Daniel

Also, imagine firing the blunderbuss from closed quarters. The loopholes were built at shoulder level; there would be no way to fire it from the hip in that situation.

Sorry to hear about it, Bo. I'll miss seeing you here, but mainly I just wish you luck making ends meet in this tough time.

Ooh, I get the Baccalaureate degree with my 96% score. Predictably, the one question I missed was the one about re-enacting.

When the USS United States captured the HMS Macedonian during the War of 1812, the chagrined British commander reported that the American vessel had "howitzers in her tops." That rather amazed me. I think of howitzers as being very heavy guns. How could the mast stand up to the weight and recoil of a large gun being fired on the top? How big of a howitzer would they put up there? And, most importantly, was this done during the Golden Age of Piracy?

Bonnet bought his sloop Revenge, but AFAIK he didn't order it built. In the Golden Age of Piracy, about 1660 to 1730, I would say sloops and three-masted ships were the main pirate vessels. For sloops, see Bonnet's Revenge, Tew's Amity, Blackbeard's Adventure, Hornigold's Ranger, and I think Pierre le Grand's vessel. Purpose-built privateer vessels like Avery's Fancy and Kidd's Adventure Galley were the best three-masted ships, but ex-slave ships like Blackbeard's Queen Anne's Revenge, Cocklyn's Windham Bellamy's Whydah Gally, and Lowther's Gambia Castle were also much used.

So I'm listening to James de Kay's A Rage for Glory, the biography of Stephen Decatur, and I hear that Decatur and his officers got all mad because they didn't get any prize money for burning the captured USS Philadelphia in the harbor of Tripoli. When Congress just voted them two months' pay instead of prize money, Decatur and his officers considered it an insult and refused the award. Now I'm thinking "WTF? You don't get prize money for burning an enemy vessel, do you? You have to capture the other guy's ship, bring it in and sell it, because that's where the money freakin' comes from, right?" But if so, why would Decatur and his officers ever have expected prize money in the first place? Is it possible that de Kay was confused, and that the angry American officers just thought they shold have been voted more salary, rather than expecting some percentage of the burned ship's value as "prize money?" Or had it actually become the law by the 19th century to award prize money for destroying vessels as well as capturing them? Anyway, I looked at the Wikipedia article on prize money, and found another surprise. The first British prize courts, where vessels were brought in to be condemned as legal captures and sold, were only set up in 1708 by the Cruizers and Convoys Act! What did British privateers do with their captures before then? Just bring in any old vessel and put it on the market? That would have been a pirate's absolute dream. "Sure, she's a French ship. What do you mean, she looks English by the cut of her jib? Would I lie to you? Do you see any Englishmen aboard her? How about if I knock another 100 L. off the price, would that convince you?"

I wonder, how many women prisoners are recorded as being kept by pirates? A significant number of them might have been actual pirates. Almost every pirate who stood trial pleaded that he was a forced man. Women could have much more credibly have pled that they were "forced" - i.e. prisoners - since it would rarely occur to anyone that they might have been on the vessel voluntarily. Granted, Read and Bonny never claimed to have been forced, but they were cursing and swearing at their men to fight, and were carrying and firing weapons, right up until Barnet overpowered them. So in their case a plea of being forced would have looked pretty silly. A more circumspect female pirate could have passed herself off as a captured prisoner so long as none of her shipmates pointed the finger at her. Is there any evidence about this?

It is indeed a magnificent piece. Was it common for hangers of the period to be pattern welded? Were any sword makers of the time particularly noted for pattern welding?

I can't tell you where to find the best replicas, but here are some pictures of authentic period pieces that you could compare to the replicas to see which are the best. These are mostly German, but I believe England largely depended on imported German swords until they got their own German smiths to move to Hounslow in the 1620s. German tuck, about 1570. Rapier and main gauche made in Saxony, end of 16th century. French rapier, about 1570. This one had a spring-loaded blade; pushing a lever on the grip made your sword suddenly 6 inches longer. Rapier made in Saxony with fake Spanish and Arabic markings, about 1570. German-made basket-hilted broadsword, end of 16th century. Believe it or not, a Norwegian owned that sword, not a Scot.

If you read only one nonfiction book about pirates, make it Douglas Botting's The Pirates, from Time Life books. Very readable, outstanding illustrations. Some mistakes, but they all have mistakes. If you want more, then David Cordingly's Under the Black Flag should be next. It's a lot more detailed and interesting. If you're really dedicated and want to find out the nitty-gritty of pirate life, read Charles Johnson's General History of the Pirates (many libraries still have it listed under Daniel Defoe); it's challenging, but great reading. You can read it on line, in two volumes, at the Eastern North Carolina Digital Library. For novels, Stevenson's Treasure Island has never been surpassed (not even by me, alas). Most of the other novels recommended here are good too. But for my money, Sabatini's The Sea Hawk is even better than Captain Blood.

My translation would be: "Philip IV, by a decree of 10 September, 1634, created the "purple regiment. "The Purple regiment was a royal guard distinguished by its purple uniform, whose flag displayed the arms of the Count-Duke of Olivares. With that name, it was incorporated in the new army of the king Philip IV in the year 1700. "On 28 February, 1707, it adopted the name of "Regiment of Castilian Infantry," and still later it was named "King's Regiment" with the honor of Immemorial ["Immortal in memory" might give you an idea of the sentiment here]. "In reality, its color wasn't really purple according to the modern concept of dark violet, next to blue, but garnet red like mulberry juice."

I could try, Captain. But I think for most people at that time, the party they belonged to would be dictated by the allegiances of their parents or lords, not their own personal values. That was still a time when people attached their loyalty to a person, not to abstract concepts like liberty, democracy, the Constitution, or stuff like that. You see that especially with the Scottish clans: the Campbells were Whigs, the MacDonalds were Tories, and the individual clansmen weren't free to pick their own party based on their individual beliefs.

Pirate fiction is my specialty; I'd be glad to help with any pirate story you'd like to write. There's no easy answer to your question about women. The simplest way I can put it is: yes, it was frowned upon, but women went aboard anyway. Pirates' attitude toward women was very variable. Some pirates, like Bartholomew Roberts, absolutely forbade them on board, and put to death any of his men who smuggled a woman secretly onto his ships. Then what happened to the woman if she were discovered? There was no rule about that; probably there would have been a vote of the crew about what to do with her, and the likeliest result would have been to leave her ashore at the next chance. On the other hand, other pirates, like Calico Jack Rackham, let women serve in the crew and carry weapons. On merchant or navy ships, it was routine for women to be given run of the ship while they were in harbor; the sailors' wives could visit them there, female peddlers and merchants would sell them things, and of course prostitutes often serviced the men. Once they put to sea, though, women were expected to be left behind. Women were seen as a source of trouble because sailors might fight over them, and it was thought that women were bad luck to have at sea. Even so, women were sometimes brought along as passengers or servants, and captains were known to bring their wives along, with the crew grumbling about it all the way. There are many examples of women serving as actual sailors on merchant or navy ships, but they seem to have always sneaked aboard in disguise, never serving openly. Judging by Cordingly's Under the Black Flag, several women sailors were discovered, and none seems to have been punished, but they apparently had to leave the crew soon after being revealed. As to when pirates "ruled the seas," there are several different times and places that are famous today. 1) The Caribbean and east Pacific, 1520s-1590s. The time of Drake, Hawkins, Cavendish, Fleury, and Ango, all English or French sailors who raided Spain's colonies in the Caribbean and the west coast of South America. It was an open secret that their kings supported them, but for a foreigner merely to enter Spanish waters was enough for th Spanish to label them as pirates and execute them if they were caught. 2) The buccaneers of Tortuga and Port Royal. The French got established on Hispaniola and Tortuga in the 1620s, but it was when the English captured Jamaica from Spain in 1655 that the buccaneering craze really got going, and lasted through the 1680s. Again, this outburst of piracy was mostly in the Caribbean, with some expeditions into the Spanish colonies in the Pacific. This is the time of Henry Morgan, Francois l'Ollonais, Bartolomeu Portugues, the Chevalier Grammont, and Laurens de Graff. 3) The Pirate Round of the 1690s. These were attacks by Englishmen and England's American colonists against the Indian Ocean and Red Sea trade, using bases on Madagascar. This is the time of Captain Kidd, Henry Avery, Thomas Tew, and John Bowen. 4) The post-Spanish Succession period. This starts with Jennings' raid on the wrecked Spanish treasure fleet off the Bahamas in 1715, grows to a peak about 1719, and then gradually peters out by about 1725-1730. Caused by privateers and seamen left unemployed after the War of the Spanish Succession. While it lasted, it was one of the most intense and widespread pirate rampages ever: the pirates ravaged the seas from Brazil through the Caribbean and along the American east coast clear up to Newfoundland, off the slave ports of west Africa, and in the western Indian Ocean. This is the time of Bartholomew Roberts and Blackbeard. 5) The Latin American Independence period. In the 1820s, when Mexico, Colombia, and other Latin American countries threw off Spanish rule, they commissioned privateers, and Spain commissioned its own privateers in a failed effort to keep its colonies. These privateers ignored the terms of their commissions basically from the outset, and robbed any ship they could lay their hands on, continuing their depredations long after the wars of independence were over. This is the time of Benito de Soto and Diabolito, and the setting of the pirate novel A High Wind in Jamaica, and is also the only time when pirates are known to have made prisoners walk the plank. There are many other less famous outbursts of pirate activity. The Barbary corsairs prowled the Mediterranean from the 14th century until the 19th. Various nationalities of Asian pirates cruised the South and East China Seas in the 16th and 17th centuries, and again in the early 19th. And we may be seeing a new Golden Age of Piracy in the 21st century; most piracy in the 20th century was mere petty theft, but in the 1990s and 2000s Somali pirates have begun seizing huge merchant vessels and holding them for ransom, which is theft on just as grand a scale as anything Blackbeard or Roberts ever committed.

You're right; Whig-Tory politics in late 17th and early 18th century England have basically nothing to do with those terms as used int he American Revolution. Speaking broadly . . . Whigs: Supremacy of Parliament. "Court ideology," which includes an aggressive commitment to alliances and wars to maintain the balance of power in Europe, a strong Navy, and strengthening the State (especially with the Bank of England). They don't actually like Jews or Dissenters, but want them tolerated to make sure they stay on the Whigs' side if it comes to another struggle with the King. Strongly anti-Jacobite, and often accuse the Tories of being Jacobites. Tories: Supremacy of the King (which leads to all kinds of embarrassment and wriggling about how to justify kicking James II out). "Country ideology," idealizing the rustic life of the gentry, limited parliamentary power, low taxes, and low spending. Strong supporters of the Anglican Church, opposed to any form of toleration for Dissenters or Jews. Contrary to Whig propaganda, most Tories are not Jacobites (their strong support for Anglicanism leads them to dread a Catholic monarchy), but almost all Jacobites are Tories. As in any party system, the objective of both parties is to win power, and ideology can be distorted or discarded to achieve that goal. You win power chiefly by buttering up the monarch in the hope that he or she will give your party the plum jobs, so the Whigs naturally don't present themselves as hostile to the monarchy; they just try to convince the King or Queen that a strong Parliament is the best way to get the monarch what he or she wants (especially, giving the monarch lotsa free cash to play with). This, and the Whigs' success in portraying the Tories as Jacobites, caused the Whigs to dominate government for much of the Golden Age of Piracy. Feelings between the Whigs and Tories were pretty bitter; they didn't socialize and children from one party were not normally allowed to marry children of the other.

Take a gander at the sword hilt recovered from Bellamy's pirate ship Whydah, on pg. 44 of Clifford and Kinkor's book. They say it was the hilt of a cutlass. I have my doubts, though. I have looked at about a hundred cutlasses and I have never seen one that had arms of the hilt (those little C-shaped bits just forward of the grip that curve out from the grip and then in toward the blade; also called pas d'ane). Thumb rings, yes; arms of the hilt, no. Also, that grip looks a bit thin to hold the tang of a thick cutlass blade. It looks much more to me like the hilt of a small-sword or late rapier, and although pirates didn't normally use that kind of weapon, it would be worth a lot of money and would be kept as plunder if nothing else.

The 1933 OED under the word "Curtal-ax" says "A much perverted form of the word CUTLASS . . . through the intermediate perversions cut(t)le-ax, and curtelas, courtelace, CURTELACE, the peculiarities of which it combines." If so, the word "Curtal-ax" came from the word "cutlass," rather than the other way around.

It is true, the Good Fortune that took Hallam could also be Anstis's vessel, and without knowing the date, it's impossible to be sure. I thought Roberts more likely just because Roberts took more ships than Anstis, and Roberts is specifically known to have had large numbers of black pirates aboard. But still, it's ultimately speculation.

There's a Captain Kidd Restaurant built on the site of Kidd's hanging near Wapping Stairs, London. I've never been there, though.

Yesterday, while browsing through the Old Bailey's on line records looking for information on cutlasses, I found this account from the prison ordinary's interview with Robert Hallam, who in 1731 had been sentenced to death for murdering his wife. While confessing his past sins, Hallam mentioned that long ago he had been briefly forced into a pirate crew. The pirate captain's name is not mentioned, but the name of the ship, Good Fortune, suggests that it was none other than Bartholomew Roberts. The souce shows something of the process by which men were forced to join the crew. Apparently Roberts, if that's who it was, had some concern for his new conscripts, enough to threaten the captain with death if he didn't swear that his men had been forced against their will. The most fascinating and ambiguous part is the role of the black pirate. He is trusted with a weapon, and palys an active role in forcing the new men to join, but Roberts is also threatening him at sword's point. Is the threat against the black pirate a bit of theater for the new conscripts' benefit, or does it suggest that the black pirate himself is not a free agent?

Absolutely period, although spelled in about 2.3 zillion different ways. In Johnson, 1726, you can find this passage: "tucking up his Shirt above his Elbow, with a Cutlass in his Hand, he, with Mitchel, went into the Captain's Cabbin, and told him, he must turn out." Johnson also writes that Kidd "used the Men very cruelly, causing them to be hoisted up by the Arms, and drubb'd with a naked Cutlash." In 1650, John Osgood bequeathed a "cutlace" to his heirs. If I remember right, the OED rejects the "curtal axe" theory of derivation, but I'd have to check to be sure.

Is Exquemelin's book rare in Dutch? You can find The Buccaneers of America in English translation in any college library in America.

When I think of a cutlass, the image that immediately springs to my mind is a curved short sword with a knuckle bow. However, cutlasses don't have to have knuckle bows, and they don't have to be curved; the National Maritime Museum has tons of straight cutlasses. I would propose that four things distinguish a cutlass from other swords 1. It must be a backsword - i.e., it must have only one sharp edge. It can have a false edge for the point, but if it's sharpened more than half its length on both edges, then I think you have a broadsword, not a cutlass. 2. It must be short. I'm not sure how short, but if you arbitrarily say a blade of less than 30 inches, that would cover just about every cutlass in the NMM. Beyond some length, maybe 30 inches, what you have is a saber, not a cutlass. Below some minimum blade length, you have a dirk or dagger; again, I'm not sure where the dividing line is, but 15 inches would probably be close. 3. The handle should accomodate only one hand. I.e., the Japanese wakizashi is not a cutlass, even though it's a short backsword. 4. It must have a hand guard. Some would say that you need a hand guard to have a sword at all, but I think certain Malay weapons have no hand guards and yet would be hard not to call swords. At any rate, I would think hand guard-less single-edge short blades like the machete should be distinguished from true cutlasses. I don't think the cutlass has to be a specifically naval sword, at least not at our time period. In the 18th century, the Royal Navy's logistics people didn't even call their naval swords cutlasses: they just called them swords, or swords for sea service. I have often read that a cutlass and a hanger are basically the same thing, and so far as I can find, that's true. A hanger, too, is basically a short backsword, often curved but not necessarily, often knuckle bowed but again not necessarily. But I think there is a difference in connotation between the words "cutlass" and "hanger." A "cutlass" suggests a practical, no-frills, cheap weapon. A "hanger" can be a working man's weapon too; there are many references in the Old Bailey records to ordinary street thugs and collier sailors using hangers. But "hangers" also included very high-quality gentry swords and even officer and ceremonial swords, like the early 17th century Hounslow hangers and some of the finer hunting hangers. I'm not sure it would be technically wrong to call a Hounslow hanger or an officer's hanger a "cutlass," but it would be unusual. One difficulty in defining "cutlass" is that the combination of word and weapon is almost uniquely English. The word "cutlass" comes from French coutlas, thence from Italian coltellacio and finally from Latin cultellus, but in none of those languages does it mean the short backsword that it means in English. The French word for the weapon we call "cutlass" is sabre d'abordage, boarding saber, and some equivalent of "boarding saber" is used in most European languages (Spanish sable de abordaje, Italian sciabbola d'abordaggio, German Entersäbel). The only language I know of besides English that uses a cognate of "cutlass" for a short backsword is the Dutch kortelas. So it can be hard to say if a weapon from a non-English European culture is a "cutlass," because they would use a completely unrelated word for it.

I think that, during the Napoleonic era, you could tell French sails from British by their color. The British sails yellowed from extensive weathering on blockade duty; the French spent a lot of time blockaded in their ports, and their sails stayed white. I think I read that in C.S. FOrester. I doubt the same would be true during the Golden Age, though.

I'm looking at World Cruising Routes, and it shows a fairly S-shaped cruising route from North America to the Cape of Good Hope, passing almost midway between Brazil and Africa. The route, however, appears to be very modern, based on George Findlay's 19th-century studies and based on the ability to fix longitude. I just found a book on Amazon by Richard Rutherford-Moore called The Pirate Round: Early Eighteenth Century Navigation During the Golden Age of Piracy. Has anybody read this? Is it good?

Reading Louis L'Amour's Jubal Sackett in print, while listening on CD to Isikoff and Corn's Hubris. Enjoying both.