Daniel

I have moved Lockhouse pirate day and the Hampton Blackbeard festival to the top of my list. Although I may just go to Rock Hall too; it's close, and a little fantasy never hurt anybody.

Magnificent suggestions by both of you! I'll be plotting my course to one or two of those events!

All right, I've got May, June, July, and August off from law school. I'm just outside Washington, DC. I want to go to at least one pirate event this summer to see some of you fine folks, but I'm extremely poor, which pretty well limits me to Maryland, Virginia, and maybe North Carolina or Pennsylvania. Where should I go? Right now I'm looking at going to the Rock Hall Pirates and Wenches Fantasy Weekend on Aug. 13 and 14. If I have enough money for gas I might go to Beaufort Pirates Invasion instead (naturally they're scheduled on the same weekend). Are there any other pirate events around my area I ought to consider?

Huzzah, Foxe! I can't wait to read it, now that I have four months of almost-free time.

I can guess that "point to dismast" means aim for the mast, but what does "point to wind and water" mean? I'm embarrassingly under-researched for have a master gunner in my stories. "Point to wind and water" means to aim at the enemy ship's waterline, that is, to sink her.

Thanks for the review, Foxe! Very interesting. I was wondering, what is the oldest known reference to Capt. Thatch/Teach as "Blackbeard?" I know Johnson calls him by that name, but he's just called "Thatch" in the trials of Stede Bonnet and his men. Did the name "Blackbeard" ever appear before The General History of the Pirates?

John Taylor's articles? Where did you find those? I'd like to see them. Taylor could well have inherited those articles from his former captain Edward England, and that could trace them all the way back to Nassau and thence to the raid on the Bahama galleon wrecks in 1715. How about merchant ship articles? What's the earliest reference you've found to them?

One of the enduring mysteries about pirate articles is where the pirates got the idea for them. We know that pirates, privateers, and merchant ships all had articles at some point in history. But who had them first? The earliest articles I know of by pure pirates, who knew their actions hadn't even a fig leaf of legality and whose articles could have had no purpose except to regulate the relationship of the ship's company among themselves, were Bartholomew Roberts' in 1721. We have privateer articles from before then. Richard Zacks reproduces a portion of what he says are Kidd's articles, although as always with Zacks it's impossible to tell where he found them. Kidd supposedly had people signing the articles in New York, while his intentions were still legal, and thus the articles are properly considered privateer articles rather than pirate articles. In their provisions, they resemble later pirate articles in many ways: division of shares, reward for the person who first sights a prize, punishment for cowards and cheats, and compensation for the mutilated. But, they differ from later pirate articles in having a punishment for mutineers, and in reserving some 40 shares for Kidd and the owners. Still earlier were Henry Morgan's articles, which were at least nominally privateer articles, and again resembled the 18th century pirate articles. But Morgan's articles were supposedly based on those of earlier Tortuga buccaneers, many of whom had no commissions and were basically pirates. So we still have to wonder, did pirates get their articles from privateers, or privateers from pirates? I have not been able to find any mention of articles aboard Navy ships. The Articles of War were not individual to each ship, but were imposed by Parliament on all Navy ships and specified only rules of conduct and punishments. They say nothing about shares or wages, except to strictly forbid looting prizes and their crews, and to clarify that you would still be hanged if you refused orders even if your wages hadn't been paid for months or years. In the 19th century, merchant ships also had articles; Dana mentions them in Two Years Before the Mast. These were basically presented ona take-it-or-leave-it basis to the crew, and always specified wages instead of shares. I have searched in vain for a copy of any merchant articles. I also have not been able to find any mention of merchant articles from before the 19th century. One of the most fascinating clues about the origin of buccaneer articles, which I think is mentioned in Benerson Little, is that they were once called the "charter party," or in French "chasse-partie." Merchant ships had "charter parties" going back at least to the 15th century, but on merchant ships they had nothing to do with the crew. The merchant charter party was a contract between the owner of a ship and the merchant who leased the ship for a voyage to some specified destination. Possibly (this is just my speculation), early buccaneers used the merchant charter party as as an inspiration to come to a similar agreement between buccaneer crewmen and their leaders.

I did go up with my son to see the Maryland Renaissance Festival in October. It's a magnificent event, although pirates are pretty scarce on the ground. My son got to shoot air cannons at galleons. Four years old is the perfect age to go to this sort of thing. When I told Brandon it was time to leave, he said, "OK, Daddy. But how do we get back to Earth?" During the summer, if not before, I should have a chance to go to a more completely pirate-themed event.

Finals are over, and I'm free of law school until January 3. I'll try to hang around a little bit until HMS George Washington University calls me back aboard. I don't know how I did; one of the nerve-wracking things about law school is that you don't have any tests in most of your classes until the final. I feel pretty confident about Criminal Law and Torts, not so sure about Civil Procedure and Contracts. I did have one mid-term test, in Civil Procedure, which I screwed up royally, but I think (and fervently hope!) that I learned from my errors. I'm celebrating my liberty by reading my first pirate book in ages: Peter Earle's The Pirate Wars, and it's interesting stuff, from a very different perspective than most pirate books I've read lately.

My Brethren and Sisters of the Coast: I have moved to northern Virginia, and in three days will be starting law school at George Washington University. As far as my participation on this forum goes, this will be the equivalent of sinking into Davy Jones' Locker. It is entirely possible that I will not be able to return here until next summer. I wish you all fair winds and following seas.

The King's Evil was also known as scrofula.

page 81 in the "BATAVIA'S GRAVEYARD" by mike dash (a large 1600's east indiamen) "Jeronimus and a half a dozen other distinguished passengers were shown to a warren of little cabins on the deck above (over the great cabin), where the quarters were smaller and more spartan". Good research! I thought that maybe the poop could be used for passengers, but I wasn't sure. Of course, in the case of the Batavia, you could equally call the passengers' quarters storage for spare rations.

The poop: that odd little cabin or compartment at the extreme top and back of the ship that sits immediately above the captain's cabin, and whose roof forms the poop deck. In Falconer's diagram of a 1st-rate ship of the line, there is a large poop that is actually divided into three compartments; a room for the trumpeters, the "Captain Lieutenant's" cabin and the "cuddy," which is for "the Master and secretaries officers." All very well, but you also see poops on large East Indiamen and other merchant ships. It seems unlikely that merchants would have had trumpeters or "captain lieutenants," which would have been a military rank. I suppose they might have put the sailing master there if the captain was not also master, but who used the poop if the master was also captain and roomed in the captain's cabin?

Haven't read Silver. The Pirate Primer is fun, but mainly it made me want to read the novels he got the language from, instead of finishing the book.

OK, that makes sense; thanks to both of you.

It seems pretty common to mount the ship's wheel forward of the mizzenmast, as in this magnificent model of a 1740 East Indiaman. This arrangement, however, would make it difficult or impossible to step the mizzenmast on the keel. The wheel's tackles must connect to the head of the tiller, and unless the tiller is to slice through the mizzenmast, then the tiller must have its own space below the step of the mizzenmast, but above the keel. I suppose it might be possible to put the head of the tiller abaft the mizzenmast and then run the wheel tackles at an angle on either side of the mizzenmast, upward and forward to the wheel, but wouldn't that take away most of the wheel's leverage and make it very hard to turn? On the other hand, if they don't step the mizzenmast on the keel, what do they step it on? Plain deck planks wouldn't be able to support it, would they?

Well of course you need one that says "My other car is a Galleon!" Or maybe a skull and crossbones and the legend "On Payne of Death!" to play on the town's name.

The exhibit also gives prominent place to Hendrick Quinton, who was Bellamy's sailing master IIRC, and who was a free black man originally from the Netherlands. I have no evidence againstthat. I agree with Kinkor that at least some Africans or African Americans were treated equally in some pirate ships; certainly more equally than they would have been anywhere else in the European world. I merely object to the generalization that pirates in general didn't own slaves, and to the continuing efforts to excuse and ignore African kingdoms' role in cooperating with the white slave traders.

"Fie" is one of my favorite curse words. You find it all over Shakespeare. I know at least one case in GAoP where it was used: Congreve wrote in 1695, "O fie, miss, you must not kiss and tell." On the other hand, I don't remember seeing the word "fie" anywhere in the General History of the Pirates, Moll Flanders, or anything else written in GAoP. Maybe Congreve was deliberately using an archaic term, instead of an everyday one? Does anyone know any other case when "fie" was used in GAoP?

Have you looked at Jameson's Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period? The deposition of John Dann refers to Captain Wake and Captain Want, as does Adam Baldridge (who calls Wake "Weak"). The isle of May is in the Cape Verdes, but where is Fernando? Is it Fernando de Noronha, off Brazil? The latitude is about right . . .

On the way back from Washington DC, I got to spend 90 minutes in the Real Pirates exhibit at St. Louis Science Center, seeing real artifacts that Barry Clifford's team brought up from the Whydah wreck. Regrettably, no photos allowed. In no particular order, here's what I saw. 1. The bell. Not your little ship's bell like I saw on the St. Lawrence II. Big mofo, easily a foot across, and I'll bet it weighs over fifty pounds. 2. A wide variety of cannons: a Danish six pounder, an English "long three," and a four pounder. The three carried round shot and all kinds of different bar shot: some dumbell shaped, some with full-size balls each end, and some with hemispheres. No expanding shot, grapeshot, or canister was shown. Shot wadding also was found; it looks like wood, but I assume it's just been solidiifed after centuries on the ocean floor. 3. Pewter spoons and plates, some marked with Masonic symbols. The exhibit says that Jacobites used Masconic symbols, so there's another point for the pirates-were-Jacobites crowd. Looks like my long-held view that pirates were basically non-political may be plain wrong. 4. No whole swords, but several hilts. Surprise: only one cutlass hilt, but three smallsword/rapier hilts! And yes, that same hilt that in the book is identified as a cutlass is identified in the sxhibit as a rapier or smallsword. The cutlass hilt was bone, and had that humpbacked look you see on a lot of the old Hounslow hangers from the previous century. Brass fittings on the cutlass hilt were surprisingly bright. 5. Several cufflinks and a big bent kilt pin, but still no earrings. 6. A shoe sole, very narrow, small enough to have been a woman's or a child's. No boots. 7. A lead sounding weight. The books don't give you the idea of how big these things are; I would guess eight inches long, an inch and a half at the bottom, and must have weighed at least ten pounds if it was real lead. The bottom was indeed concave to hold sticky tallow so the pirates would know what kind of sea floor it was. 8. Several pistols, including a magificent Louis XIV pistol, but mostly too damaged after years on the ocean floor for me to tell anything useful about them. 9. A magnificent ship model of the Whydah. Basic three-mast design with lateen mizzen that you would expect for that time, very bluff-bowed, showing no sails bent on. A very curious design of the wheel: the tiller is on the open quarterdeck with the wheel just forward of it, and the rope drum aft of the wheel. This means that you can't stand behind the wheel; the rope drum is in the way. You would either have to stand forward of the wheel, facing aft, or (which I figure is likelier) stand to the side of the wheel facing forward, probably with another helmsman on the other side of the wheel to assist. Model also shows something that looks like a globular lantern hanging from a line over each side. The mainstay is not connected directly to the mainmast; instead, it splits into about a dozen little lines, each secured to the edge of the maintop. 10. A few slave artifacts were still aboard, including manacles. I almost cried at the sight of the first one, because the manacles were so small they appeared sized for children; on second glance, they might have been big enough for adults. The manacles were connected to an unbending iron bar, very close together; if all of them were actually occupied, the occupants would have been literally sitting in each other's laps. There was also a device called a "branding needle," but so small I doubt any useful branding could actually have been done with it; maybe it was used for tattooing? There was an honest-to-God branding iron too, shaped like a plus or X, but I think it was from Jamaica, not the Whydah. 11. Overall the quality of the reconstruction was pretty good. I disagreed with some of the captions. One said that pirates baording a prize would have carried boarding pikes; with your hands occupied I doubt a boarding pike would have been practical. The section on the slave trade was msotly accurate, but inaccurately said that Africans attacked slave forts to free their brethren. Yes, Africans attacked slave forts, but it was for the same reason Europeans attacked each others' slave forts: to take the slaves and other wealth and use them for their own ends. It also suggested that pirates didn't use slaves, but they ignored Henry Morgan's articles specifying buccaneers' compensation in terms of slaves. Aside from that, though, they did a pretty good job.

A late discovery: the Whydah pirate ship carried all kinds of bar shot, and also round shot, for her three pounders. Saw it myself at the Real Pirates exhibit in the St Louis Science Center.

The point that large ships required much more maintenance and more specialized personnel is valid. But note that some pirates, like Bartholomew Roberts, dealt with this problem by simply switching to newly captured large ships, so they didn't have to deal with the headache of maintaining their old one.

I love, love, love the Star of the County Down. The Jolly Roving Tar is a fine air too.