Mission

Speaking of anachronistic words and phrases that PotC uses, I got to wondering about the phrase "every man jack". According to UsingEnglish.com, it is an idiom: "If every man jack was involved in something, it is an emphatic way of saying that absolutely everybody was involved." This must mean that "man jack" is a single person. Wiki eventually led me to phrase "last man Jack" which is from Cricket. This led me to just "Jack" which, according to the wiki entry for "jack (playing card)": "The term [last man jack] originates from a cricket pun. In the cricket batting order, the worst batsman is listed at number 11. The "last man" (to bat) can therefore be referred to using playing cards terminology; following numbers 8, 9 and 10 comes Jack." Of further interest: "[The knave] became Jack in 1864, when Samuel Hart, an English cardmaker, published a deck using J instead of Kn for the lowest court card. The Knave had been called a Jack as part of the terminology of All-Fours since the 1600s, but this was not common usage because the word was considered vulgar." Based on all this, the term wouldn't have been in use during the approximate period when PotC is supposed to take place. __ Of further interest and almost no relevance to the original topic: "[in France] each court card is said to represent a particular historical or mythological personage. The jacks in a French deck have traditionally assigned names as follows: * Jack of Spades: Ogier the Dane (legendary hero of the chansons de geste) * Jack of Hearts: La Hire (French warrior) * Jack of Diamonds: Hector (mythological hero of the Iliad) * Jack of Clubs: Lancelot" Hector the Jack! It's like Robert the Bruce!

Read some stuff that interests you and then add your reply to it when you have something interesting to say. There used to be this silly thing about buying virtual drinks for the crew when you first arrived, but we found out that we were serving virtual crewmembers that were underage so we had to stop doing that. Either that or the people behind it just got tired of doing it because it was goofy.

Do a google search for some of the topics we've been discussing lately and you'll find the Pub comes up pretty high in the rankings. I think it's because Stynky upgraded the forum software to a version that was more Google friendly. (We were using a pretty leaky ship until then. That's why we used to have so many spammers.)

I don't know if I'd go quite that far. Some of it is true - we have court records so we know she existed. Whether her back story is true or not is another matter, but without proof either way I don't think you can dismiss it out of hand.

Relying on portraits as your only proof could be very misleading. Mooseworth and I were just talking at Searle's this past weekend about how pictures would have mostly been showed people in their best clothing given the time and effort it took to create them. Not having as much interest in clothing as I do in medicine, I can't recall everything I've read about it, but I do know Wafer gives a description of himself going in for native dress in his book. So we can safely say it did happen. Come to think of it, I believe we also read that sailors traded their own clothing for trinkets and possibly clothing with the natives in...I believe it was Woodes Rogers' book? (I don't recall it verbatim, but that's the gist of what I remember.) They ended up having the sailmakers create warmer clothing for the sailors out of the sails because the sailors hadn't thought about how cold it would be rounding the cape. (Which I thought was funny - and that's why I remember it.)

It's not period correct - you failed to misspell anything. Very nice.

Buying was not their first choice for getting clothes. (Why spend money on fabric when you could spend it on alcohol and women?) Pirates were likely to steal the choicest clothes from the prizes they took and wear them willy nilly. I don't have the quotes handy, but it seems to me that one set of articles for a pirate or privateer gives the best suit of clothes to the man who first spotted a prize. It seems to me that it was in The Memoirs of Pére Labat 1693-1705 (translated and edited by John Eaden) where he describes how silly a group of pirates look strutting around an island in mismatched finery that they filched from the crew of a wrecked ship.

There's nothing earth-shatteringly new in it, but I thought the book The Sea Rover's Practice by Benerson Little had a pretty well organized listing of ships, weapons and tactics from period. (Once you get past the first few chapters, which I thought were a little bombastic.) It won't necessarily give you the dates of ship types in a concise, ordered fashion - which may not be useful anyhow in that ships were kept in service for as long as they could keep them going. Nor will it tell you the time from place to place. Although, to be quite honest, times seem to have varied widely based on prevailing winds, currents, storms and such so that you probably couldn't precisely pin such a thing down anyhow. On point, in the book I am reading just now, The Travels and Controversies of Friar Domingo Navarrete, 1618-1686, the good friar explains that "No Voyage upon Sea, even a short one, can be foretold and it is a folly to try to set days to it." (Navarrete, p. 103). However, Little's book will give you a nice round-up of specific and well-documented background information that will serve you well if you want accurate details of sailing and sea warfare from the Golden Age of Piracy.

The essence of my argument (which is apparently stubborn and rational) is that everything that is real to you is real to you in the moment that you believe it to be so. We each exist in our our own little worlds that are never fully shared with anyone else and we can build it in any manner we want and experience it that way. Ru is the sort of person who doesn't blog on a three month trip, she writes poems about it. (Which is really cool in a way, but poetry is not my favorite form of writing.) So Hobbes is real to Calvin (and the readers who get to live in his world), but not necessarily to anyone else.

Sunday - A bizarre day. I am writing this now because I have a moment and...well, I just feel like writing it. You'll have to wait for the webpage to see everything that preceded it. I actually woke up early - unlike yesterday when I didn't want to wake up at all - and got ready before Shay arrived. I saw the little green BMW Z3 coming up the road from the hotel window, but that couldn't prepare me for Shay, who appeared at the window shorty thereafter in nothing more (than I could see) than her white shirt and blue socks! I threatened to take a picture, but, alas, for you, dear reader, I didn't. So use your imagination. (Someone - I think it was Patrick Hand - said they saw here scurry out of camp thus clad quick as could be. Shay wandered into the bathroom to use the shower while I sat here and typed something or other about island fashions. She wanted to put the top down for the trip back, which was fine for me. I felt slightly like James Bond with my shades on, riding in the passenger seat the scant 1/4 mile or so to the Fountain of Youth park in the BMW convertible. (If only it were steel blue instead of dark green, we'd have a bingo.) The camp was the typical sad state of affairs for the last day of an event - people were packing their tents and gear and loading their cars. There's something anachronistically anachronistic about people bringing cars into a former period campsite - you know? Michael, Kate, Callenish and Salty were just finishing up the loading of the white van for the 14 hour ride home, Mooseworth and Kelly were packing up their box on wheels and Red Jessi was rolling up her sleeping bag in preparation for a 6 hour jaunt. I hugged all the women and shook hands with the men and was sad that all my pub friends were leaving as soon as I arrived. They hauled about breakfast, which looked as good as everything else that had been prepared this weekend. Of all the events that I have attended, this has to be the best food event I've seen yet. Alas, the veggie entre had bits of meat in it and, as yesterday attests, my stomach is just not up to the challenge, so I started getting ideas about going back to the hotel for scrambled eggs. (Note to all you reads who THINK you know what this means - you're wrong. But you'll have to wait for me to write the webpage to learn why. Too bad for you.) Shay generously offered me the keys to the BMW, so now I could REALLY play James Bond and drive the thing. So I took a little impromptu tour of St. Augustine, managing to find the worst parts of it with amazing rapidity. Fortunately, no BMWs were harmed in the making of this Surgeon's Journal. I tooled back to the hotel, feel very smug and suave as I pulled into the parking lot and proceeded to crack the little plastic cowl in the back of the car as I put up the convertible roof. Shay later told me that it was already cracked, but I think she was just trying to make me feel better. Nevertheless, I had scrambled eggs and cheese grits, which is something you just can't get Michigan without going to a lot of trouble. (The grits, not the scrambled eggs. We're not savages.) Then I put the top back down, so as to engage my James Bond image and drove the 1/4 mile back to the park. It was a very cool 1/4 mile. I spotted Sergeant Jeff's wife in the parking lot and begged her to take a photo of me at the wheel, "...looking like James Bond." So we'll have to see how that comes out. After that, I mostly sat around and watched people work on breaking down their camps. Your ship's surgeon can watch other people work all day long. It was warm and sunny and I eventually deposited myself in front of Shay's tent to chat with her and Patrick Hand. Shay invited me to lie in her bed rather than on the ground, which proved to be a good idea, I think. (The sun was hot and my head was in the shade and...well, mostly she just had a very comfy mattress.) Several inappropriate jokes which I'm sure I do not recall were made, the best of which was from either Doug or William who suggested that I write "Mission slept here." on the wall of Shay's tent. (This is actually a historical joke, but you are invited to read it however suits you despite the fact that I am almost certain you are wrong.) Within an hour or so, the camp was pretty much broken down (meaning I had to stop dozing in the warm bed) and Shay Patrick and I agreed that we should meet at the little period tavern in historic St. Augustine that served Woodchuck Cider that Shay had taken a liking to. Since the Z3 had every possible open molecule filled with Shay's gear, Patrick and I walked back to town with the agreement to meet her at the tavern, the name of which I hope to get before I write the web page. (You know how it is.) We arrived (I imagine) around 3:30, the agreed upon time, and had a drink. We finished that and...no Shay. I wondered aloud if we should try and find the Pirate House, the hostel where Shay (and eventually Patrick) was staying and, in typical Prince of Pirates fashion, Patrick said she would be along eventually and we might as well have another drink. So we did. She appeared sometime near the end of that round with a charming young blond girl in tow. This turned out to be Ru. (I later learned that they had done a bit of clothes shopping on the way over. Uh huh.) Ru, as it happens, was here from Sweden on a 3 month visa and was also staying at the Pirate Hotel in the community girl's bedroom with Shay. (It's only $20 a night, which is a bargain by anyone's standards.) She had arrived in New York last week or some such time, gone to...Virginia?...for a few days, gone to Atlanta to see the first street in America to allow African Americans to open businesses and then had come to St. Augustine. I think. Remember that I had had two Woodchuck Ciders by then. There may have been a day or two somewhere else along the way. Her future plans seemed rather nebulous to me, although they included "mostly the east coast," along with (apparently) New Orleans, Texas and Washington State. Oh, and California. Per usual, I found such adventurousness in a single girl most admirable so we all had another round. Or two. Maybe three. I forget. Finding the whole thing quite interesting, I asked Ru a bunch of questions. What made her decide to come here? Everyone asked her that. She thought America would be an interesting place. Did it match her expectations? She had had lots of "wild ideas" on the plane on the way over, but she had forgotten them all once she arrived here and just gotten lost in the moment. What did her parents say when she decided to do this? They had told her to be safe and have fun and occasionally texted or called her. Did she know about the character in Winnie-the-Pooh who shared her name? Her name was spelled different, but she said she was named after Roo and thought that the character was really cool because when he wanted to do something, like swim in the creek, he just did it. Well, her parents got THAT right! A girl named after Roo. How cool is THAT? During the third or fourth or whatevereth round, a pair of guys in period Spanish outfits arrived in the tavern with a guitar. They started playing standard Spanish tunes which Shay knew (naturally - being a piano player/singer at a club in Key Largo) so she joined them for a few songs. A couple came in and sat at the musicians table and were saranaded. Then a group of young girls arrived, whom the Spaniards made a successful pitch to and they all joined them. Shay and Ru confided to Patrick and I the secrets of attracting women which were (as far as I can remember them) that you should play a guitar and be sort of brooding and mysterious. It seems to me that there was another one, but I don't recall it. Looking at the Spaniards, I guessed she was right. Shay and I had a standing date to go to the French place I will eventually mention that Sergeant Jim had mentioned to us on the trolley and, after four or possibly five hard ciders, I invited Patrick and Ru to join us. In keeping with the spirit of things that had happened so far that you may eventually read about, I didn't recall exactly where the restaurant was. I knew what road it was on and the direction it was in, but that was about it. Shay had the solution, so we all trooped out of the bar of some unknown name and went to another bar several blocks away (and in the wrong direction) of some unknown name. Shay explained that the bartender here knew where everything was. (Who needs mapquest? We have Carlos the bartender.) Turns out Carlos wasn't there, but the other bartender (We'll just call him Phred) knew and gave Shay the directions. It turned out to be quite a hike, but we were all feeling no pain, so we trooped the mile or so to the alleged French restaurant. It turned out to be more sort of German and French, and maybe a little Indian restaurant. Ru assured me that it was in no way European in decor, but the food was very, very good and the service was great. Ru and I had crepes, Shay had seafood pasta (that was outstanding) and Patrick had chicken curry. Oh, and wine. We had a very good Shiraz. Ru wasn't going to have any until she found out it was a Shiraz. (Although I suspect this wasn't the real reason. You'll have to wait for that.) Following that we wandered back into town. I will probably explain all this on a previous page that hasn't been written yet, but the town is a charming maze of alleys and winding streets with a variety of little shops, restaurants and bars everywhere. Much effort has been made to keep it sort of historic. We were wandering around, looking for who knows what when I spotted a alleyway that appeared to have no redeeming features whatsoever. Naturally Shay chose this alley to go down. We ran into a group of ghosttourers which led to my spouting off about not believing in ghosts, which everyone else disagreed with to different degrees. If you know me, this led to more strident verbal opposition which I announced just as we were passing a second group of ghosttourers, to whom the group leader was explaining some ghostly happening in a low voice. This didn't bother me. Ok, I felt a little bad. Shay led us down some blind alleys and then eventually found a through street, at the end of which we found another charming little bar. So we went in there for more cider. (All except me - they had NewCastle on tap, and I can't resist that. I'm proud to say that Ru approved of my choice.) Ru and I discussed spirituality and philosophy for a quite a while, going from belief in ghosts to belief in God to belief in whether Hobbes is a real tiger or not. She decided I was too stubborn and rational, which are traits I am especially proud of. Then, out of the blue, she announced that she was only 20. For some reason I found this amazingly funny. (This is why she didn't want to have wine in the restaurant. But if you hang around with three people who are clearly not 20, I guess you get a pass.) After a round there, Shay said that Ru wanted to hear some live music, so we want back to that bar on the corner (which was not very far from where we were at) and asked again for directions. Who needs maps? Unfortunately, we apparently got wrong directions or got them mixed up and, after 20 minutes of walking on the charming streets, wound up back at the map bar. There we learned that we had missed the place we were looking for, although, being after 9pm on Sunday, the music was over anyhow. So we all went back to the hostel where we ran into the owner - who gave me a ride back to the hotel. So that's it. I just didn't want to forget all that. You'll get more with pictures when the web page is done in a few weeks or so. It was a really fun event with a street battle unlike any other I've seen before.

This is pure speculation on my part, but I think you could safely say that anything is possible. Most sailors and colonists would have probably stuck with a more traditional European style initially because people are people. As time went on, I would think you might see more homogenization of styles (on both sides) but some would no doubt have gone native right. Again, people are people and some personalities take to the local style right off. This is how tattooing often seems to be viewed since it appears to have been largely (but not entirely) borrowed from indigenous people. If someone is willing to ink their body because they thought it looked good, I would imagine many others might adopt a scarf or fabric from a local culture if it appealed to them. The practice of adopting parrots and monkeys as mascots also suggests a similar line of thought to me.(Still the concept of colonization and the structures they built suggest to me that many would be spending more of the time attempting to re-create their home culture rather than adopting the local culture.)

...and a parka and heated gloves and long red underwear like in the cartoons. Me, I'm staying in a hotel.

And now the time has come to say goodbye. Goodbye.

The article had to do with the effect of economics on the pirates. Ok, it's pretty thin, but I couldn't find a reference to this article in the likely forums, although I thought I remembered there being one. I found this instead and I think it's fun to drag up old threads for those who haven't been hanging around in Twill since 2003. It sometimes starts whole new discussions. (Plus I disagree with the intellectual tendency to mangle data so it fits a model just to prove the scholar's point. I didn't want to highlight the book by creating a whole topic devoted to it. Call me nefarious. )

I am finally getting around to read an article from the Oct. 2009 Scientific American sent to me by many friends - Pirate Economics?: Captain Hook Meets Adam Smith. It's about a book that sounds like it indulges in the rampant intellectual tendency to try and force a piece of popular history to fit the academic author's model. Still, I though this was interesting (in that, when rephrased, it fits my intellectual model ): "From where, then, did the myth of piratical lawlessness and anarchy arise? From the pirates themselves, who helped to perpetrate the myth to minimize losses and maximize profits. Consider the Jolly Roger flag that displayed the skull and crossbones. Leeson says it was a signal to merchant ships that they were about to be boarded by a marauding horde of heartless heathens; the nonviolent surrender of all booty was therefore perceived as preferable to fighting back. Of course, to maintain that reputation, pirates occasionally had to engage in violence, reports of which they provided to newspaper editors, who duly published them in gory and exaggerated detail. But as 18th-century English pirate Captain Sam Bellamy explained, “I scorn to do any one a Mischief, when it is not for my Advantage.” Leeson concludes, “By signaling pirates’ identity to potential targets, the Jolly Roger prevented bloody battle that would needlessly injure or kill not only pirates, but also innocent merchant seamen.” In sum, pirates believed in what we today call marketing. Where I would disagree is in dismissing this whole thing as a "myth". There was still a fair amount of lawlessness and anarchy from what I've read in various sources. I don't think it was as prevalent as many movies portray, but neither was it minimal or only for show. However, if this whole line of thought intrigues you, you will find the book title and author via that link.

Abraca-pocus!

Pressing people takes effort and money. I don't know about the rest of the crew, but I wish to expend neither in that direction.

Ah, theory. I'd like to see you reset your watch by 1.26 milliseconds. That's small enough to be dismissed as a measurement error. (NASA used to be cool back when they were focused on planning space flights but they have branched off in such weird directions that they seem like a government organization ripe for future budget saving measures to me...)

It's extraordinarily funny.

Try a blacksmith. There's usually one or two at the period trade fairs which seem to go on in the winter. Actually, I didn't look at the size - they're smaller than I thought, too. (Bigger than a toothpick, but not by much.)

That's neat - I didn't know Garangeot started with a three pronged version of his bullet extractor. I would think it would be devilishly difficult to use, though, what with the bullet being covered with blood and fluids and so forth. In fact, I'd imagine that's why he changed it to a screw instead as the article there suggests. (You can see a repro copy of the screw version which is available for a much more reasonable price over at Godwin's site here.) What I really like on that page is the early personal dental kit: I haven't seen much reference to them (especially from the 17th c. as the page suggests.) It's curious that the tools have no handles - they're just raw steel. That is not at all like most medical instruments from period which had wood, bone, ivory or other material handles. Of course, they are doubled ended, so that might be why, although it still raises a potential flag in my mind as to their dating. In any case, a personal dental kit probably wouldn't have been in the kit of a common sailor. These would more likely be used by the gentlefolk from what I've read. Then again, if it is period, since they are raw steel this might suggest they were oriented to the common man. The bone case could hint that they would be used for traveling - or at least be carried about for some reason. Like I said, I really like it.

It kind of looks like that anyhow. You know how there are some people who look impeccable, even in pirate garb? I am not one of those people. Not even close.

It's in the 30s at night. Two south Floridian words: Arctic. Tundra. Someone better bring her long underwear.