Mission

I have spent years researching historical piracy. Since most of the places I would like to visit are tied to things I have seen or read, I have a list of historically significant places I would see. In fact, I have already visited one of them... Robinson Crusoe Island, once called Más a Tierra or, in the bucaneer accounts, Juan Fernandez. I almost made it to Ile Ste. Marie (now called Nosy Boraha), Madagascar which was home to many of the East Indies pirates and the site of Adam Baldridge's pirate trading post at the turn of the 18th century, but... covid scotched that for me.

I have a short list of other desired historically significant pirate destinations like these. So what's on your list?

I talked to Stynky a month or so ago and he was having some issue backing up the database so (in Stynky style) he has been putting off the closing of the forum until he can figure out the problems. Like your ghost ship, I imagine we'll just find it missing some day.

No, I honestly can't...which is the real problem with the list. It cites no sources, so there's no way to verify it. I used it for an article I wrote several years ago and people occasionally point out errors to me in my list. (This happens sporadically, so I don't remember the complaints. But, one example I do recall: Nicholas Woodall wasn't a pirate and so doesn't belong on the list.)

I have been trying to go through the period sources and create my own list so I can correct the one in my on-line article, but it's a very tedious, time-consuming project because you have to read all the contemporary sources and record mentions of the ships, noting who had them, when they had them, how many men and guns the ship had (which usually changes - sometimes dramatically - during the tenure of ownership) and what type of ship it was. Some of this can be really difficult to figure out because the period documents occasionally identify ships by the wrong name, wrong ship type and wrong captain (or are sometimes given an aliases).

So I wouldn't rely on this list to be accurate.

I don't know the answers, but I'm almost certain each of these things has been discussed here in the past. Use the search function, restricting your search to the appropriate forum. Most of them are probably in Captain Twill. (You may find the gunlock answer in Cacabel's Lock, Stock & Barrel forum.)

? Where did you see that? I've seen period accounts of salted pork & beef, the salting of fish, boars, seals and even penguins. But I don't recall ever seeing a mention of salted horse.

Read the version edited by Manuel Schonhorn, taking time to read the end notes for each chapter. He explains where everything came from in Johnson's book. Mostly it was newspaper accounts, public records and published court accounts. What Johnson did was sift and organize these otherwise dry, dull documents (trust me, I've read a lot of them) and the stuff he added is mostly regarded as being fictional like the story of Captain Misson, Blackbeard's supposed journal, philosophical speeches by some of the pirates and similar odds and ends.

The author of these books is widely believed these days to be journalist Nathaniel Mist. Ed explains the reasoning behind this pretty well in this posting.

 

This may interest you.

“[Roberts, philosophy] [Thomas] Sutton used to be very prophane; he happening to be in the same Irons with another Prisoner, who was more serious than ordinary, and read and pray’d often, as became his Condition; this Man, Sutton used to swear at, and ask him, what he proposed by so much Noise and Devotion? Heaven, says the other, I hope. Heaven, you Fool, says Sutton, did you ever hear of any Pyrates going thither? Give me H———ll, it’s a merrier Place: I’ll give Roberts a Salute of 13 Guns at Entrance. And when he found such ludicrous Expressions had no Effect on him, he made a formal Complaint, and requested that the Officer would either remove this Man, or take his Prayer-Book away, as a common Disturber.” (Daniel Defoe  (Captain Charles Johnson), A General History of the Pyrates, Manuel Schonhorn, ed., 1999, p. 246)

As Foxe already explained, when you try and hunt them down, you'll find that many of the sea superstitions can only be traced back to the mid/late 18th century. I ran into that when trying to run down superstitions that we think were prevalent then when I was writing my article Dealing With the Deceased a few years back. I found the sea superstitions weren't much different than the landsmen's superstitions and a lot of the more "sea-based" myths came later. As I quoted in my article,

"Writing several decades after the golden age of piracy about a shipwreck that took place in 1739, John Byron explained,

That common people in general are addicted to superstitious conceits, is an observation founded on experience; and the reason is evident: but I cannot allow that common seamen are more so than others of the lower class. In the most enlightened ages of antiquity, we find it to have been the popular opinion, that the spirits of the dead were not at rest till their bodies were interred; and that they did not cease to haunt and trouble those who had neglected this duty to the departed. This is still believed by the vulgar, in most countries"

Part of the crew, part of the ship.

The more likely explanation is that Stynky is too lazy to take it down. (Trust me, I know Stynky...) Although I've no doubt that when the web page contract expires as Coastie mentioned, it will suddenly disappear. This has the added benefit of insuring that Stynky doesn't actually have to do anything to remove it.

I have saved a lot of the files that interested me, although they're in separate Word files and so are a PITA to actually try and sift through unless you know what you're looking for. I mostly saved them to refer to stuff that I can use in writing future Surgeon's Journal articles.

There's no challenge in that. The fun for me is in trying to be as PC as possible.

Or perhaps like something lifted from an assortment of newspaper accounts with lurid bits of historical fiction randomly thrown in to either make a political point or at least keep it interesting?

Here you go, Jib.

(And, for the record,  I have never worn them. )

You're assuming the merchant ships would fight. The majority of period accounts suggest merchant ships wouldn't. If the pirates ran their flag up, a merchant ship would try to outrun them more often than fight. It's probably just as (and perhaps even more) likely that they would just surrender without resistance. When ships resisted capture, they expected the pirates would punish them if they were caught by doing a variety of things including beating them, sometimes with swords, slitting their ears and noses, marooning them or possibly sinking or burning their ship.

Five men who had taken a ship created "a black Flag, which they merrily said, would be as good as 50 Men more, i.e. would would carry as much Terror [in the minds of their prey]". (Captain Johnson, A General History of the Pyrates, 2nd ed., p. 417)

You could read the original source material and give your own account of it. (I much prefer this to interpreted accounts, although they certainly have their place as well.)  The easiest book to follow is A General History of the Pirates. It contains is a certain amount of artistic license in the way the accounts are presented along with some embedded political philosophizing, but it is still mostly based on the facts and contains the easiest narrative to follow. I recommend Manuel Schornhorn's version which includes decent endnotes that will help to understand where the original source material came from. Plus it can be bought fairly inexpensively. (If you want to remain free from some of the most blatant pirate romanticization, skip the chapter on the pirate philosopher Captain Misson, an almost entirely fictional, politically-motivated account by the book's author. The accounts of Captains Lewis and Cornelius are also considered fictional, although they're not quite so blatant in their biases.)

Or if you want to read the original source material on which much of that book was based, get hold of Joel Baer's four volumes of reprinted source documents called Pirates of the British Isles. That contains a lot of the court trials and quite a few period newpaper accounts. I got that one through inter-library loan because it's expensive (and apparently out of print.) It doesn't give much of a narrative sense of things, however. There are also some other good sources of original documents, such as Dr. Foxe's annotated Pirates in Their Own Words and John F. Jameson's Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period Illustrative Documents.

To add to the list of barbarous pirates, the court accounts of Francis Spriggs show him torturing prisoners pretty regularly.

I don't know what the Grinner is (sounds like a villain from a superhero comic), but it is sort of interesting how the General History has (somewhat inadvertantly) molded the perception of the pirate population so that the only historical pirates of note in popular culture are the pirate captains.

If I were looking to create other characters, I think I'd read the chapter on Bartholomew Roberts as well as the actual court document, both of which contain a lot of material on men other than Roberts. (There's a lot of overlap because Charles Johnson used the court document - called Tryal of all the Pyrates, Lately Taken by Captain Ogle - to write much of his chapter, but the original document contains quite a few things that Johnson chose not to use.) In fact, nearly all the court documents I've read have some information on men other than the pirate captains if you want source material. If that interests you, Joel Baer's four volume work British Piracy in the Golden Age: History and Interpretation, 1660-1730 is what you'll want. You'll probably find Volumes 2 & 3 particularly interesting. (Although, if you decide to read them, get them through interlibrary loan because they're prohibitively expensive to buy outright.)

Another really interesting account with quite a bit of detail with daily life on a pirate ship is that found in George Robert's The four years voyages of captain George Roberts (wrongly attributed to Daniel Defoe in the 1930s), pages 37 - 98. where Roberts describes being captured and held by Edward Low's crew. 

I doubt if there's ever been an accurate portrayal of pirates in mass media. Hell, I still don't think we reenactors get more than 50% of it correct. There's a huge swath of unknowns about this small group who lived 300 years ago and kept almost no records of what they did. (Documentation could lead to hangings... ) Most of what we know about them is gathered up from the State Papers, newspaper reports, court accounts and a couple of accounts published by victims. Even the General History of the Pyrates is culled mostly from such documents. (Although there are a few exceptions. See the book Pirates in Their Own Words by Ed Fox if that interests you.) Take what historical reenactors (who are explicity trying to get it right) get wrong and add a layer of the things that are wrong in the much Hollywood-loved pre-Hollywood pop culture (such as works created by the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson, James Barrie, Howard Pyle and NC Wyeth) and you have a potpourri of misinformation in the pop-culture renditions.

Still, some are better than others. David Fictum has commented on some of the recent pop-pirate phenomenons. He actually talked about the accuracies and inaccuracies found in Assassin's Creed 4 from an historic POV in an article he published on Dropbox. You will find that article here.

Sorry if it took awhile to approve your registration. (Which I can not take credit for because I haven't logged into that section in weeks... and therein lies the problem.) 

That's a good point.

I am also guessing, but I have heard that a man wearing only a shirt with no waistcoat or a woman wearing a shift with no stays and mantua were considered undressed.

A rare reference to a figurehead in a pirate document. (Although it could be argued that Philip Roche was less a traditional ship-taking pirate than just a mutineer.)

"And when they came to Dartmouth the s[ai]d Peirce Cullen ordered the Examinate to procure a Carpenter and to agree with him to run a spare Deck upon the Vessel [the 40 Ton Ship St. Peter] and to alter her to a Snow by taking down the Misen Mast, and he the sd Cullen pro[c]ured one Taylor a Carpenter to doe the same; And he the sd Cullen and the aforesd Neal before she came to Dartmouth took off the Figure that was in her Head and painted her. And at Dartmouth the sd Carpenter run a spare Deck upon her and took down the Mizen Mast and put up a Lyon in her Head." (Ed Fox, "31. Philip Roche The Examination of Philip Roche, 11 April, 1723. HCA 1/55, ff. 36-41", Pirates In Their Own Words, 2014, p. 149)

The Opening of the First Eddystone Lighthouse, 1698 by Peter Monomy (c. 1703). This was an octagonal structure built by Henry Winstanley beginning in 1696 located on the Eddystone rocks, 12 miles off of Plymouth Sound.

"England was at war with France at this time and such was the importance of the Eddystone project that the Admiralty provided Winstanley with a warship for protection on the days when work was taking place. One morning at the end of June in 1697 the protective vessel did not arrive; in its stead a French privateer arrived, and subsequently carried Winstanley against his will to France. When Louis XIV heard of the incident he ordered that Winstanley be immediately released saying that 'France was at war with England, not with humanity'." (Trinity House Website, Eddystone Lighthouse, gathered 7/26/16)

Actually, I got something wrong in my original post (which I have changed). I had said the ship was seized by George Lowther, which would have been impossible because this all occurred in 1696. Lowther's pirate career didn't begin for another 25 years. (I had thought they had mispelled his name which was fairly common until I realized the dates were so out of synch.)  Instead, the money was taken by a Captain Lowth of the East India Company. He seized the ship the Margaret, which was under the command of Samuel Burgess, for reasons not stated in the accounts found in Ed's book. Burgess had sailed to Madagascar in the Margaret to sell goods to pirates and obtain slaves for the return trip. It seems likely that Lowth thought he was seizing pirates (although they had pardons, which he also seized)  and pirated goods;  the four men claiming that the money was not pirate treasure, but gambling or care-giving earnings in their testimonies was an attempt to claim the money was legally obtained and get the money back. Without futher evidence, however, who can say?

Because Lowth seized the ship, the owners of the Margaret sued the East India Company. Burgess was convicted of piracy in a trial in London as a result of these events, so it would seem that the owners of the ship lost that suit, although I don't actually know that. I suppose the pirates could have brought individual suit to get their money back since they had received pardons... although their explanations for how they came by the money were absurdly flimsy and, based on other court accounts of pirates from this period, probably wouldn't have held up.

This is interesting and related to the idea of saving money, at least in the short term.  It is from Ed Fox's book Pirates in Their Own Words, being taken from court examinations of four former pirates who traveling from Madagascar (where their money would have had only limited value) to New York (where there would be many opportunities to spend it.) Ed explains,

Quote

One remarkale feature of these depositions is that many of the passengers were arrested in possession of large sums of money but none of them appear to have obtained it by piracy. Three of those whose testimonies are reproduced here won all their money gambling (though nobody on board the Margaret admitted to losing money gambling) and the very enterprising Richard Roper managed to accumulate the equivalent of around 35 years’ worth of wages for a seaman in a comparatively short time by doing sewing repairs and nursing favours for his shipmates. Money acquired through piracy could, of course, be confiscated, but money that was come by legitimately could not, and this may or may not have had a bearing on the pirates’ keenness to explain the source of their income. The fact that they all told the same unlikely story suggests that it was something they had discussed together beforehand. (Fox, p. 59-60)

Their money was seized by Captain Lowth of the East India company who seized the ship when it stopped at the Cape of Good Hope.

The four men being questioned included:

   1. Thomas Bagley - "...he saith that he had ...in gold and silver to the value of Two Thousand one hundred and Fourty peeces of Eight together with his Chest and Cloaths, and saith that he wonne the foresd mony at play." (Fox, p. 62-3)

   2. Michael Hicks - "...he had aboard ...abt the value of one hundred pound sterling in silver and in gold abt the value of six hundred pounds sterling, great part of which mony he won at play." (Fox, p. 65)

   3. Richard Roper - "...he had aboard ...abt the value of four hundred pounds sterling in silver and gold and Cloaths and other things to ye value of ten pounds, most of the sd mony being given him for tending upon sick people working of Cloaths and other services." (Fox, p. 68)

   4. John Barret - "he had aboard ...one and twenty hundred Lyon Dollars [a large Dutch silver coin], thirteen hundred ps of Eight, in plate and small mony to ye value of one hundred ps of Eight and in corrall and amber to the value of one hundred peeces of Eight more, a great part of which mony he won at play." (Fox, p. 71)

Had they not lost the money, it would have been interesting to know what happened to them after they reached New York.

You can definitely post to the old posts if you would like. Although I can see a good argument for creating this as a new post too. Those buttons do look neat.