Brit.Privateer
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Posts posted by Brit.Privateer
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Merchant captains did offer clothing for sale to their sailors. It was another debt to add against them over the course of a voyage. A quote from Peter Earle's Sailors: English Merchant Seamen 1650-1775, pg 91-92:
"Foodstuffs, especially cheese and bacon, were also sold to sailors and debited against their wages by captains and pursers, as were many other things such as bedding, clothes, tobacco and drink...Some sailors were almost completely outfitted from the ship's stores, such as William Cotter of the snow Lawson who in six months bought a quilt, a wig and twenty items of clothing for a total of £7."
Also, you're not too active at all, in fact I enjoy seeing questions asked and information spread. :)
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Matchlocks were used during the GAOP. It was this time period that the flintlock finally overtook the matchlock, though you would still find them. For instance, in 1707, the British made a large purchase of matchlocks from the Dutch. But, that was due to arms shortages from the War of Spanish Succession. While matchlocks were used in this war, this war was by far the war that put a end to the use of matchlocks in major wars.
The Spanish colonials had plenty of matchlocks. St. Augustine's Castillo de San Marcos struggled to keep what few flintlocks they could get, but for the longest time they had more matchlocks than flintlocks (the Spanish colonists were the farthest behind in the 'arms race' so to speak in the New World).
During the 1680s and 1690s, the Dutch even sold a transition piece between the Matchlock and flintlock. The gun had both the ability to fire as a flintlock and had a matchlock arm as well, on the same lockplate. Strange thing is, while the Dutch army never had these guns made for themselves, the Dutch did sell them to other countries like the Danish.
For sea service, the GAOP would have witnessed its share of matchlocks, but based on surviving evidence and surviving originals, it seems the maritimers had a pretty big preference for flintlocks, even more than land (at least that is what William Gilkerson concluded in Boarders Away II).
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Do we know where this drawing came from? If it is attached to a particular book or story, maybe the artist drew this in 1700 but was trying to portray someone from a earlier time period. I've found that situation in several books from the early eighteenth century - the illustration may be from the period I was looking at, but it's not portraying people of the period I want. One very common one I've seen are books depicted the first encounters and conquests of the New World, they seemed to be pretty popular around the GAOP era for some reason. Unfortunately, when you are trying to do sailor clothing research for the GAOP era, that doesn't help you really.
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Oh, for buckles, go to Loyalist Arms, if you ask them they will sell you buckles (I want to say it was $15 a pair, but don't quote me). As I see it, they are the best available on the market right now.
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Saw this on Cracked.com today. Really Interesting. Enjoy:
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i'll throw my name in
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I just got this on Friday, and I have to say I am very happy with it. I had some kind of cheap version on DVD before with quality equal to youtube before this. Now this DVD actually allows me to see much more detail than before. New things I hadn't notice before came up, like Billy bones having a knuckle guard in place of the trigger guard and that Heston had gone all out and stained his teeth to look more accurate.
It was cool to listen to the commentary and find out a little more about the film, such as the costume aims. The director says that they tried to be historically accurate as possible. At the same time, he also says he allowed for the occasional flare in costuming for the sake of adding to a character, like the hats for example. The other thing is that he admits to heavily borrowing from the N.C. Wyeth illustrations of Treasure Island for costume and various shots in the film. Also, he sets the film in the 1740s-1750s, because you can argue that the book was set to that time period. With all those factors combined, Treasure Island costuming still manages to be decent half the time, or at least as decent in historical accuracy as something from Hollywood can be. There is always much room for improvement, but it has made it farther than many of the films before it.
In the commentary, the director makes a interesting comment on shooting at sea. This movie uses the HMS Bounty reproduction for their vessel. In talking about that, he mentions how many directors advise that going to sea for shooting is a bad idea. Heston on the other hand says that with enough effort and organizing (and listening to the expert sailors on board) that it can be done well enough. Based on the film, I would have to say he figured out how to do it right.
This film also has some of my favorite fight scenes for pirate films. The fight in the Benbow Inn is great because not only do you see a fight where there isn't fancy swordplay (but actual trying to hack the bejesus out of your opponent), but there is a mid-battle misfire of a pistol, which are not seen enough in films.
It is amazing how this was a TV-film, for I've seen released in theater movies not as good as this. This is also the best version of Treasure Island that I know of for both entertainment and being close to the novel. But, the 1950 Disney version for me will always be a close second.
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FYI the newspaper has been re-posted:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/260863772894?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
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Where did you find this image, and from what part of the seventeenth century is that from?
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For those who are wondering what exactly is in this newspaper, here is a quick summary of the content:
-International news, in particular events in Europe
-local news in Jamaica
-common prices for trade goods in Jamaica
-advertisements of all kinds, from runaways to watch sales to renting property
and more.
If you have any more questions, please feel free to PM me.
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How many pages in the paper?
This product is only four pages total, one front, two inside, and one back. Most papers produced during this time were only 2 or 4 pages (there were some that had more, but they were produced back in England).
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This is a reproduction of the newspaper the Jamaican Weekly Courant, a newspaper available in Jamaica during the Golden Age of Piracy. It was only one of two English newspapers in production in the western hemisphere at the time. It comes from August 5, 1718
It's $10 for this paper, plus shipping. There are 20 of this newspaper available. Get them while supplies last!
The link:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/260863772894?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
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Hey guys and girls while some of thecomplaints about the public have some merit don't give up just yet. At the pirate festin St. louis I set up a display of celestial navigation and weapons for the public. It is not a small controlled event and not billed as a historic only event. I have had people young and old come back and pay another entry fee to bring their friends back to listen to my talk and ask questions. While some of these people are as you say walk and view many are spending as much as half an hour asking questions and listening to the answers. After thirty one years doing living history I have seen a lot. But please do not count the youth of today out yet. I have seen them transfixed and learning about everything from a mariners astrolabe to a chip log, and a traverse boaRD TO A STAR CLOCK. i HAVE FOR THE PAST TWO WEEKENDS HAD A HUGE CROWD AROUND MY DISPLAY AND IF THE FEEDBACK FROM EVERYONE IS RIGHT MY DISPLAy has been talked about by more people tha the belly dancers and the other acts. We all have bad times with people but don't give up on them yet. Beeee encouraged and they will too
Well, it's good to hear that someone found a place and public that allows for education. What I said about small events being the best for teaching, it's not always the case. It's just a matter of setting up the right circumstances, and sometimes it can be pulled off at a larger event. Course, a large event for me means something where there a thousand or more reenactors involved (something rarely seen in the pirate reenacting community), and I don't know how large the St. Louis pirate festival event is. Sometimes finding that right combination of event and receptive crowd is stumbled upon by accident, I've found that once or twice.
The best thing though to improve the odds of getting a receptive audience though is knowing how to talk to people and a crowd. An audience will respond to good public speakers more often than not.
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I'm not sure about those corers being fids, but that site is a really good link. He at least makes a few items that I may be interested in.
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thanks Captain Bo for that. That will probably work for the grease horn, but now I need a horn that isn't hollow for the fid.
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I have been looking and looking, and cannot find a good reliable supplier of horn for a couple of projects.
The one project is making a tallow/grease horn for my sailmaking needles
The other is making a fid out of horn (check out Des Pawson's monograph on the subject for more info, in particular look at the 1691 illustration within that work).
So, does anyone have possible suppliers for this?
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They look real interesting. Do you have any front shots or side shots of the shoe? How wide are the latchets? I have been interested in the Reconstructing History shoes myself, but haven't seen any close up pics of them yet. Also, would be interested in seeing where you can get period correct buckles. Seems that its hard to find them these days.
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I was wondering, what would you all recommend for a GAOP period correct sharpening stone or whetstone? Does anyone supply such a thing?
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Honestly, I don't know the answer to that question. I'm not sure any pirate tactics and weapons could match that description.
From my understanding of pirate tactics, it wasn't really about stealth at all for pirates, it was about surprise and demonstration of overwhelming strength. Look at the targets pirates often attacked. Merchantmen, and usually not navy ships. The pirate is a robber when you get down to it, and robbers prefer weak targets that they know they can intimidate. And if things get bad, the robber relies on the sheer power of those intimidating weapons he has to blow his way out to victory or escape. These tactics resulted in many victories for pirates. This style of tactics presented a way a victory that required minimal combat skill. If one compares pirates tactics to any other group of people that we identify today as "organized crime," you will often see similar tactics.
As for throwing boarding pikes like spears of javelins, haven't seen that. The ship environment once again would be too restricting for such a thing like with the knife. Also, period descriptions of the little training given to sailors mention using pikes in such a way. Usually what little training that was given on the pike involved keeping your enemy within the point of the pike.
Stealth and range, can't speak for it. But stealth up close can be done. Plenty of sharp things in a period weapon chest to comply with that. Just make sure to sneak up behind your enemy and put a hand over their mouth to muffle the screams.
That last sentence wasn't a creepy way to end a message at all, was it?
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Speakin' from my experience as a frontier fighter during the French & Indian War, and my experience on the Frontier of Virginia afore I took ta Privateering for the American War effort in 1778....Why the Hell would ya want ta throw away a perfectly good weapon. As stated earlier, it's a functional up-close and inside weapon. Samething with hatchets and boarding axes....It makes more sense ta throw your pistol after you've shot it and closed for battle, but then again pistols make excellent clubs in the hand of a master. Just my two schillings worth...I'm comin' back with all my weapons and maybe more, or I'm goin' ta Hell with em.....
On the point of throwing pistols. We can actually document sailors throwing their pistols during combat. Part of the chapter on Pistols in Wilkerson's Boarders Away talks about this. Its one of many contributing reasons why sea service pistols don't survive through to today. In combat, pistols were used very roughly, including through throwing. Can you imagine what kind of condition a pistol would be in before they decommissioned it?
It seems as though Hollywood has this thing about the ability of swords and knives. One other movie I can think of with throwing knives during sea combat is "Damn the Defiant." Other things Hollywood does is cut ropes quickly with a cutlass. I don't know too many cutlasses that can cut through a good diameter rope in one swing. In addition to one swing cutlass cuts, there are also pistol and musket shots that part ropes. The worst offender in that line is Pirates of the Caribbean 3, At Worlds End, when Norrington shot through several cables used to tow a ship in one pistol shot. If a cable was meant to tow a ship, I would hope it would be sturdy enough to withstand a single pistol shot, even at close range. I would hope that it would take a ton of cuts from an axe to take down such a set of cables. Even shooting a small diameter rope with a gun is extremely difficult to do.
Like I said in my first post, if you can find the period evidence, then by all means go ahead and do what you please. But I'm not the sort that likes the really stretched "it could have happened" stories.
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Okay, I'll take a stab at this (pun intended).
All I can provide you really is the perspective of if you were going to try this in maritime world of the seventeenth and eighteenth century. For a sailor, first it would all depend on the kind of knife a sailor had. While there was a variety of sailors knives, the majority of styles wouldn't work for throwing. Sheath knives frequently didn't even have a point based on surviving examples. Many of the styles of folding knives you wouldn't allow for good use as a throwing knife. Honestly, I suspect that if you were going to throw a knife, you would have a knife designed for throwing. As for what would a throwing knife look like in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, I have no clue.
Then one has to consider the environment of a ship. It rolls, its compact, and has many things like ropes all over the place. It would make it really difficult to throw one on a ship unless the thrower had been trained or trained themselves to compensate for all that (which is very hard).
So if anyone is interested in trying to incorporate throwing knives into their reenacting persona, I recommend doing a lot of research into throwing knives of the era and to be very careful, especially if you plan to use fake knives in battle recreations. (I wouldn't recommend the battles though. You never know how ticked off someone might get if they get hit in the head with a rubber knife without knowing ahead of time.)
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I have had a good deal of 16th - 18th Century drinking vessel research. THis topic motivated me to do something with it. Here you go! Have fun!
That is A LOT of pictures for period drinking vessels. And you give a little bit of everything, wood, glass, pewter, and so on. Plus, those pictures will be useful for more than just mugs. Thank you for that Ivan.
Meanwhile, I somehow found a thread I missed before on sellers of various cooking and eating implements:
Didn't net me much new stuff for sources though for what I was really looking for, but turned up interesting stuff none the less. For instance, these sellers of mostly copper items on the bottom have some interesting iron flagon and a iron tankard from the mid 18th century (see the bottom of the page, "from our collection"): http://www.goosebay-workshops.com/CUPS-CANTEENS
And, for those interested in pewter tankards, flagons, and such; there is this: http://www.pewtertankardsflagons.com/index.php?p=1_7_British
well, onward with my search.
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Digging deeper into my private collections, I did find a couple of pictures that might help. For one, the Mary Rose style tankard appears to have gone well into the eighteenth century, if we are to believe the accuracy of a picture "The Sailors Parting" by C. Mosely in 1743. I would post it, but having troubles with that right now. The picture is questionable because the picture shows a sailor and a lady on a unbelievably large gun duck (there is at least two feet of head room for someone standing) and a gun port that is less of a port and more of a very large window.
The other picture can be seen on Foxe's website here: http://pic100.picturetrail.com/VOL762/3253847/6655055/85754627.jpg Not sure if the sailors owned the cups though. Hard to tell based on these pics.
Also, been looking through the Port Royal findings that Texas A&M did in the 90s, and it seems like there were many more pewter mugs than I thought, and many stoneware ones as well. These studies also helped me clarify some terminology. A cup seems to be more defined as something holding around a pint or two of liquid. Mug or tankard is a tall drinking vessel, and is what I am more interested in documenting. And then there are flagons, which is more for pouring liquid into smaller vessels.
Any other contributions are still appreciated.
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Well, I did find one thing that was kind of interesting. Horn Cups:
http://www.cottoneauctions.com/oldsite/old/images/TomWnuck/cups.jpg
they are from an Estate sale that have a lot of eighteenth century items. This lot is described as 1 horn cup with silver mount, and six horn cups.
The search continues.
Montero caps
in Captain Twill
Posted
I do believe that is a reference to the Duplessis watercolors from a French expedition to the Pacific Ocean from 1698-1701. Fox has an image of it on his site: http://pic100.picturetrail.com/VOL762/3253847/6655055/86051167.jpg
Also, there is a hat on the illustration of the Spanish sailor equipment from 1725 that kind of has this look as well, but is only referred to as a bonete: http://www.piratebrethren.com/spanishsailornotes.gif
Also, in the Will of John Hutchinson from 1684, it mentions a mounteer cap, which is a variant name on the montero cap according the Oxford English Dictionary. Fo rthe will, see pg 58 of Peter Earle's Sailors: English Merchant Seamen 1650-1775.
So, maybe the 1698 Joseph Haycock slop shop inventory is referring to the mounteer cap. But, there are only 2 of them in that shop with so many others. There is no doubt that these caps were worn in the Atlantic World by at least some sailors, but to say it was common is hard to say.