Mission

If you want the POV of a historian whom I'd trust and who also happens to like the show from what I can tell, check out David Fictum's blog post on Black Sails. (He posts here as Brit Privateer.)

The answer is that we don't really know the answer.

For the somewhat 'pro' hygiene argument, see the thread GAOP Era Grooming & Hygiene starting at this post. (You can pretty much ignore the posts before it because while they contain a few correct ideas, they contain an awful lot of incorrect ones.) For the somewhat 'con' hygiene argument, see: Do You Want to Be Truly Period Correct? (I personally spent much of that thread trying to find the most horrible examples of period hygiene that I could.) This may also interest you (particularly Captain Sterling's responses): Let's talk dental hygiene.

This is the trouble with researching the reality of the period - there are LOTS of holes. The best information I've found on hygiene are brief mentions in diaries and journals, usually written by people on land, not at sea. I have read a variety of period and near-period sailor's journals and many things don't seem to merit mentioning such as hygiene. Anyone who has ever kept a journal or diary will probably agree that such things don't usually wind up in there because the writer doesn't deem it worth mentioning. However, here is the one example I have,

"[washing] Moreover, I had more than enough to do already, what with tending the ship's crew, patching my clothes and washing my linen; doing, in short, what one must do for himself if he wishes to keep himself free from vermin, which are terribly numerous and are always running up the masts. Thus, one puts the dirty linen into a baler or tub and pours fresh water over it (for one can neither drink sea-water nor wash with it); the clothes are then rubbed with soap and are then rinsed in sea-water and hung up on deck and quickly dried. For one would scarce believe how dense, salt and drying the sea-air is." (Johann Dietz, Master Johann Dietz, Surgeon in the Army of the Great Elector and Barber to the Royal Court, Translated by Bernard Miall, London, England, 1923,  p. 129)

You would think that the Navy would have regulations about this, but they didn't during this period. The earliest British Naval Regulations book we have is Regulations and Instructions Relating to His Majesty's Service at Sea, dating to just after the golden age of the pirates in 1731.  While it doesn't mention the cleanliness of the men. It has much to say about keeping the ship clean:

[Regarding the store room] "...such of the Stores [supplies] as require it [are] to be frequently brought upon Deck, to be survey d and to be aired, and their Defects repaired; and the Store-Rooms are to be cleaned, aired, and put into good Condition, and made as secure as possible against Rats." (p. 27)

"[The sick bay] The Captain is to appoint some of the Ship's Company to attend and serve the sick Men Night and Day by Turns, and to keep the Place clean." (p. 54)

"[The ship's Master is to] see the Balast [is] all taken into the [hold of the] Ship, and that it be clean, sweet [not foul-smelling], and wholsome..." (p. 93)

"He [the gunner] is to visit the Powder-Rooms, and see that they be well secured, clean, and in right Order, before the Powder is brought into the Ship." (p. 99)

"...the Decks are immediately after [firing the cannons] to be thoroughly swabbed, and cleaned of the loose Powder that may have fallen." (p. 100)

I've saved the best for last. We have this entry from Nataniel Boteler's Botelers Dialogues (this is from the 1688 version, based on the original which dates to around 1630-40, well before the GAoP), which were written to represent guidelines in force on naval ships. (Were they the rules in force on every ship? It isn't certain.)

"The Office of the Swabber is to see the Ship kept neat and clean, and that as well in the great Cabbin, as every where else betwixt the Decks; to which end he is, at the least once or twice a week, if not every day, to cause the Ship to be well washed within Board and without above Water, and especially about the Gun-walls, and the Chains; and for prevention of infection, to burn sometimes Pitch, or the like wholsom perfumes, between the.decks: He is also to have a regard to every private Mans Sleeping place; and to admonish them all in general to be cleanly and handsom, and to complain to the Captain, of all such as will be any way nastie and offensive that way." (Boteler, p. 18)

I haven't seen either Assassin's Creed or Black Sails so I can't say one is better than the other, although the two things seem like different animals entirely. However, I've found nearly everything in the entertainment industry lives up to its label by being entertaining, with history merely providing a tableu for that entertainment. (As it should. Entertainment by definition exists to amuse.) I do know of BS, Ed Fox said something to the effect that while he found it enjoyable to watch, he did so by basically suspending his knowledge of pirate history.

Actually, if you really want to understand the history, you're best off learning about it yourself so you can recognize what is real and what isn't. (As well as recognizing that there are more than a few holes in our knowledge which the entertainment industry winds up filling in.)  While there are a variety of modern books available, I prefer the actual sources from the period. There are three essential ones that I know of: Joel Baer's four volume set Pirates of the British Isles (get that through inter-library loan, they're too expensive to buy), Ed Fox's Pirates in Their Own Words, and Charles Johnson's A General History of the Pyrates. Johnson's book is the trickiest of the lot because it actually inserts a lot of things that either are not or at least may not be true. I've been told the best version to read is the Dover version annotated by Manuel Schornhorn. (And then you have to read the notes to see what parts are real and what are likely fabricated by the author.)

There are two others worth looking at if you really want to delve.  The first is John Franklin Jameson's Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period Illustrative Documents, which you can find at archive.org. Jameson's book covers a very broad period, however, and you have to pick and choose through his documents. The second is George Francis Dow and John Henry Edmonds' The Pirates of the New England Coast 1630-1730. A lot of the material in their books is covered by Johnson and Baer's books, although it is a nice, narrative presentation of the material.

"When [Captain] Knot Arrived within the Capes [of Virginia - at Virginia Beach]. the Wind turning Westerly, as he came to an Anchor, upon which 4 of the Pyrates came to him and required leave to hoist their boat out, which Knot Complied with, accordingly these 4 men put off the Boat, designing to go to the Bay, [These four pirates, four other pirates and two Portuguese prisoners had been put on Knot's ship along with a boat for their use after Knot's ship was captured about 300 miles from Virginia Beach. Knot had been forced to take the men back to shore and say they were passengers from London if asked.], but being quickly weary with rowing, they put into Back River [an inlet of Chesapeake Bay]; as soon as they came on Shore, their first care was to find out a Tavern, where they might ease themselves of their Golden Luggage. ['They [apparently referring to all 8 of the pirates] had brought on Shore with them in Spanish Gold and Gold Dust upwards of 1500 Pound Sterling.'] They soon found a place to their mind, where for some time they lived very profusely treating all that came into their Company, and there being in the House English Women Servants, who had the good fortune by some hidden Charms, to appear pleasing to these Picaroons, they set them Free, giving their Master 30 Pounds, the price he demanded for their time. Their Extravagant way of living soon discovered they were not Passengers from London, as they pretended, but rather Pyrates, accordingly they were taken up, and Commited on Suspicion, as such, to the County Goal. The other four not hearing of the fate of their Companions landed at Hampton in James River [Virginia], where pursuing the same courses, they were likewise taken up and Commited to Goal." (The American Weekly Mercury, Thursday March 17th, 1720)

While interesting, that is about 100 years after the end of the Golden age of Piracy and it is not a pirate ship. OTOH, as I said, my evidence is only from one ship - I don't believe there is that much information about the the makeup of various GAoP pirate crews.

I am reading the trial of Bartholomew Roberts men and have found it contains a surprising amount of detail that the account included in the General History doesn't include. (Incidentally, this trial was published as "A Full and Exact Account of the Tryal Of all the Pyrates Lately taken by Captain OGLE", 1723.) I came across this, which has interesting ramifications for the notion that members of a pirate crew spoke different languages, at least in Roberts' crew.

"Harry Glasby (acquitted) swears, the Prisoner [Michael Mare] he is convinced was on board the Rover when she was taken, and made a Pyrate of, three or four Years ago, continuing with them 'till the Company broke up; that afterwards sailing in a Sloop from Martinico, and meeting with some of the same Pyrates he was formerly with, he joyfully embraced his being a second time Associate with them, none but himself being taken out of the Sloop, because it was against their Rules to take a Foreigner, which the Prisoner was, as well the rest of that Sloop's Company.
... The Prisoner pretended he could not speak English and being asked whether he could not swear in that Language? he readily understood the Question but answer'd, No, Mynheer..." (p. 38)

Mynheer is Dutch, so we're not exactly talking about a language sailors wouldn't have been exposed to here.

While this list does contain a lot of valid info, it also contains several errors. (I know because I used it in my Surgeon's Quarters article and have received more than a little criticism of the veracity of that content.) Unfortunately, since the information presented here is not properly sourced, the errors cannot be easily identified and thus it is not very valuable if you want to do effective research.

I am working on a list of sourced golden age pirate's ships. I am currently reading through all the court accounts (which is where a lot of the ship info seems to come from), their burthen, men and guns. When I am done with that, I am going to read Ed Fox's Pirates in Their Own Words (and, if it comes out in time, Pirates in Their Own Words II), which contains a variety of period sources not found elsewhere. I also want to go through John Franklin Jameson's Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period, look through the Johnson's General History (which while not actually a primary source has ship data from what I believe are court and newpaper accounts) and Dow & Edmonds The Pirates of the New England Coast (again, not primary, but many of their sources are period newspaper accounts). Once I am finished with all that, I will update my article information so that it contains only sourced ship info. I should note that I am doing that while continuing to write my regular monthly pirate surgeon articles, so it will probably be a year or more before I have this completed. That's the trouble with proper research - it takes time.

Only one of them looked like a dog. (The one that kept sticking its tongue out.) I believe I named him Phydeaux.

I learned a long time ago that you can't control what people think of your art. (You can stop them from stealing your bandwidth thought. Which I guess you did.)

Huh. Rendering just fine now.

Stynky made the pirate icons but he didn't upload them the last time the forum underwent a major overhaul for some lame reason I've forgotten. Say, didn't we get rid of the hyphenation? (I am seeing it right now.) Again, minor thing.

I don't know that we need to archive posts (although I'm not exactly sure what that means with regard to this software), but we could combine the separate forums which are related to each other back into a single forum. (I'm saying this despite having put untold hours into separating them when we added forums.)

I think Coastie may be referring to the new way the recent postings section appears. I thought I saw some double listings (although not actually double postings) right after the change-over, but I wasn't used to the new format.

The emoticons aren't rendering. (A minor point, but something not working that I noticed.)

Maybe it's time to revisit the board structure, though. We could probably get by pretty well with just the top sections ('Joining the Crewe & Signing the Articles, Re-enactment & Living History, etc.) with the amount of traffic we have. While the multiple forums were useful when there was more traffic and more finely differentiated discussions, they seem lengthy and a little confusing these days. (Just a thot.)

Wall street companies take ships at sea?

You can find examples of illegal behavior everywhere in society, although it is rarely the dominant behavior of a group or organization, despite what those trying to paint that which they oppose as being illegal*.

*The exception, of course, being organized crime. Well, that and real pirates, which are, in fact, a lower form of organized crime. But now we've come full circle.

So much data available that no one has bothered collecting before. The non-English speaking archives are full of it and very few people have bothered looking. Not only do I have excellent what I call "victim data", but I have collected "aggressor" data as well. I have excellent trade tonnage data for several nations by year for many nations. While many will say that much of the data will be invalid because I am missing too many data points, the exciting thing about this analysis is that I CAN track noticeable downward loss trends in shipping by year that when looked at within the whole are very analytically viable.

See, now that sounds really interesting to me (provided you cite and quote your sources). I was just whining about the lack of this very thing on a Facebook group, but I only speak English. I would love to see what the Spanish have to say about the pirates from this time. And I really wish I could read the French surgical books without having to try and translate them bit by bit. (You can't just mass translate them because the print style from the period confuses OCRs and the result confuses the translator program. Although the last couple of books I downloaded were vastly improved over the ones I downloaded a couple of years ago. But I digress...)

I was trying to figure that out yesterday, but I didn't come up with what I thought was a definitive answer. For what it's worth, Exquemelin says,

"At first he [l'Olonnais] made two or three voyages as a common mariner, wherein he behaved himself so courageously, as to gain the favor of the governor of Tortuga, Monsieur de La Place; insomuch that he gave him a ship, in which he might seek his fortune, which was very favorable to him at first, for in a short time be got great riches." (Alexandre Exquemelin, The History of the Buccaneers of America, 1856, p. 65)

If the governor was willing to give him a ship, he almost certainly would have been willing to give him a letter of marque, but it doesn't specifically say that. At least one modern author suggests he had a commission (Patrick Pringle, Jolly Roger, 2012, p. 60), but he doesn't cite his source, so I'd guess he was just reading into the above passage. I believe a commission is more in the area of being an understanding that you have the permission of some government official to take enemy ships on their behalf, which would clearly be the case there and would justify Pringle's statement. Like Ed, my knowledge of the buccaneers is limited; maybe David knows since he is familiar with the difference between a commission and a letter of marque.

It sounds like you're writing something that will probably be rejected by a large part of your intended audience. (Which is certainly your right as an author, although it will limit sales. I probably wouldn't buy or promote it based on what you're saying here and I don't have any degrees in history.)

In fact, couldn't every ship that took another ship could be considered a pirate, including naval vessels? (Some of the navymen were dishonest and stole from their captives - I know for a fact that one English surgeon's plaster box was taken by the Dutch Navy when his ship was captured. Doesn't that make the Dutch navy pirates by your definition?)

Do you know what term Labat used in the original French to describe Daniel? There's no real straight translation of 'privateer' in French: they usually use the word corsaire, but that can also mean 'pirate'

Aw, you just had to make me go and do work.

He refers to him as 'flibuste' and his crew as 'flibustiers', so I guess I answered my own question. (Labat, Noveau Voyage aux Isles d'Amerique, Tome Sixie'me, p. 358)

You should include him in the book we talked about. (Now I will make you go and do work. Although at least you know which volume of the French edition to find him in.)

Sort of makes you wonder how many filibusters were around during the (broadly defined) golden age of piracy. I bought a book on filibustiers, but their heyday seems to have been in the 19th century so I never read more than a few pages into it.

I notice you didn't actually answer my question about Morgan.

It's because of the letters of marque that I call them privateers when I am writing. Was the French Captain Daniel (from Labat's memoir) a pirate? I believe Labat actually calls him one.

Out of interest, how are you defining piracy in the 1670s-80s? And how are you quantifying activity?

I was wondering that myself. There are a lot of buccaneers who either were or weren't really pirates. (For example, would someone please tell me if Henry Morgan was a pirate. None of this "Well he was, except when he wasn't" nonsense. Either he was or he wasn't. And I'd say if he didn't know peace had been declared with the Spanish when he attacked a Spanish settlement, then he technically wasn't. It took at least 8 weeks for news to travel to Barbados from England during a good season and more like 9 or 10 with typical delays. Jamaica was further off the main news route and would be another week or two. Add to that the fact that Morgan might be away from an English port for weeks at a time and I think you could say he's got a window of at least 3-4 months before he might know that peace had been declared.)

The two best books I know of about buccaneers are Alexander Exquemelin's History of the Buccaneers of America and Jean-Baptiste Labat's The Memoirs of Pere Labat, 1693-1705. The first one is as common as dirt and can probably be gotten from Amazon for the cost of the printing. The second is more expensive and should probably be gotten through inter-library loan unless you're willing to shell out about 100 bucks for it.

As for Henry Morgan, there are dozens of books about him, some of them which can be found digitally on Google Books:

https://www.google.com/search?q=umberto+eco&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#tbm=bks&q=henry+morgan+-lewis

I can't speak for how good any of them are because my focus is more on golden age of piracy (1690-1725).

3. Regardless of how you interpret it, archaeologists generally go higher than 50/50 on it being an accident. This might be statistical "babble" to you, but the math is sound. Do you believe that all non-primary sources are a 50/50 shot? If so, then the formula applies.

Each instance is either independent (which, by definition, makes it hypothetically 50/50 right/wrong) or it isn't (which means it depends on the original observation which is 50/50.)

However, it is babble because you're trying to apply statistical methods to a complex situation that is not 50/50 anyhow. The rightness/wrongness is not purely statistical, it is based on a multitude of things about the person making the observation - their knowledge, information and biases. People's opinions are not coin flips.

True... one piece of data alone proves nothing. That's what I was saying before, too. A 50% probability, after repeated occurrences, however, becomes 75% after two, 87.5% after three, and 93.8% after four... and so on. That is basic probability statistics... assuming that each occurrence had a 50% chance.

Statistic babble aside, you're just saying that each independent primary source agreeing with your statement makes its factuality more likely, something that's been discussed on this forum several times. So how many independent primary sources do you have? (This may be cited in the discussion here, but I've sort of lost track.)

Some humble thought based on arguments floating around here. There are just plain thoughts and if you want to shoot them down, brief arguments are enough. These are not really serious claims of any kind.

And I have nothing any of the presented viewpoints at all.

1. Why Teach left for North Carolina if his family and connections were in Jamaica. He could have accepted the pardon there from the governor as well. If he was a popular person, it wouldn't have been shameful to return there.

2. Being "a family man" doesn't mean someone couldn't be very violent or cruel person to others.

3. Being "Aristocratic" (or indeed mere "estate owner") in colonies might mean many things and doesn't necessarily mean high Social/ economical standing. People in the colonies were often someone who were "unwanted" in the main country or who has left it for some problems.

4. If the fact is indeed true and Blackbeard was a Jamaican planter, is it possible that Johnson put the real Blackbeard's story in his book, but under Stede Bonnet's name with few changes (Jamaica to Barbados etc.)? Do we know much about actual Bonnet?

5. If he was a planter and Bonnet is who we think he was we might have 3 Caribbean planters as pirates: Teach. Bonnet and Jennings. Does, this however, mean that pirate crews generally had a captain of upper social class? I think it barely means that.

6. What if Teach was just a pseudonym of Blackbeard? He might have just picked a name he heard while he was in Jamaica and work under it. Perhaps his family connections were even more secret.

7. These claims smells of conspiracy against a single man. Is it really that believable starting point? Conspiracy theories generally require a lot of things working together which makes them always less likely than other explanations.

Being an academical student in more general history and being not really able to focus on mere maritime themes I have some other thoughts: New approaches are always needed, genealogy in this case. This is certainly true with maritime history which has often been an isolated field of history that doesn't really use all tools available to it but often focuses heavily on chronicle like telling. Like noted in article Maritime History as Global History?The Methodological Challenges and a Future Research Agenda Maria Fusaro noted "Within the Anglophone world, maritime history in its widest sense has been –historically and indeed culturally – extremely sceptical of theoretical approaches."

(Maritime History, in my humble opinion, barely deserves its own category in modern scientific field. Maritime world has always been just a part of the general happenings. It this theatre of history, not a category lice "Social" or "Economic" history.)

I think your seven points are really quite interesting and well thought out. I, too, had wondered at the idea of what it meant to be aristocratic. I am not always sure that my knowledge of English culture (particularly English culture 300 years ago) is sufficient to fully comprehend what it would mean to be a landowner in one of the colonies. I've learned that our understanding of social class structure is very different in America.

I don't know that history needs to be divided any particular way to make it more or less valid as a subject, though. I suspect many people just focus on the topics and areas that interest them. (Unless they're cynical and then they focus on the areas with the most potential for recognition.) To focus on all of history would make you a generalist. I find it's hard to get excited about something that broad. The authors that interest me seem to focus on a particular niche and then explore the details of that - the details are usually what interest me the most. Of course, that's just my view of it. I imagine you're taking classes that are focused more on the larger topic. I do find if you don't have an understanding of the larger scope, a lot of the details don't make sense. Kind of like me not understanding what it really means to be aristocratic in 17th/18th c. English society.

Substitute 'person' for either and the nail is well and truly struck on the head.

Just so.

'The question is not is this witness lying to me? It's how is this witness lying to me?' There's no such thing as a 'credible witness', everyone is subjective and nobody ever tells the full story from every angle, the important thing is to work out in what way a witness might be credible or not. And just because a witness is not credible in some respects does not mean that nothing they say can be believed.

Substitute 'historian' for 'witness' and it still works.

Someone on Facebook was just opining that they missed your tutorials, Patrick. Glad to see you putting another one together.

As far as names go, a lot of documents and books contain a variety of spelling of names. I have seen books where the same location or name is spelled two different ways in the course of the narrative. (I've also seen words spelled three different ways on the facing pages.) There's a lot of phonetic spelling during this time, particularly with regard to names and places. With regard to 'spinster', Samuel Johnson's 1768 Dictionary defines the word as "The general term for a girl or maiden woman". We tend to focus on the second part of that definition when we see it because that's primarily how it's been used in modern.times.

I find one of the most serious challenges of fully comprehending period documents is to understand them in terms of the environment in which they were written rather than the one in which we are immersed. When I am writing, I sometimes come across words that even Google can't effectively explain - then I start scouring the period (or near-period in the case of Johnson) dictionaries.