John Maddox Roberts

I forgot about the mallet. Does anyone know when the patched ball first came into use?

It's the Dixie Early american Jaeger, manufactured by Pedersoli.

Dixie Gun Works has a sale on its Jaeger rifle. It's the ancestor of the Pennsylvania/Kentucky rifle, and copy states that it's late 17th - early 18th century, putting it squarely in the GaoP. Would this be appropriate for a pirate persona? There were plenty of American colonists in the trade, and I think it would be cool to have a rifle where we usually see only muskets. Any thoughts?

Before the advent of lime juice, scurvy, a vitamin C deficiency disease, was a perpetual problem for sailors on long voyages. Among its effects was swelling and softening of the gums, causing teeth to loosen and fall out, so pirates like other sailors may have been more prone than the general populace to missing teeth.

I live in New Mexico. Just a couple of hours ago in Albuquerque I drove behind a car with a licence plate that said YARRR. Anyone here driving that car?

The MRL "Scottish Cutlass" is similar to the "Sinclair Saber" they offered some years back. There are numerous examples of the Sinclair saber in museums, distinguished by their basket hilts with quillons and their wide, curved blades. Apparently they were carried as infantry hangers, but there's no reason they couldn't have been used at sea.

I've been a professional novelist for 30 years.

Not a tricorne, but 18th c. Spanish colonials in Mexico had the custom of wearing a black silk scarf under their poblano hats. That's the flat-crowned, brimmed hat we associate with Zorro.

Personally, I think Morgan sacked Panama because he'd heard that there were weapons of mass destruction there. That yellowcake gunpowder couldn't be allowed in Spanish hands.

Mates: Do the loyalist Arms pistols come with the touchholes drilled? I was under the impression that since they are shipped from Canada thay have to come unvented.

The MacNiells of Barra where an entire clan of pirates.

Museum Replicas Ltd. ( www.museumreplicas.com) have added two new cutlasses to their lineup of pirate goods. The one called the "Scottish Cutlass" is especially handsome, with a basket-and-quillons hilt. It looks like a simplified version of the Sinclair Saber they offered a few years back. Give 'em a look. Prime plunder!

A circular cannonball rack that went around a mast was called a "monkey." The balls sat right at their midpoints to make them more secure, so the hole in the monkey was only a millimeter or two smaller than the circumference of the cannonball. In cold weather iron shrinks faster than brass, so that if the monkey is brass, in Arctic weather the cannonballs can shrink enough to fall through and roll around on deck. When that happens it's COLD ENOUGH TO FREEZE THE BALLS OFF A BRASS MONKEY.

Powder was usually carried in a compact with a mirror and a puff. Balls went into a codpiece. Oh, wait a minute, you meant the other kind. Never mInd. I know there's no evidence, but isn't it possible that powder was carried in small, thick glass bottles? It would keep the powder dry and a leather or cloth cover would protect it from breaking. A tiny laudanum bottle would be perfect for priming powder. Just a suggestion.

Then as now there were probably also "classic" designs that changed little or at all over decades and even centuries. In our own time we still wear: Levi's (1850s), the trench coat (WWI), the black leather motorcycle jacket (1940s), Ray-Ban aviator glasses (WWII) all those cool aviator jackets (WWII-Korean War) and others. As to those bucket boots...they were horseman's attire, rather impractical for seafaring though very swashbuckling. They lasted a long time, too. Cromwell wore them, and there is a photograph of Robert E. Lee wearing a pair. For riding they were pulled up to almost crotch-length.

Don't know about sheaths, but he gives his email and you could ask. I intend to. By the way, Cap'n, I've been away for a while, busy plundering in other waters. Hope Katrina wasn't too rough on you.

Even Catholicism had its own version of Calvinism/Puritanism. It's called Jansenism. Jansen was one of those Counter-Reformation figures who set out to prove that the Catholics could be more protestant than the protestants. He promulgated a guilt-based faith that came perilously close to predestination and involved most of the usual Calvinist practices. He was eventually condemned as a heretic and burned at the stake. Jansenism was suppressed and lives on in only one place. Yep, you guessed it: Ireland. The Irish church is principally Jansenist to this day and in America in the 20th century the Catholic church meant mainly the Irish church. If you went to Catholic school in the 50s and 60s like I did, you recognize the tenets of Puritanism as pretty much what the nuns were teaching you back then. No wonder the Irish like to cut loose from time to time.

Take a look at this site: www.whirlwindtraders.com/chrisknifepage.html This guy makes really authentic 18th cent. knives at extremely reasonable prices. I plan to order the Spanish belduque, a real beauty and good for any time between the 16th-19th centuries. It's a variant of what Peterson in Daggers and Fighting Knives of the World" called a "Mediterranean dirk." But he makes many plain utility knives as well, and most of them are good for the GAOP.

Most of us have transferred our puritan attitudes to health and diet fanaticism. We even use the language of sin and redemption. We talk of food being "sinfully delicious" or "decadent." If we scarf a cheeseburger we repent and say "I was bad." Cholesterol is our modern equivalent of sin. It clogs the arteries instead of the soul. To answer an earlier query, the puritans were not teetotalers. The Pilgrims stopped in Massachusetts instead of their intended Virginia primarily because they'd run out of beer. They abhorred drunkenness, but were enthusiastic consumers of ale and wine. Cotton Mather was fascinated by pirates and often interviewed them in prison, which must have constituted cruel and unusual punishment. And plenty of Puritan businessmen got rich middle-manning pirate plunder. Religious morals were no less elastic then than now.

Vessels often took livestock along for fresh provisions, so presumably pirates would, too. Pigs, sheep, chickens, ducks, even cattle. Of course, you might have to put a guard on those sheep.

I have a Royal Navy boarding pike, probably 19th century. It's about 8" long, with its socket and langets beautifully inletted into the wood. Same with the butt cap, which has a bit of the wood protruding through it to fit into a socket, and to avoid marring the deck during drills. It's amazing the quality of workmanship that went into even these cheap weapons back in those days. It is part of a lot that was sold off when the Tower of London was clearing out a lot of rooms back in the late 60s or early 70s. Pikes were used when boarding, when the pikemen were detailed to clear a space on the enemy rail so that boarders could get through. I've seen pics somewhere of pikes carried aboard a longboat heading out for a cutting-out expedition.

Hey, just found a picture of the bull's pizzle on that ecstagony site. Look it up under "pizzle" or "verajo" (Spanish name). You never know what you'll find around here.

Mediterranean galleys employed rowers who were encouraged with whips. Unlike the movies, these were not bullwhips which would cut the rower's backs and impair their efficiency, but the "nerf de boeuf," to use the French term - or "bull's pizzle" to use the English. It was a dried bull's penis, about two feet long and looking like a rather twisted walking cane. Slightly flexible, it was the rubber truncheon of its day. A skilled man could knock another unconscious with one and they were sometimes used by police as billy clubs. Victorian writers refered to them by the euphemism "sinews."

I don't know what the weather's like where you are, but lately here it's been "cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey." It's a nautical reference, having nothing to do with either simians or testicles.

Hollywood reality check here: Russel Crowe is currently the biggest male star in the world. There is no way he would take a supporting role like Billy Bones. Silver, maybe, but he probably wouldn't take another maritime role so soon after MAC. And, Bones really is depicted as a sick old man.