John Maddox Roberts

Pegleg, Who is the manufacturer, and is the frame steel or brass? I might be interested.

Of course, he might have fought Maynard with his "working" sword, while this was his "go to meetin'" sword.

Robert Newton as Long John Silver, when Captain Smollet finishes the service for a burial at sea: "Armen."

Broad-tipped, spatulate knives are frequently seen in medieval banqueting and private dining scnes, but they seem to have been mainly used for serving - the servant would carve meat with the knife, then scoop up the pieces with the tip and transfer them to the diner's trencher. Frying pans with folding handles are found on Roman sites and reproductions are used by legionary reenactors, so they are penty old enough to be GAOP period correct.

It's always good to read something like this when you get to feeling sorry for yourself and think you've had it rough. A boy so young in this day and age who went through anything one-tenth as horrible and terrifying would be in for a lifetime of therapy for PTSD. In the early 19th century, he'd merely experienced some of life's hard knocks.

People's perceptions of these historical locales are shaped more than anything else by what they see in film and on television. With the pirate ports as with the Old West gold camps, we always see far more women than were actually there. This is so that women viewers will not be turned away. In fact, women of any sort were a rarity, and "respectable" women practically nonexistent. Women arrived with settlement and the establishment of law and order. In the pirate hangouts usually once the governor had settled things down he brought his wife over, soon followed by the wives of other officials, then whole shiploads of women to be wives for the settlers. In the West first law had to be established, then the railroad arrived, then women came out to marry the homesteaders. Previous generations were not shy about mentioning the "civilizing influence of women," i.e. men just behave better when women are around. Anything goes in their absence.

Certain things seem to hold true throughout the breadth of history and geography. Among these is the nature of places of entertainment, and behavior therein, in places where law is nonexisant and the population is predomonantly young and male. Under such conditions disorder prevails, to say the very least. Activities in the taverns of Port Royal and other pirate-infested harbors probably differed little from that to be seen in the saloons of Deadwood or any Gold Rush camp. Only the costumes and weaponry varied.

I see nobody has mentioned one of my favorites, "Damn the Defiant." (1962) For those unfamiliar with it, Alec Guiness is a Royal Navy captain during the Napoleonic wars who gets a psycho officer (Dirk Bogarde at his slimiest)who delights in subverting his commanders and getting them beached. Why can't they control a subordinate? This man has powerful friends at court and in Parliament, an unpleasant fact of life in the RN of those days. This movie features a deck fight of surpassing savagery for the time it was made. (British title: "HMS Defiant.")

I just read "Pirate Latitudes," and I'm certain that this was the first draft of a novel. Not only that, but I am sure that it was to be followed by a story taking place in modern times. Remember the pirate co-captain who took half the loot and disappeared and the medallion thought to have a treasure map had simply "a series of small triangles"? somebody in modern times would have found that medallion and interpreted it. Remember the chest of "silver" that turned out to be platinum, "a worthless metal"? It would be worth a stupendous fortune now. (Reason: right up until the late 19th century platinum was used as a cheap substitute for silver. Then along came electricity and platinum is the best electrical conductor in the world. Now almost all of it goes into the electric and electronic industries and the little left over for jewelry is fantastically expensive.)Too bad Chrichton didn't live long enough to finish this project.

And just consider, before personal computers most people would have had no idea what "font" means in this context.

Sword terminology for all of history is a tremendous headache. Earlier periods were just not as anal as we are concerning terminology and separating things into discrete categories. The Royal Navy in Napoleonic times was likely to call a cutlass a "broadsword." Even now, just search your dictionary for a definition of "sword." Usually it will say a "long-bladed dagger," while it defines a dagger as a "short-bladed sword." The presence or absence of a guard or knucklebow is irrelevant. The Cossack/Caucasus shasqa has a long blade and no trace of a guard, as do many other Asian designs. In the Carabbean to this day the weapon/tool we call a "machete" (Latin American term) is called a "cutlass." As far as I am concerned, a cutlass is a shortish sword of whatever design suitable for close combat on a ship's deck.

I'm glad you liked it, and I've been working on an epic pirate book for some time. The Nossov book is quite good, by the way. JMR

I recently read a gruesome but very likely true study concluding that the weapon that has been used in the greatest number of homicides worldwide in the last couple of decades is not the AK47 or the M16 or any other firearm - it is the machete. Think Rwanda. Since the slaughter happens in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Latin America and other places that, let's face it, don't have oil, it has dropped under the radar of the international media. To put it another way, we're actually living in the golden age of the cutlass.

The stiletto was very popular in Italy and Sicily for assassinations from the Renaissance clear up through the 19th century. Men often wore light mail shirts beneath their civilian clothes and a stiletto would go through one if the assassin was dextrous. The idea was to approach your mark in a crowd, thrust the stiletto into his body somewhere and just keep walking, leaving the stiletto in him. The motion was so quick and subtle that people wouldn't notice, often not even the victim until it was too late.In the days before antibiotic drugs, he would usually die within a few days from infection even if no vital organ was pierced. Incidentally, Museum Replicas still sells an all-steel stiletto.

Try www.ravenswoodleather.com They have a whole line of baldrics for various types of swords.

The kiltie is definitely not good shipboard wear. Remember, when you're up in the rigging, people are looking up at you from below.

The best way to clean a blade is to stick it in a Spaniard, or several if they're running in groups. But make sure to lick all the blood off before putting it away, because blood is corrosive.

The period name for the rectal syringe was "clyster." In 17th-18th century comedy, the physician was always equipped with an enormous clyster. Vanessa Redgrave got one used on her in the 70s movie "The Devils," based on Aldous Huxley's "The Devils of Loudon." It was in turn based on a true story about a convent in 17th century France where all the nuns came down with a bad case of demonic possession. A clyster loaded with God knows what was one of the instruments used to drive the devils out. The one employed on Redgrave was the size of a bicycle pump. It's a movie that makes you glad you didn't live during the reign of Louis XIII.

Does slavery still exist in North America and the Caribbean?

You know what's most impressive? That you can work a knife that size on such a teensy little anvil.

Samuel Pepys mentions in his diary discovering that he had head lice, as if it wasn't something he was used to. Of course, a prosperous man like Pepys could afford to bathe frequently, have his clothing laundered (which involved boiling in those days) and could avoid physical contact with his social inferiors, as was expected. Even so, he had his hair cut off and made into a wig to prevent a recurrence. For sailors the problem would have been much worse, confined in crowded quarters under terribly unhygenic conditions.

Walter Matthau had a cutlass with a Scottish-style basket in the movie "Pirates." I'm thinking of cobbling one together with a Cold Steel Scottish basket and an old MRL cutlass blade I have. Should look stylish.

Yeah, well you know that Salem crowd, buncha high-living libertines.

Actually, it's just a variant of the slouch hat popular in Europe and the Americas from the 17th to the 19th centuries. It had a low, round to high, "steeple" crown and could be any color. Puritans favored subdued, dark colors (though not necessarily black, which they associated with the Catholic clergy) and without the feathers, ribbons and other foofaraw popular with the Cavaliers. Very cool-looking once the originally stiff brim has acquired the characteristic "slouch" through long wear.

Peyote is native to the New World and known to its natives, but as far as I know it grows only in northern Mexico and the American Southwest. The psilocybin mushroom grows here, too.