Brit.Privateer

I would pay money to see Mel Gibson in a pirate movie. It probably would not be an accurate movie, but if its anything like the awesomeness of the Patriot...

But anyway, I didn't even see the chainmail on that outfit. It would be interesting to know more about reasoning behind some of this costume selection from the people who made this film. At some points, I wonder if the costume coordinator simply ran out of outfits and didn't want to make more, so they borrowed whatever looked cool from their studio's collection.

The DVD will be available in July...in region 2 version (the sort that works in the UK) on Amazon.com UK version. For the U.S., still not known when it will be released on DVD in region 1.

I just saw this movie on the U.S. SyFy channel for the first time, and I liked it. It altered a few characters and the plot slightly, but I think the changes worked for this approach (for those who have not seen it, I will not go into detail). Eddie Izzard was good in his role. I definitely got the the perspective of John Silver struggling to get a bunch of rowdy pirates to do what he planed. With over three hours of time, the movie fleshed out the Treasure Island story, including showing how Silver and Blind Pew got their physical trademarks. The movie by far was really good at showing more and telling less. It was interesteding to see the most racially diverse group of actors in these roles I've ever seen. Also, this version by far has the largest roles ever seen for women in a Treasure Island film (except "Pirates of Treasure Island' but let us not count that one). A kind of refreshing to see this adaptation of the old story. It was different, but not different enough to be off putting (like the 1999 that ended with everyone but Ben Gun, Long John Silver, and Jim Hawkins dead). The only things I didn't like were some of the smaller roles have so-so actors (at least thats the only negative thing that comes to mind right now).

As for the clothing and weaponry, the weaponry was slightly above average in quality and the clothing was...strange. First, the weaponry looked like real weaponry. The blades were reasonable lenghts and widths and had decent styles of hilts (at least from what I could see watching it only once). For the firearms, there were some typical late 18th-century pistols in there. Also some of arms stuck out to me as being form Loyalist Arms right away. Some of the others looked really and I couldn't identify the manufacturers. For the clothing: It's hard to describe it. It is obvious that the movie was influenced by Pirates of the Caribbean in the sense that they mix in this clothing from around the world (especially from the Indian Ocean and South-East Asia) with Atlantic world style clothing. They use these cloths that, some of them appear to be a mix of cloths that look like they are of a old historical style, but it's hard to determine at times. Some clothing is so strange in shape that it's hard to identify what it is. There is a lot of raggedness and drab colors/sun bleached colors (with bright colors mixed in on occasion) and dirt. The resulting look is like a misleading accurate look. Of course, there are some items that are just weird and wrong, like the kit Israel Hands wore that looked like a bunch of leather pads tied together. It's just strange. Pirates of the Caribbean does this misleading accurate look too. At least we are getting farther and farther away from that clean bright look of those technicolor films of the 1950s.

That's all I can say about the film with only being able to watch it once and watching without some way to pause or rewind to get a second look at things.

For the Nathaniel Mist thing, the article you will want to read is:

Bialuschewski, Arne. “Daniel Defoe, Nathaniel Mist, and the General History of the Pyrates.” The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America. 98, no. 1, 2004: 21-38.

He explains how Mist was involved with the book's publication. The general conclusion appears to be that Mist was by far the person most responsible for getting this book published, if not the author himself. Evidence seems to point towards Mist very much. Also, to counter the ideas that it was Daniel Defoe, consider this. Mist is pretty responsible for publishing this book. In 1720, Mist and Defoe had a falling out relating to a libel case and Mist's newspaper (I won't go into details here). There is no indication that the two worked together after that. If Defoe had written General History, no evidence has come to light yet that the two reunited to work on the book's publication. To explain why Defoe has been considered at all, look to 1930s Defoe biographer John Robert Moore. He appears to be the first one to make the claim, and thanks to him Defoe's name is even listed as General History's author in the U.S. Library of Congress. Moore also claimed many other anonymous works had been written by Defoe. You would think that Defoe wrote practically everything written in Great Britain from 1700-1730 (unless it was written by Johnathan Swift) if you listened to Moore. In the late 1980s, P.N. Furbank and W.R. Owens published works that demonstrated that a lot of the works attributed to Defoe were not written by him afterall.

For the use of a pen name, a lot of authors did this during the early eighteenth century. For one thing, there were libel cases to consider. Also, "factual fiction" or writings based on facts but has fiction mixed in was controversial, and General History has plenty of factual fictions. It's part of the reason why the word "history" was added to titles to works at the time. It made the book seem more legitimate. People of the upper classes during the period seemed to be concerned about if they were reading the truth or not (or at least period writings about the subject expressed that idea). Even fiction about the lower class and their immoral activities was controversial, like the book Moll Flanders. To be reading such books or to be associated with such writing was not considered a classy thing to do (but that doesn't mean they didn't read such works of course...).

Want to know more about writing of the period, here is where I got my knowledge on the subject:

I think some clarification is needed on "editions" of the original Charles Johnson's History. There were four editions of the first volume and one of the second volume that were actually done by whoever Charles Johnson was (most likely Nathaniel Mist) from 1724 to 1728. Each of the new editions of the first volume had some form of editing or addition of information or new chapter. The second volume did not go beyond one edition. After 1728, any further editions through to today were either reprints, or combinations of the two volumes and/or remixes of previous vol.1 editions. Some publications of the 1720s and 1730s outright stole chapters from Johnson, including works on famous criminals, highwaymen and so on. If you want the best representation of the whole History, I suggest the edition edited by Schonhorn in 1972. It includes notes on when particular lines and chapters appeared in this work and historical notes on the information in the History. One notable change that comes to my mind between editions is the name of Blackbeard. In edition one, its Thatch, but in edition two its Teach. Also, if I remember correctly, the origins of Blackbeard change between editions.

Was looking through some old posts on another forum and I came upon this thread, and thought of this one instantly. Hope it helps with this conversation on the Peter the Great hat:

http://www.ukpiratebrotherhood.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=795.0

Here is some background on this documentary:

http://bonesdontlie.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/nelsons-skeleton-crew/

Specifically:

"Excavations over the past years of British Royal Navy cemeteries from the mid-18th to early 19th century have unearthed the remains of numerous sailors. Detailed examination has been conducted of 340 skeletons, including 120 skeletons from Greenwich, 50 from Gosport and 170 from Plymouth."

It seems that more and more studies are being done on the remains of these British sailors. For instance, here one one on the diet of sailors based on their remains:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120323093802.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29

This should take care of your needs:

http://www.muzzleloaderbuilderssupply.com/pistols/1720englishheavy.html

http://www.muzzleloaderbuilderssupply.com/pistols/englishgeorgian.html

Is that what you are looking for?

As I was reading through this thread, I find myself a little confused. I think that some definitions have to be established.

You all have mentioned sloops and ships primarily categories of vessels so far. But, both those terms are not very specific terms.

Sloops, while many people take it as meaning a vessel with a single mast at roughly amidships (as compared to a ketch that is a little bit aft of that point), during our time period a sloop can also mean a small vessel that has more than one mast. Thomas Riley Blanckley in his nautical dictionary A Naval Expositor in 1732 had the following definition for a sloop:

"Sloops - Are Sail'd & Masted as Mens fancys leads them sometimes with One Mast, with Two, and with Three, with Burmudoes, Shoulder of Mutton, Square Lug & Smack Sails, they are in Fugure either Square or Round Stern'd" So a sloop could be considered a ship, if one goes by the frequently used definition of a proper ship using three masts.

Ships, interchangably used as a term for sailing vessels as a whole and for specifically three-masted square-rigged vessels. While sloops were generally considered to be a smaller vessels, a ship with three masts can vary greatly in size.

So, maybe to clarify this discussion on the size and type of vessels commonly used, it may help to discuss things in terms of ship size (tonnage) and maybe armament and crew size as well.

If we talk in those terms more, things might be a little bit more orderly.

One thing to consider is that the typical merchant vessel transversing the Atlantic in the late 17th and early 18th century that the largest of the merchants ranged in the 150-200 ton range, but many more vessels came in around 50 tons or less (source: The Heyday of Sail: the Merchant Sailing Ship 1650-1830 pg 25). While the British East India Company often built vessels of around 500 tons and larger, their fleet could be numbered in a few dozen or so.

So my question is, what a common tonnage for these vessels and common crew size for these vessels. Those two things are more telling to me than "sloop" or "ship" or even number of guns (for some accounts blur the lines between guns in carriages on the deck and swivel guns).

So, correct me if I am wrong, a very common tonnage size and crew size for the GAOP was between 50 and 100 tons and a crew of between 40 and 100 (around 80 sounding like a good mean in that number set). And the interesting thing about those numbers is that in terms of tonnage per crew, that places pirate crews at about 2 or 3 times higher than merchant vessels at the time.

I think that David Cordingly has found only one entry of a pirate making someone walk the plank, and that comes from the post Napoleonic era of piracy. It would be interesting to find out though if the use of the plank has it's origin in the late 18th century slave trade. There is a grain of truth to most myths, maybe this is it.

I have searched the forums and nothing really came up that satisfied what I was looking for (it was difficult to think up good search terms for this as well that were specific enough). So here we go:

I am in search of good, historically correct pen and/or quill, ink, and container to keep it in. In particular, I am looking for these items in a form that a sailor who could write (like Esquimelin, Dampier, or any of the other sailors who wrote journals at sea during this time) would have during the GAOP era.

So far, all I have found is a source for period correct paper to write on: http://www.2makepaper.com/

Interesting. I do wonder how frequent black linen came about (or was it a really dark blue)? Also, how hard would it be to do a black dying on ship (and would they actually go out of their way to do it)?

Since we are on the topic of pirate flag materials, and since I have had the idea of making a period correct flag as well on the back burner for a while, I've got a related question.

If a crew was just getting started and wanted to make their own black flag, how available would black wool bunting be at sea? Would they actually go to all the trouble to dye wool bunting black (or something close)? Or what other material would they have used? I know about and can document black silk. I can also document using a dirty tarpaulin to fool an oponent into believing a prize vessel was a pirate vessel (I think that's in Johnson somewhere).

Can anyone else contribute to that?

However, that isn't what Brit Privateer seems to be looking for. He wants a bottle of equivalent to sample, I think. Where are all the alcohol experts that used to infest the forum?

That's pretty much what I'm looking for. Sample, and ability to refer anyone to the source if they wish to sample too.

Also, I'm not going to set up a still just to do this.

Bear in mind that rum was not traditionally made in the Islands. In the (simplified) "triangle trade", slaves went to the Caribbean to raise 'cane, molasses went to the Colonies to make rum, rum went to Africa to buy slaves. When the trade began to break down, rum began to be made in the Islands, cutting out the middleman. That said, some distillers in the Islands started earlier. Mount Gay Rum is the oldest still operating, having been in production since 1663.

Well, for rum not traditionally being made in the Caribbean during this time, that's not the case. According to the well researched book Caribbean Rum: A Social and Economic History by Frederick Smith, the islands began producing rum in the 1630s and 1640s, mostly for local consumtion in the Caribbean but a good amount still went abroad to the Chesapeake and New England. Also, ships coming into port frequently restocked their alcohol with local rum. Between 1699 and 1701 Barbadoes alone exported around 600,000 gallons of rum annually to the colonies, 19% of all Barbados exports. The strong majority of that rum went to New England and the Chesapeake.

As for how nasty this rum was, I would still be interested in seeing what that mainstream nasty stuff was like. Stuff like that gives you a good appreciation for modern technology in drink-making.

I actually know that one. Molasses is a byproduct of sugar manufacture. There are generally three grades of molasses: Barbados or light, left after the first extraction of sugar; dark, left after the second extraction of sugar and; blackstrap, a name not used in GAOP, simply because sugar was not generally refined to that level then. Sugar was expensive, molasses was much less so. After the first or second extraction the molasses was then barreled up and sold as the most widely used sweetener of that time. When a recipe of that period calls for molasses, it doesn't mean blackstrap but more likely Barbados. Lesser classes would have used dark. No one used blackstrap because it didn't exist in any quantity until after WW I, when refining techniques improved and crystal sugar became more popular than molasses as a sweetener.

That means we can eliminate Thomas Tew Rum then, since they use blackstrap molasses.

The search continues.

One question. Blackstrap Molasses, when did they start making that? The name itself comes from the early 20th century. Thomas Tew Rum uses Blackstrap.

I looked at the Barbadoes Rum people, and it seems like they have refined the stuff a lot. I suspect that isn't what I am looking for. I would be almost convinced by Smoke and Oakum, but their mixing in of gunpowder kind of deters me. Any other possibilities?

I've seen quite a few recipes for punches and such that involve rum, but I am curious about the rum itself.

In the greater selection of rums there are today, which modern gets closest to the kind of rum the common sailor and pirate would have had access to (both at a cheap tavern and on ship)? I understand that this common stuff might choke modern drinkers, but I'm okay with that. I want to get an idea of what these guys had to put up with.

Also, if you can, provide evidence for why it's closer to the original.

I have to say that we must remenber that there is differense between those pirates who plundered fishing vessels in boston and those like B. Robets or E. England who were more succesful, so weaponry like clothing or ship's size would tell how succesful pirates were...

Ah, you see, that's what I was talking about, it's all about context and circumstances.

As for swords in seaman's effects, not sure. I've yet to encounter one, plus I am not sure how it would go over with a merchant captain for the crew to be arming themselves. He did often keep the weapons intended for ship defense locked up, so I don't think he would take to a common crewmember bringing one onboard.

As for that History channel clip, they got quite a bit of that right (surprisingly) especially the first half. But, the firearms they had were all models after our time period, with the exception of the pistols that could be from as early as about 1720, but it's hard to say.

I would think most carried blades, pistols fired one shot, then were useless, even with a brace of them, you would still be defenseless in the melee that was boarding combat... though if they were hard to come by, they probably stole them when the got the chance... though pistols could also be used as clubs, and boarding axes were also in use.

Well, a ship boarding combat was not limited to swordplay or those with swords. A boarding action could get real nasty. You used anything you could get your hands on as a weapon. Traditional weapons are used of course, and then you get into boarding axes, boarding pikes, and then tools turned to mayhem. A handspike for instance makes an excellent club. Sometimes it would come down to wrestling your opponnent according to Bennerson Little in Sea Rovers Practice. While not perfect (it is a typical hollywood 'everyone board' situation), the final combat scene in the Master and Commander movie gets pretty close. One point really sticks out to me in there, a Frenchmen is strangling a british sailor with his arm, and yells for a fellow British sailor for help. His friend tosses him a pistol, leaving himself with no weapons, and then gets pistoled by a young Frenchmen hiding somewhere. While over the long term of a boarding a cutlass was the preferred weapon, a firearm (especially a pistol) would be preffered for killing someone, since its just a trigger pull away from doing away with your oppenent. Also, as you say, the pistol becomes a club, and so can the musket.

But, as I pointed out before, there are the factors of lack of skill among these guys using swords (uncommon to say the least that these guys would have training with a sword), the availability of swords (like I said in the last email, it's all about the circumstances to say how many swords would be around), and the fact that it's rare that the whole crew would board or need to board. Those typical pirate movie boarding actions where the whole crew swings over are and fights a large enemy crew are very rare. Sending a smaller well armed part of the crew was more common. Trying to send the whole crew could be inconvenient, and sending in part also meant that you could send in more men later if necessary. Like I said before, you're not going to need to send the whole crew when going after seven to a dozen merchant crewmembers. Heck, sometimes even outnumbered pirates can still subdue a merchant crew due to firepower and the element of surprise. Don't forget, pirates didn't like taking too far an unecessary risk, and if battle could be avoided to save time, powder, and potential death or injury in battle - they would.

Saying that a lot of pirates or many of the pirates would be armed with swords is too generalizing of a statement. I think a more accurate and inclusive statement would be that pirates would obtain arms whenever and wherever they could so they could be heavily armed and ready for any possible engagement and more easily intimidate their opponents into surrender. This would frequently include swords, but a firearm (in particular the musket) would more likely be a higher priority to have since it had more utility, would be found more frequently, and could kill from a distance.

Well, to start getting at this question, lets gets some context from the period (note, that I am mostly dealy with 1680-1740 here, especially the 1690-1728 part of it)

1677, the English Ordnance Departmant decrees issuing one sword or hanger for every five to six men. Compare that to the number of firearms issued to ships in the English Navy in 1684. First rates (100 guns) received 150 muskets and sixth rates of 24 guns or so received 30 muskets (this all roughly works out to a little above one musket per gun). Mind you, this musket count does not include the muskets issued to marines onboard. Pistols were issued 40 to a first rate and 6 for a sixth rate. These were guidelines generally held to through the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. While what was issued and what was actually onboard a ship could be different, these allowances do give us a point of reference as to amount of guns seen onboard a Navy ship. A sixth rate ship may have only been allowed six pistols according to regulations, but I could see a captain obtaining more than that, especially if the captain comissioned the arms from a gunsmith themselves instead of the ordnance department armoury. (sources for all this is Gilkerson's Boarders Away I and II) But how many more pistols would they have had?

If the navy thought that for this sixth rate that 6 pistols were okay, they had to have a reason for it. Maybe it was the fact that since large scale purchasing of military grade flintlock firearms by a central government had only begun in the 17th century (the big beginnings for this appear to be James II reign when he was assembling a new standing army, though there are other small instances of it occuring before that). Adapting and eager use of new military technologies didn't move as fast as it does today. Plus, we must also take into consideration that not every man was going to board, so you don't have to have close combat weapons for every single man (which the sword and pistol were). Also, I've seen it argued that the British preferred a strategy of hitting enemies from a distance rather than boarding, but I want to see that mindset verified for this time period through some kind of documentation before agreeing with that (it kind of goes off on that whole "Spanish Armada" thing). So, to answer the question of how many more pistols, I think a captain could double that number so could have 12. But still, 12 pistols on a small navy vessel. Same could go with swords onboard, maybe a captain would option to have more, closer to the one for every five men.

But back to how this applies to pirates. Where did pirates get their weaponry? From the merchants they robbed, from the ship they started on, and sometimes from the merchants that traded with them at places like New Providence, the mouth of the Sierra Leone river off of Africa, and St. Mary's on Madagascar. I can't account for the merchants because...it's illegal activity, they won't have many records in the first place. But, the merchants they were robbing, I don't think they would have many swords. Muskets are going to be common enough, because they can keep an enemy at a distance and can be used for hunting. If you're a French merchant, there was even requirements from the government that you carry a few for the purpose of depositing them in French colonies so they could be properly armed. I'm not sure that they would invest too much in close combat weapons. I could see them investing in a few. So, lets say the crew was about seven to a dozen men onboard ship (a common sight during this era). I wouldn't see it unreasonable to for a captain to invest in between four and eight swords.

Now, for the pirates themselves. Now, on quite a few occasions, pirates preffered to board by boats. The key thing here is that not the whole crew would be going on the ship. You only needed enough to combat the merchant crew. It's a concept that goes back to the Navy, not everyone is going to need a close-combat weapon. But also, having a good amount of weaponry was good for intimidating your opponent and good if one of your weapons breaks down in the middle of combat.

If I had to give percentages of the pirate crews with swords, since there are so many variables at play here, I would have to give a generic between 33% and 66% (and mind you, I don't even like those number, because, some crows might have less than 33%, such as the Worley story where it was 8 pirates all with muskets only, if that can be relied on). It all depends on how the crew got started, in what state it got started, how long the crew had been together, how successful they had been, how many men would they trust to bear arms (if there are slaves aboard being used only for manual labor for instance), and the personal preferences of the pirates themselves. Basically, the number of swords would be notably higher than merchants, and even navy ships possibly, but I don't think every pirate would have one.

Another consideration is the amount of rope (in the form of match) that a matchlock goes through. Figure a foot per hour (two feet if ou light both ends which was recomended) for any time that you might need to fire. Multiply that times the number of musketeers and you burn up a lot of rope. If you were on watch then you had to have your match burning the entire time or your gun was useless. In the military, battles were infrequent and you only needed enough match to last the battle. Garrisons in the outlands where active cobat was infrequent could also make their match last.

Matchlocks are a poor weapon for hunting. If you have the match cocked then you have to keep adjusting it constantly as it burns down. If it isn't cocked then you have a few seconds delay before you can fire. Also, the smell frightens the wildlife. Accordingly, colonists swapped out their matchlocks for flint pieces as soon as they could.

Different countries made the switch at different times. Because of match shortages, the Swedes changed to an ungainly type of snaphaunce in 1620. This has a cock in the form of a long "z" and a pan that has to be opened manually. Other countries changed later. The invention of the French Lock (what we think of as the modern flintlock) spend the process up quite a bit. I have counted pieces. My snaphaunce has twice as many pieces as most flintlocks. My Swedish Snaplock is comparable to a flintlock but, like I said, you have to open the pan manually. The lock is huge and most of the pieces are exposed to the weather.

A matchlock is less reliable in the rain. The same would be true for sea spray. Wet rope does not burn, even when soaked in saltpeter.

One final point - matchlocks can be a fire hazard. When they go off, the burning end of the match it sprayed out. I know of someone whose piece went off because of sparks from the person beside him. When I am firing a matchlock I make sure that my sleeve is thick enough that a spark will not burn through it. Even so, you can see dozens of tiny burns.

The matchlock is quite a interesting weapon in terms of it's place in firearms history. As MarkG points out, more dangerous than the flintlocks and pretty hard to use for hunting. But even with that consideration, what throws me are the European powers were throwing these to their colonies into the early parts of the 18th century. For instance, in 1705, the Governor of Virginia requested more firearms for their state armory since most of them went up in a fire. And what does the Ordnance department send them? Old matchlocks (which ticks of the colonists since by that point they were pretty used to flintlocks). (Ref: American Military Shoulder Arms, Vol 1) The worst offender was Spain by far. St. Augustine dealt with matchlocks for the longest times in their armory. It took forever for the number of firelocks of some sort to outnumber the matchlocks. In the 1680s, the wives of deceased soldiers in St. Augustine had to be stopped from continuing the tradition of taking the weapons of their passed on husbands and selling them to those on ships coming into port at St. Augustine, all because of how short weapons they were (and operational weapons). Even in 1698 when arms were sent to Pensacola, Florida, they sent 300 matchlocks to 100 flintlocks (and since the garisson of that town was too small for that many weapons at the time, there is the question of what purpose those guns were all for and if they actually got that many). (Ref: Firearms in Colonial America) It's no wonder the illegal trade of firearms from the Dutch and English to the Spanish was strong.

Btw Where weapons to ships come from? were they army surplus equipment?

There are two questions you could be asking here. I think I'll go with the one that was intended. The British Royal Navy did have weapons specifically made for use in the Navy. But, in a way, there was a "army surplus" aspect mixed in, at least for muskets anyway. By this time, or at least by the time Blackbeard was killed, the British preferred short muskets for ship use. This trend was being followed more or less by other maritime powers of the time. The French were the big exceptions with a preference for having a notable amount of fusil boucanier guns in their arsenals, though they had many shorter muskets as well (and this eventually overcame the long muskets completely by the middle of the century). While longer guns provided longer range and theoretical accuracy, it made it harder to stay in cover while reloading and is heavier when trying to transport it.

Since a lot of musket firing is individual firing against the enemy and not organized volleys like on land, the short musket had an advantage of being able to reload easier because of a short length, and was even easier to reload while staying behind cover. The lighter weight also made it easier for taking up into the tops or taking out into a boat for other duties. Also, the barrels made for the army that had imperfections at the front end of the barrel were recycled by giving them to the navy. Since the army needed more consistent barrel lengths, the barrels went to the navy and were cut town beyond the imperfection. That is not to say that there were barrels that were meant for the navy, or that there weren't infantry musket length barrels in the navy, but the general trend was short muskets with barrels in the lower 30s-inch range.

Does that start to answer your question, or want something more specific, or in a different direction?