John Maddox Roberts

The Time-Life book "The Pirates" has on p.56 an engraving of Captain George Lowther standing in front of a crude tent while his ship is careened. Inside the tent, three of his men drink punch and smoke. Of course, this scene was not taken from life. Actually, though, pirates were sailors and therefore handy with things like spars, canvas and rope. I imagine they could have erected some very efficient shelter in short order and it need not have been crude. There were usually spare sails and spars and plenty of rope on every ship.

How about: "No pirates were eaten in the making of this film"?

Cap'n Enigma, Ben't that Captain Fallow's Jolly Roger from "The Crimson Pirate?"

A while back I happened on a site that catered, among others, to Native American dancers. It featured feather cases for transporting delicate feathers. I'll see if I can find it again. Not much help if the feathers are glued to the hat, though.

Mate Nelson: I be a professional novelist meself, and I know what a tough row it is to hoe, or, more properly, what a tough scupper it is to scrub, or something like that. Anyways, keep thy pistols primed and watch thy back with them Hollywood people. I knows from experience that they can skin an honest pirate while soothin' his brow and feedin' him mangoes and cocoanut. Beware. Meanwhile, congratulations.

Mate Nelson: I be a professional novelist meself, and I know what a tough row it is to hoe, or, more properly, what a tough scupper it is to scrub, or something like that. Anyways, keep thy pistols primed and watch thy back with them Hollywood people. I knows from experience that they can skin an honest pirate while soothin' brow and feedin' him mangoes and cocoanut. Beware. Meanwhile, congratulations.

I've never debauched a sloth, but I am both slothful and debauched. Does that count?

The current state of vegetation on Haiti won't tell you much about the same 300 years ago. Except for a few small regions, the place has been just about denuded of greenery by people foraging for firewood, still the principal fuel there. Efforts at reforestation always fail because people come in and uproot the saplings for fuel. The human situation is pretty desperate there, as it has been for many years.

Mincemeat pie recipes still call for beef suet. And remember, when you eat that "well-marbled" steak, or most any other beef product, you're downing a lot of suet.

Great looking outfit, mate!

Is it just my aging eyes, or is the seated figure in the storm scene wearing a sort of Turkish turban-thing wrapped around a fez?

What about period edgeware? Did the buccaneers use the sort of swords we think of as cutlasses or were they more like machetes: swordlike blades but without guards, in other words working tools adaptable for combat? And were they likely to have daggers or butcher knives? As plunderers many conventional weapons must have fallen their way. So did they use one set of edged tools for hunting and another for raiding, or did they plunder with the tools they hunted with? Or did some do one and the others, the other? Just to add a little confusion here.

The detail is striking. Notice that those aren't just generic bones. They're thighbones. And you can see the openings at the backs of the eye sockets.

The shape looks right for a grenadier's hat.

For that extra, ineffable touch of authenticity, don't bathe for six months, soak yourself and your clothes in cow and pig blood (easily obtainable at the local slaughterhouse, and smear yourself and all your gear in lots of rancid fat. Keep a charcoal brazier going in your house day and night to obtain that period-correct smoky tang. Next pirate get-together you'll knock 'em dead for sure. And the ladies will run from you just as they would a real buccaneer.

I posted this in the Beyond Pyracy forum, but for those of you who don't look in there, and since many of you are RenFaire devotees, there is a new book just published called "Renaissance Faire." It's a short story collection with RenFaires as the recurrent theme. It's edited by Andre Norton and Jean Rabe and contains stories by the likes of Joe Haldeman, Esther Freisner, Elizabeth Anne Scarborough, Andre Norton and (blush) me. My story is called "Girolamo and Mistress Willendorf." It's from DAW books and is to be found in the Fantasy/SF section, since most of the stories are fantasies.

Yesterday I needed to light some charcoal for a barbecue and found not a match or lighter in the house. So I got my fire kit from my shooting bag and struck a light with flint, steel and charcloth (made from old Army fatigues from back when they were made from 100% cotton. Old blue jeans work well, too) . I hold my charcloth on top of the flint because I find that when I strike, more sparks fly upward than down. The char caught on the second or third strike and I stuck it into a nest of tinder made from old rope fibers (hemp only, those newfangled nylon ropes don't work) and blew on it gently. In a few seconds I had a flame and dropped it into the charcoal. Voila, I had a fire without recourse to the 20th or 21st centuries. Hell, not even the 19th. The whole process took maybe two minutes. Of course, this is under ideal conditions: everything dry, daylight to see by, everything prepared properly. It isn't always that easy.

This is a vexing question, since it is well known that blacks were often found on pirate ships, but were they pirates? We know that slaves were often part of the loot taken from other ships, and that pirate ships often carried black slaves to do the scut work like manning the pumps, scrubbing the decks, etc. Pirates weren't known for their love of hard work. But does this mean that blacks weren't also pirates as well? In those days, a black who was also a pirate might be perfectly comfortable in an environment where other blacks were slaves. That was just the way of the world they lived in. I've never seen a record of a captured black pirate standing trial, but then it could be that captured black pirates were simply sold into slavery instead of standing trial with their white brethren. It's the paucity of information that stymies us here.

A few years ago I bought a flint-and-steel fire kit from Jas. Townsend & Son and they sent a big hank of tow along with it. You might inquire there.

I be 57 and as far as I can see the current record holder for longevity. It takes cunning to remain so long unhung. I have the body of a 20-year-old, but only I know where it's buried, so I'll never be convicted.

In case anyone here hasn't checked the general forum these last two days, I want to let you know that our Deacon Frye, Scott Bubar, passed away last August. He posted often on Captain Twill, and his posts were always learned and well informed. We will miss him, as there are never enough serious scholars.

I'm sitting here wi' me pistol in me sash, me cutlass in one hand and a cup o' claret in the other, (don't ask how I'm typing) drinking a toast to th' Deacon. He never indited a post that wasn't learned and wise. We'll not see his like again. I suspect that, like a true pirate, he didn't want to burden his shipmates with his health problems. I vote that we retire his avatar and not let a newbie appropriate it (it was one of the best, Pyle's Captain Kidd, so someone's going to want to use it.) What say ye?

Maria: It was on the Sword Forum that I saw the news, posted as a sticky at the top of the Nelson Family Pub forum. It includes a copy of his obituary, along with three pages of comments. He was much esteemed there. I can't believe that I missed it for more than two months.

I was shocked to learn, on another board, that our Deacon Frye, Scott Bubar, passed away in August. Is this old news here? I hadn't seen it mentioned, but I confess I don't check all the forums religiously. He will be missed.

The low doorways argument always causes me to posit this: In the far future, archaeologists will have only the most durable items in our houses to study: to wit, our bathtubs. Thay will deduce from these that Americans averaged about 5' in height, while Britons were closer to 7'. It would never occur to them that Americans bathed with their chins on their knees because of poor design. When I lived in Scotland was the only time that I could really stretch out in a tub, and I'm only 5'8".