Mission

Such lush photos. Can I use them?

Hey boo! Good to see you here!

Wow, that sounds cool. I had a friend who went to St. Johns on her honeymoon and she reported that I would probably love the place. That was over 10 years ago but I've never gone. After a short burst of Caribbean trips, I decided they were too expensive if you didn't want to stay in the (boring) resorts. (This from someone who's made nearly 20 trips to Key West. My true favorite Caribbean island. ) As in wood masts? If so, I doubt they're original. Lumber rots fairly quickly in the warm Caribbean. I've only been to four Caribbean islands, but of them my favorite was Nevis, West Indies. It was the least trafficked and thus had the fewest crowds. As boogater noted, it was as much because of my travel companion as the island. He was most gregarious and found a taxi driver that he really liked and we hung around with him for much of the week. Our driver even brought us a bottle of rum that had been smuggled in by an American pilot to share with us. For the most part, the four islands I've visited seemed pretty similar to me in the main, other than as I recall on Jamaica there were places we were advised not to go. It boils down to resorts, Caribbean food in interesting restaurants, kitschy shopping, eco-tours, snorkling/diving, forts and museums, tropical drinks and a curious love/hate regard from the locals.

Hear, hear! (From FB, I thought it was only Brig's birthday. What do you know about that? ) You guys should celebrate with Star Wars costumes.

Gee, I'll have to find a way to get more of my stuff out there. I chose all the shiny, repro stuff because I figured it would be a party crowd that wouldn't know the difference. Some of the most unexpected people knew what all of my stuff was for...many because of the History Channel! (Others were nurses, although I had some stuff they were not familiar with.) One guy even knew the about the dental pelican! (I had never heard of one until I read a book on the history of medical tools.) I thought it was a very nice balance from a presentation POV. It was not a production line of people trooping through so that got sick of it or felt guilty taking a break and wandering off to see other people but also not an event where you carefully set your stuff out only to do two or three presentations. This is exactly the sort of thing I think would play well at the Santa Maria event, maybe on the lawn or if the tour guides would let us - on the ship. I saw many of our group doing formal and informal presentations at this event - it was very cool.

I was actually very impressed with his presentations. I witnessed him doing several on weapons and fighting. He'd start, because everyone was interested in the weapons, and then he'd hand them off to me. Very slick. Kudos to M.A. d'Dogge on that front.

Will people staying outside the fort be able to get in with their ID for the evening festivities? That's one of the best parts of the event IMO. Too bad about the beach. The fort can get stifling inside where the beach has a nice breeze. Ah, well...

You will find my photos here: http://picasaweb.google.com/MarkCKSuccess/PutInBay10?authkey=Gv1sRgCMTpo_m014ylzAE# I look forward to seeing the other photos so I can get the SJ put together quickly. (With any luck, before I leave a week from Thursday. Otherwise I'll forget half the stuff.)

Are you staying for a full week or just a few days?

I'll be there on Saturday. I'm taking the Jet-Express ferry so I have the option to leave later than 8pm. I'm bringing my bike...you would not believe to what a pain in the arse the Patrick Hand Original hat is going to be. I am using all my engineering wiles to create a structure to affix it to my backpack without permanently folding the brim. (Some day someone's going to have to explain to me how to block a hat. Or maybe not. The multiple bends in the brim are acquiring an air of character...) Oh, and could someone bring an extra mug? Mine is officially MIA since Searle's. (And my Spring Lancet turned up missing after the Santa Maria event last month. Looks like I'm going to have to keep a closer eye on my stuff...what a pain. )

You don't say! I'll have to get a copy of that. For anyone else who's interested, you can find it on Amazon here. I must say I'm surprised. Most of what I've seen in the surgical books and sailor journals refers to meat as the pre-eminent foodstuff. Yet another wee bit of proof that people in 17th/18th c. were quite diverse in their preferences - not unlike today.

I was digging through the archives and found links to several old PiP photos - '05 and '04. (I didn't find anything from '06 which is the event that spawned the current flavor of the event which leans more towards period re-enactment. ) Still, it was pretty neat, so I added the old stuff to the photo list (which I moved up on the list for quicker reference.) Check 'em out! I also weeded through the topics and did a little better job organizing the lists so that it is a bit easier to find info. If you spot a post that is no longer relevant, holler and I'll remove it.

Look, a predecessor to the Surgeon's Journals! Started by the estimable Patrick Hand, no less! Kewl...

Ok, there! The second post is updated! If you see anything I missed, post a link to the post and tell me which category you want me to put it in.

At long last the latest Surgeon's Journal is finished! This is for the Santa Maria fundraising event in May...yes, all the way back in May. Most of you who attended this event probably already forgot about it. So this may serve as a reminder. Or not. May 2010 Santa Maria Surgeon's Journal

The word 'font' referring to a typeface actually dates back to the late 17th century. As far as function, intentionally different styles of typeface date at least back to the 16th century.

Oh yeah, I know who you're talking about. The only reason I asked was because picture was originally intended to be of people who post on the pub. (The swoopy skull and swords flag behind us in the photo used to be the pub symbol, although it's kind of been modified since they upgraded the forum last year.)

For those who think the question of period vs. movie re-enacting is the only regularly recurring topic, I present the following for your edification and further research: Mary Read Anne, Mary, and Calico Jack? Most Successful Pirate was Beautiful and Tough Anne Bonny ~ History A Discussion of Female Pirates Women on Ships (in The Shipyard forum) grace o'malley? found an article on real-life pirate queen More Than Bonny and Read? Pirate Women

Speaking to the comments from the 2004 posts, I started Burg's book and gave up on when he explained that it is based upon supposition. (He doesn't call it that, he calls it "speculative social science" or "interdisciplinary sociology" but the point still stands.) As he explains, "This [book] is simply not history. It utilizes the past but doesn't deal with it." (Burg, p. xli) After reading that, I set it aside, rather than confusing my supply of mental information that is history with someone's "not history."

Do they post here? I don't recognize their names.

Actually, Mission has little insight to this and just suffers along just like everyone else. Cap'n Bob's link above does lead to a nice (if entirely too large to remember unless you're going to be reading this stuff non-stop) list of rules for how they used it back when. However, I mostly think the strange letter and word usage in period texts are funny as you can see by my points for writing in fyne period style. The truth is (as the rules Cap'n Bob referenced) that it varies from text to text and period to period. The way the letters look varies from text to text and period to period. You haven't even begun to have fun with period fonts until you've tried to decipher the apothecary symbols. You can get an idea of how much these vary from this fine reference.

I'd sort of like to update this by putting references to all the 2009 'timeless' topics in here. I am not talking about roll calls, schedules, sign-ups and temporal-bound such-like; I'm talking about the generic material that will help newbies get a feel for what they need to do, have and bring. We can put the relevant 2010 topics at the top if you like, but I would actually lean towards leaving that out going forward as that stuff changes all the time. That's not what a good index thread does IMHO. The forum itself is facilitates the time-bound material as recent topics rise to the top. An index thread is to point people to good, tangible, timeless references that no longer appear on the first page. So...what do you guys think was the creme de la creme of the 2009 topics that should be incorporated here?

If you go to Google books, you'll find Hannah Glasse's recipe for Salmagundy from The Art of Cookery, which is much, much closer to period (1747). (The exercise is left to the reader.) I used it at Pirates in Paradise in 2008.

Glad you enjoyed it. But...how did you manage to read it this morning? I didn't tell anyone but Brig about it before I posted this. (Get Kelly to read it too.)

After a month and a half of alternating my nights between studying Spanish and working on this monster (that was going to be 6 pages long...then 7...then 8...) it is done! Thanks so much to the lovely Brig for looking editing it for me after I could look at it no more. If anyone know the names of people that I don't, please feel free to let me know so I can correct that. There were so many of them... Searle's Raid 2010 Surgeon's Journal Feel free to share it with others who aren't around here much.