Mission

I am resurrecting this thread because my pirate surgeon article for this month is about memento mori during the golden age of piracy. It gets into how memento mori symbols were used in stories, art, grave art, anatomy books, jewelry and pirate flags. In fact, I actually added a story (and an image) which I found in this very thread.

Wow. There is a period or near-period book that does just that, although it's been picked apart by the critics here as not doing a good job of representing the other countries clothing, rather showing it as the author saw it.

Trouble is, I don't know the name of it and I don't have it because it's not related to the topic of my interest. I'm almost certain it's been discussed in one of the older threads the Sewing Room subforum.

"Evaluating this thing I just watched is like trying to evaluate the Mona Lisa after somebody poured acid on the canvas."

Ha ha ha ha ha!

And...

Ha ha ha ha ha! Hee hee....

Aw. c'mon you guys. I want to see where he goes with this.

Uh huh.

Do keep us informed on how this all goes for you; we shall follow your future progress with great interest.

You'll want to check with Leigh/Lily Alexander on that one. A LOT has changed since 2009 as far as park rules are concerned, so it could go either way. You can find her email all over the FTPI Website.

Wasn't there something about a catholic monk or priest whose twelve apostles were swinging around him?

I don't recall Teonge ever getting into battle, but that's not what I look for and it's been years since I read his book. Why not read it and find out? You can get it on line for free. It seems to me that there was another chaplain who wrote about his experiences at sea around this time... yes, there was. Dr. John Covell was a clergyman who wrote a diary that included 1670-1679. You can get his book on line for free as well at archive.org.

I only read the parts of Covell's book that interested me, but I seem to recall that he was told to go below with the surgeon during battle. (Not to help the surgeon, just so he would be out of harm's way.) Based on that limited information, I'd say the clergy generally didn't get involved in fighting.

Now this is amusing. I was the one who started the thread asking about the name (probably in regard to Stynky wanting to change the name and me wanting to keep it) and Beau was the one who gave the answer he just gave. I don't find any other discussion of the name in this forum.

Captain Twill?

Stynky and I spent a lot of time debating the forum names back when the last batch of name changes were made, so it was probably from personal messages between us.

Oh yes, definitely. I believe during the GAoP, chaplains were warrant officers like the surgeon. (All title, no power.)

If you're interested in a GAoP naval officer's POV, check out the Diary of Henry Teonge. It's an entertaining read. (Not quite as entertaining as Pere (French Catholic Father) Jean-Baptiste Labat's memoirs from about the same time, but still fun to read.)

Didn't we have this conversation at some point? Or did that happen via personal message?

As I recall, it was another way of saying "thread counter" on this forum according to someone who has been around since the beginning. (Probably Stynky.) Of course, I never remember it being used in that way in any of the old discussions. (Although I haven't read all of them, so who can say?)

We talked about changing it to something more obvious and relevant a few years ago when we were overhauling the forums, which I argued against. While it doesn't mean anything to most people, it has a pretty long history here.

Receipt = Recipe in period-speak. And it does sound yummy. I expect William, Iron Jon and Captain Jim will be preparing that at PiP this year. :)

I was reading my copy of Dr. Professor Señor E.T. Fox's Pirates In Their Own Words and I came across this quote in the court testimony of Thomas (middle name probably Michael) Bagley,

"...afterwards they sailed to the Coast near Cape Commoroome [Footnote 94: Cape Cormorin], and there in or abt the month of Dec: 1698 they found a Moorish Vessel abt 200 Tonns towing a shoare with boates, whereupon some of ye said ship the Pellicanns Company went off in their Boate and brought her off, the said ship having some Opium and Cotton aboard, and because their owne ship was leaky they burnt her and

__

went all aboard the sd Moorish ship, and they sold the goods abd her to the Natives of the Coast of Commoroome, and this Examinate had abt Fifty peeces of Eight for his share..." [Emphasis mine] (Fox, p. 94-5)

Now, admittedly, this is a court testimony, but I find two things of interest here.
1. There's nothing about celebrating afterwards, which you sometimes see when they take a cargo of liquor.

2. They simply refer to the opium and cotton as "the goods ab[oar]d her", which is not the way they seem to regard liquor.

While I wouldn't call it proof positive that drugs weren't used recreationally (it's much harder to prove a lack of something than it is it's presence - the dog that didn't bark and all that), it at least suggests that opium was regarded as just another cargo.

There. Now you're both Old Twillians. (For all the good it will do you.)

Maybe it makes more sense to just lock the old one so no one can reply to it since other people commented on it? (I am sort of opposed to deleting threads unless there is a need to do so because it sort of contains the history of the forum in a way.)

I think on a commentary track or one of those featurettes I saw they specifically note that Parker was paying homage to Pyle in that scene (and some others, too, if I remember correctly.)

Hats were cocked every which way up until about the mid 1730s when the tricorn style took hold. (Although it wasn't called that at the time.) You see all manner of ways of cocking a hat in artwork dating from the late 17th and early 18th centuries - front, back, one side or the other, both sides, front and back &c.

In general I would agree that broad-brimmed hats make no sense on the water. (I don't even bother to bring mine any more when I go sailing in garb.) However, period images show them quite consistently being worn there.

My conclusion is that there are other factors at work of which we aren't aware. (Maybe the style amongst sailors was to wear them - amongst peers, style frequently holds more sway than practicality. Maybe it was the most affordable, respectable hat for a sailor. Maybe it was the easiest hat for a sailor to procure while in port. Maybe they they put ties on the hat to hold them on. Maybe hats weren't worn when sailing. (I can't think of any images of regular sailors on a ship under sail from period. It's hard enough to find images of them in port.) Maybe something else of which I'm not thinking.)

I just went through and tried to update the images in here. (Many of which were lost when the gallery was deleted. For the record, that may have been a mistake. I know I placed some stuff in there to put into threads that now have errors in them.)

Anyhow, there are some neat images in here, so I thought I'd pop it up again. Especially since it was a bit of work to go and find all those images.

Here are a couple of threads on head kerchiefs. There is some evidence, but as I said in the previous post, it is limited. This suggests they were around, although probably not as common on GAoP period sailors as we represent them today. (One note... be cautious with the older posts. We've gotten much better at accurately documenting things over the years.)

Aye the kerchief!

bandannas

Kerchief under your hat

I'm no expert, but I think I've read most of the various accounts of Robert's crew and I didn't come away with the impression that his ships were "run mainly by black crews". What's your source for that?

If you look through the images of period sailors at work, you will also find a lack of sailors wearing kerchiefs on their heads. (I believe there is limited evidence of this in period images, but it is more unusual than usual.) This may reflect the artist's bias for more formal hatware, but it is pretty consistent across various period artists.

This is a good thread and you've added a lot of interesting material to it. It was very helpful when I was writing the hat article last month.

There are period images showing officers wearing what appear to be tricorns, so he could be wearing one. Officers in the navies would have higher social status, more money and would likely be more fashion conscious.

Fashion was mostly the province of the upper classes. Sailors were near the bottom of the social ladder and some wore the same clothes day after day. (Some period accounts note that they sold their clothing when in port so that they could buy drinks, which might help to explain this.)

Even so, they would have a hat; hats were considered a necessary article of clothing during the time. (This is unlike today where hats are an accessory - you must be always cautious in trying to understand society 300 years ago by comparing it with modern society.)

A straw hat seems to have been primarily associated with the lowest classes, so a sailor might have one if he was really down on his luck. However, most period illustrations seem to show sailors who are working wearing felt hats either uncocked or cocked on one or two sides.

I could go on, but it would be easier to just direct you to my last article, beginning on the 3rd page where I discuss this in some detail and provide loads of images from the period.

I started out wanting to use that first image for my article on hats as proof of tricorn-style cocked hats on regular sailors, but it's out of period. As I started looking at more images, I realized three cornered hats start showing up on regular sailors in the early/mid 1730s, but not really before.