennie Gist often arrange the meals, so they might be the cooks. (Whether they want to be or not. ) I often see Silas sewing at events, so I'd guess him to be on the sail repair crew. Most of the group I run with are just ABS. Of course, none of those people are going to be in Key West. I do remember Captain Jim - way back in 2008 - saying we should rig up a mast on the beach and explain sails and how they were set and so forth. Since he vehemently denies being the captain, despite his user name, perhaps he is the sailmaster? Naturally, when asked by the officious forces of the Royal Navy, they are all pressed men, forced to sign by the threat of the loaded weapon lying next to the articles on the table.

St. Jofeph's Bay William is our secret, double ought spy captain.

I thought we had sort of decided the name. (The last two people who responded aren't even Mercury crew members. And, no offense to anyone, but Hermes sounds like a poncey name. If a pirate captain was given the name Hermes, I think he'd start referring to himself as 'Mad' McHugh. or Fierce Beard or hmm... never mind. Those are poncey too...)

I wish I could like posts on the forum. (Duchess would win. She would. Honestly.)