Mission

...and probably every year after that, even up into the present. Of course, it sort of depends on your definition of "interesting."

Nice, another example of an amputated arm. No hook, though. I wonder where the source material is for him? (Hegwish & Pirate's Cove never give their sources.)

Happy birthday!

Yeah, you're telling me. Especially when you read the same authors over and over - you begin to misspell on purpose! Very interesting. The Sea Peoples were engaged in piracy for over 200 years according to some of the websites I read. Now THAT'S a golden age of piracy! Hey, I just came across this page that has a wonderfully organized and documented account of the Sea Peoples on the University of California Riverside website. Very good reading if these folks interest you.

If you thought citing sources for the GAoP was tough, check out some of those for the Sea Peoples - a mysterious confederacy of seafaring raiders of the second millennium BC. (Depiction of the Shardana (Sherden) Sea People, Battle of the Delta, 1178 BC, Mortuary Temple of Ramesses III, Luxor, Egypt) (Sea Peoples Warship, Battle of the Delta, 1178 BC, Mortuary Temple of Ramesses III, Luxor, Egypt) (A naval battle against the sea-peoples. Soldiers cling to masts, fall into the sea, drown. Bodies drifting in the waves. From the outer facade of the Temple of Ramses III, 1198-1166 BCE. Luxor, Egypt) Sea people attack Let's see you cite THAT to make your point!

The Surgeon's Journal for the Santa Maria May edition is finished. You can view it via the link: http://www.piratesurgeon.com/pages/col12spring/ch1.htm

Happy birthday to you. 18 now, right?

Aiee! This is driving me crazy. There's a somewhat comical image of a guy from the 17th/18th century wearing several hats, one on top of another. He has a grin on his face if I remember it right. I can't find it! I know it's been posted on these forums several times. Can anyone point me to that image?

It's a myth that it was a common pirate behavior. Just like wearing tattoos and earrings. Were there such behaviors? Yes. Did most pirates engage in them? Not without proof of their commonality they didn't. But you couldn't tell Pyle that.

Ah, Howard Pyle. Creator of several of the much cherished pirate myths that the movies hold dear. I must say, I'm impressed that someone would stick a cutlass in their mouth while shooting. I wouldn't think you'd want to do that for very long or your teeth would start to hurt. Fighting and climbing with a sharp object in your mouth is the pirate equivalent of running with scissors.

My point. Although if you have to do it, be a skeleton pirate so you won't care about accidentally slicing something off because of a clumsy misstep. It looks much, much cooler (like Master Twigg here) and it probably makes sense on some level in that world.

Cascabel's explanation makes sense to me. It also explains the parity of the fuse in his mouth. Now, swashbuckler, for the record, how many times have you carried a sharpened blade in your mouth? Not stuck it in your mouth when you speared a grape with it (which is still fraught with peril, but I must confess I have done as much), but actually walked around with a honed piece of metal between your jaws?

Who wants to cut the hell out of their mouth while slipping or risk getting the knife caught in something and having it accidentally cut you or the fellow following you as it tumbles down? The whole idea seems foolish. It implies that an item carried by almost every sailor would not have a proper place to put it while engaging in an activity as rigorous and likely to cause the loss of the knife as climbing. I could see lighting a fuse and sticking that in your mouth briefly, but as goofy-looking as that image has been rendered, I'd say showing Bart with fuses sticking out of either side was either artistic license for dramatic purposes or a misunderstanding by the artist.

I was just making fun of this silly idea on a page in my latest Surgeon's Journal for the Santa Maria Event. (I'd like to share it here, but the Journal is not yet finished and I don't publish my Journals on the web before before they're finished. (Well, I don't publish them except to fans of the Surgeon's Journal Facebook Fan Page. ) It looks like pure Hollywood magic to me - where style rules over logic with an iron fist. I've yet to see a reference to anyone storing one's knife in their teeth at any time. Then again, there are precious few references to sheaths or scabbards at all in most of the stuff I've read. I mentioned one somewhere around here within the past few weeks from the General History. I believe it was to Bonnet's crew making scabbards out of some material they took off a ship.

So, basically all that boils down to... I should really make that my signature line.

Wikipedia has done something similar to this, adding the timeline dimension everyone keeps whining about. They only focus on captains and the more noteable, however, and don't appear to include other named pirates. You'll find it here.

When you think about it, it's really not surprising that Europe was the major contributor to the pirate makeup at that time. For several hundred years, England and her neighbors were the expansionists, traveling and exploring. Naturally the criminal element would be traveling and exploring with them.

There could have been Africans, middle easterners, American Indians, Indians, multiple varieties of Orientals, Russians, Spaniards, American Colonists (although they were basically transplanted Europeans as well), Maltese, Italians... If you go look at the list sorted by nationalities that I keep mentioning, you'll notice a decided preponderance of UK Pirates (Scottish, English, Welsh and Irish) with the second and third largest follow up nationalities being French and German and the Nordic Countries running fourth. Yet all these people lived within fairly close proximity to one another and are encompassed by the continent of Europe - the second smallest continent in the world. Sure, they all have different cultures, but in many ways those cultures are more similar to than different from one other. Their languages are primarily Germanic- or Latin-based, their cultures developed in somewhat similar ways and at similar times, their monarchs intermarried and their religions were mostly Christian-based.

Funny, I was just thinking how homogeneously European it was. In those last two quotes there appears to be a decided bias towards the English as well. The language question is sort of interesting. I theorize that people who successfully traveled the sea learned enough of the most common languages to get the basics across to each other. Nearly every sailor's account I have read contains foreign words (usually barbarously phonetically spelled, of course.) Plus they could always use gestures. Although I also remember reading about some group of pirates forcing a captured Spaniard to speak to Spanish ship in a fleet so that the pirates could pretend to be Spanish and get in amongst them. But then the Spanish seemed to be the most insular group of sailors in the Caribbean.

Yeah, I'd say we have to call pirate eyepatches an unknown at this time. They certainly existed and it seems logical that they might be used in the case of medical/cosmetic cases, but no evidence has been produced.

Ah. Still it's another example of pirate with no eye.

What's that from, Ed?

It's still a pretty good find IMO. It proves yet another sailor lost his eye somewhere along the way, although it doesn't necessarily mean this was at sea. But it is an 18th century eye patch on a sailor.

I found this in Dionis's book (Dionis being a French land surgeon during period.) It doesn't say much about the likelihood of eye injuries, nor anything about their occurrence at sea, but it is still interesting in light of our discussion. “We draw two Advantages from this Addition, the first is ornamental, as when we fix in an artificial Eye or Tooth; the second, is for Necessity, as when we add a wooden Arm or Leg; and ‘tis particularly this last Species of Prosthesis which is necessary, since without its help the Man can’t act." (Dionis, p. 416) Oh, and here it is! I am wrong in what I said about there being no accounts of eyes being lost at sea! No mention of an eye patch, but it is a splinter taking out an eye at sea. Unfortunately, it's the only one I found. (I don't know how I missed it before.) Here's some grisly ones for you that have nothing to do with the sea. (Bradwell has some of the most bizarre cases and treatments in his book. That's why I read it.)

Yeah, that's why I found it. I am searching for info on eye surgery for you. This only agrees with your previous comment on eyes in the articles listed in Exquemelin's book, however. But we're confusing threads by having this conversation here. However it's the first near period evidence I've seen for arm hooks and it relates to the buccaneers. I'd call that pretty good evidence for their use during/near period.