Mission

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.

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?)

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.

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).

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.

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.)

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.

Just so.

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.

Exactly. I think. "I can't stop... I have so much to do! I am concerned with matters of consequence. I don't amuse myself with balderdash." -The Businessman, The Little Prince, Alexandre St. Exupery

Happy 30th to Skullwench! (Whoever she it, I'll bet she's married with two kids by now.)

Welcome to researching 17th/18th c. documents. I did a little digging with Google to find bb. as an example. (I don't know what such abbreviations mean since they aren't a part of my research interests). I found it with "per bb." because "bb." is too generic and will turn up a lot of unwanted results. From that search, up came the 1850s Parliamentary Papers which say the b.b. means "barrel bulk". This is almost meaningless today, so I looked it up and found it on my favorite dictionary site listed as "a measure equal to five cubic feet, used in estimating capacity". Of course, neither of these sources are contemporary so they may be wrong for the period. (I doubt the definition of b.b. (or bb. as written shorthand in those docs) is wrong, but accuracy of the size estimate is anyone's guess.) And that's how you have to do it. Personally, when I am researching irritating things like this for my surgical articles such as abbreviated (not to mention often misspelled) Latin medicinal ingredients, I start comparing the effort required to the result produced and how important that is to the core my article. I have spent hours trying to untangle all the ingredients in a single medicinal recipe on occasion. BTW, I found another interesting thread in the 15 minutes I spent trying to figure out how to find this for you. (I didn't give you the whole process, I only gave you the steps that worked.) Check out Barrels, Bales and Bags.

Thank you for the compliments! Hey, Ed, aren't there bills of lading out there somewhere? I seem to recall PoD saying he printed them up in period style. While I'm throwing ideas around, didn't a lot of ships carry a limited or even a single cargo? For example, I seem to recall reading in the sailor's narratives (probably Barlow) about how this ship carried wine or that one hauled pepper or another contained sugar, or logwood etcetera. I suppose it would vary just like it does today, but I had the impression a lot of ships just transported one primary cargo with possibly a limited amount of another cargo to fill in spaces not used by the primary cargo.

So you can wear a hanging tankard, but only if you strap a barrel to your back from which to fill it. Actually, given that he's an ink salesman, I suspect that tankard may be for measuring the quantity of ink dispensed to the customers. (Which is still sort of cool.) I am more curious about what he has stuffed in his shoes, though.

That first image is in the UK's National Maritime Museum. http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/the-wreck-of-the-gloucester-off-yarmouth-6-may-1682-173385

The food section of my notes is over 100 pages long in word and it's not organized in any way. The liquids section is close to that long. I had always intended to write about food on my web page but there's so many references in there now that I usually use the search function to find food-related things in my notes these days. (I wrote articles on Pork, Eggs, Pumpkins and Goats in that way.) For food they would have stored on the ship, you can use the BRN calendar is a pretty good thumbnail guide. But when they were in port, they ate anything and everything and brought some of it on-board to have fresh provisions for as long as they lasted. Somewhere I have notes on sailors eating monkeys. (From Dampier if I remember correctly.) You name it, they probably tried it. However, there are two pretty decent threads here on the forum for food and drink: the food sailors ate (I think I saw some ship's documents in there while glancing through it) and Water, beer and rum. Many other specific foods are discussed in The Way to a Pyrate's Heart forum - although you'll have to expand the range of thread shown by selecting a custom date range in the maroon-colored bar at the top of that forum to see them. Most of the threads are pretty old and I think the default is the last 90 days. 'Manifest' first appeared in print in reference to ship's cargo in 1706, which is smack in the middle of the golden age of piracy. However, 'lading' dates back to the 15th c., so it is probably slightly more likely to have been used. (Things generally changed more slowly 300 years ago than they do today. There was less opportunity to share new ideas.) I've found when I am searching for a concept, it's best to try various different words because what is common today may not have been at all common in the docs written then. However either word is good for your writing. To be honest, when I write my articles, I try to use different words so I don't sound like a parrot repeating the same thing over and over. (Although sometimes it's unavoidable. There's only so many ways to put the concept of bloodletting across...) I can't help you out with weapons, I don't pay the least bit of attention to them when I am researching. They've been discussed ad nauseum on this forum, though. Check out the search function.

This may exist, but I've never really seen all of this information in a succinct form. There are mentions of cargo on this forum, but I don't recall seeing a complete list of goods hauled here. (You could search for 'cargo' or 'bill of lading' to see what is here. There are probably actual manifests somewhere in the all the British records. The question is whether they are accessible on-line for free.) I do recall there being a cargo list in the book Journal of the voyage of the Sloop Mary, from Quebeck, together with an account of her wreck off Montauk Point. Don't know if that will help. You can also look at the ever-fascinating Dictionary of Traded Goods and Commodities, 1550-1820 on the British History Site and construct your own bills of lading. Food is actually trickier to pin down. I literally have hundreds of references from GAoP books on things that were eaten shipboard. I know David Fictum was working on an article on food relating to pirates but I haven't seen it published yet. For the navy, the BRN spelled out a menu for their sailors in the 1731 Regulations and Instructions Relating to His Majesty's Service at Sea which you will find here on page 61 (That is the 1757 edition, but I checked it against my 1731 copy and the chart is the same.) Of course, this was first published about 6 years after the golden age of piracy, but it should give you an idea.