Daniel

There's quite a good bit of evidence for the high power of quartermasters other than Bartholomew Roberts' that I haven't seen mentioned yet in the thread.

I would agree with Foxe that the quartermaster was ultimately the creature of the crew, as were all officers on a pirate vessel. One must guard against thinking of pirate officers in the same way as merchant and naval officers, who could rely on outside support against their subordinates; in a pirate crew, every officer ultimately stands or falls by his ability to win over or intimidate his fellows. But that doesn't mean that their power wasn't real. Prime ministers are creatures of their constituents, and can be deposed by a no-confidence vote, but nobody would say that they don't wield real power!

1. Stede Bonnet's quartermaster

Stede Bonnet's quartermaster, Robert Tucker, was apparently very powerful, according to the boatswain, Ignatius Pell, as seen in this excerpt from Bonnet's trial:

JUDGE TROTT. But he [bonnet] was commander in chief among them, and that after they went a-pirating; was it not so, boatswain?

Pell. He went by that name; but the quartermaster had more power than he.

JUDGE TROTT. What do you mean by your evasion? Was he commander in chief or was he not?

Pell. He was.

JUDGE TROTT. Then who had the greatest power?

The Attorney General. Do you know if he received his share of Captain Manwareing's goods? Or did any receive it for him?

Pell. Sir, it was the quartermaster took care of that.

Bonnet himself also claimed that Tucker had more power than he did.

But when we came to sea, and saw a vessel, the quarter-master, and some of the rest, held a consultation to take it: but I opposed it.

Bonnet's testimony, of course, must be viewed skeptically: he was pleading for his life. But Pell had no reason to try to excuse Bonnet; on the contrary, he was King's evidence and was saving his own neck by putting his fellow pirates on the gallows.

2. Thomas Tew's quartermaster

Johnson clearly refers to considerable power of the quartermasters in crews other than Bartholomew Roberts', particularly Thomas Tew's.

[Tew] desired they would chuse a Quarter Master, who might consult with him for the Common Good, which was accordingly done.

I must acquaint the Reader, that on Board the West-India Privateers and Free-booters, the Quarter master's opinion is like the Mufti's among the Turk's; the Captain can undertake nothing that the Quarter Master does not approve. We may say, the Quarter Master is an humble imitation of the Roman Tribune of the People; he speaks for, and looks after, the Interest of the Crew.

They had intelligence from the Prisoners, of five other rich Ships to pass that Way, which Tew would have attacked, tho' they were very strong, if he had not been Over-ruled by the Quarter-Master and others.

3. Charles Vane's quartermaster

Charles Vane's quartermaster was the infamous Calico Jack Rackham.

Vane, the Captain, was for making off as fast as he could, alledging the Man of War was too strong to cope with, but one John Rackam, who was an Officer, that had a kind of a Check upon the Captain, rose up in Defence of a contrary Opinion . . . . The Mate, one Robert Deal, was of Vane's opinion, as were about fifteen more, and all the rest joined with Rackam, the Quarter-Master. At length, the Captain made use of his Power to determine this Dispute, which, in these Cases, is absolute and uncontroulable, by their own Laws, viz. in fighting, chasing, or being chased; in all other Matters whatsoever, he is governed by a Majority . . . . But the next Day, the Captain's Behaviour was obliged to stand the Test of a Vote, and a Resolution passed against his Honour and Dignity, branding him with the name of Coward, deposing him from the Command, and turning him out of the Company . . . . John Rackam was voted Captain of the Brigantine, in Vane's Room.

Foxe asked:

Do we know of any historical nobles who went on the account to escape <fill in crap excuse here>?

I believe that Stede Bonnet is reputed to going pirate in order to escape a nagging wife

True, but Bonnet wasn't a noble. He owned a plantation, but his only title was Major in the Barbadian militia.

Haven't read the book. To the extent that it shows pirates as being drunken, debauched, fond of torture, and generally not nice, I agree.

As regards pirates not being aristocrats, that's obviously true for 99% of them. There are examples of real aristocrats, like the Chevalier de Grammont and Cavendish, who would have been regarded as pirates at least by the Spanish, though their own countries would probably have called them privateers. I realize that for re-enactors (which I am not) that opens up the old controversy over whether it's legitimate to portray an unusual pirate as opposed to a commonplace one, and I have nothing to say about that. All I'm saying is that it did happen. But of course, aristocrats aren't necessarily any nicer than the common rabble, or even any soberer. Ever hear the phrase "drunk as a lord?"

I would not agree that pirates were necessarily stuck permanently as pirates. There are well-attested cases of people passing from lawful seafaring to piracy and back again. Obviously, some pirates took advantage of royal pardons, like almost the whole population of Nassau did when Woodes Rogers came in; Culliford also got away with that, and John Taylor got himself and his crew pardoned after robbing the Nossa Senhora do Cabo. There was also the old "forced man" excuse, which got several dozen of Roberts' crew off the hook at Cape Coast Castle; even a few of Bonnet's crew managed that. And even without a pardon or an acquittal, there was still a decent chance of simply setting up for yourself in a lawful profession after leaving your ship. Avery probably did that successfully, and those of his crew who went to America instead of Britain also got clean away with it. Kenedy came close: he kept a tavern and bawdy house in London for several years before he was recognized, arrested and hanged.

A belated thank you for the help, gentlemen.

I went to the website of the NC Maritime museum and looked over the QAR model: I notice that she has one forestaysail, as well as a spritsail. Other reconstructions that are out there on the Web are different, but I assume NC Maritime should have the best idea, given that they're digging the actual ship up!

From what you bopth are saying, it sounds like the names of the jibs or fore stays'ls depend more on the era than on their actual placement or design.

Thanks again.

1. What is the difference between a jib and a fore staysail? That is, if you had a ship with three triangular sails forward of the foremast, and one person called them (from aft to fore) the inner jib, outer jib, and flying jib, and another person called the same sails the fore staysail, inner jib, and outer jib, is it just a matter of opinion, or is there an objective difference?

2. When were jibs (or fore staysails, if that was what they were first called) first introduced? Harland's Seamanship in the Age of Sail shows the Sovereign of the Seas in 1637 without a jib, and a 1756 warship with a jib. That leaves pretty well the whole GAoP in limbo. Would Morgan's ships have had a jib? Avery's Fancy? Blackbeard's Queen Anne's Revenge?

3. How long did the jib and spritsails coexist? I don't think I've ever seen a picture of a ship with a jib and spritsail topmast together. harland has a picture of a 1756 ship which has a jib, a spritsail, and a spritsail topsail, but the spritsail topsail yard is attached to the bowsprit forward of the sprisail yard, not to a separate spritsail topmast. I get the impression that jibs made spritsails obsolete, but I'm not sure how quickly.

A most excellent lead, Foxe! I went immediately and tracked down the source for the OED quote on Googlebooks, Christoph Frick's A Relation of Two Several Voyages Made into the East Indies. From the whole quote in context, not only is that 1700 dog watch not a short watch, it's not a "time period" watch at all; it's a "division of the crew" watch.

Frick is describing practice on the Dutch East India Company's fleet about 1680 (the account being published 20 years afterward).

Then must all and every Officer, Soldier and Mariner, make his appearance upon Deck, to be divided into their several Quarters, which are two: The one of them is called the Prince's Quarter, the other Count Maurice's.

Each person is assigned into one of these Quarters, in which he is always to be found on any occasion; and there he is to keep the Watch by turns. And that all may know to what part every Man belongs, the names of them all as they are divided is affixed to the Main Mast, on two distinct Tables; where also is set the order and time that every Man is to watch in. The Prince's Quarter hath the first turn, and is therefore called the first Watch. There is a Provost, whose Office it is to call them together, and to set the Watch; each Quarter watches four hours, and then is relieved by the other. Count Maurice's Quarter hath the second Watch, and is also called the Dog-watch.

Thus, it's clear that the Prince's Quarter, aka the first watch, is what we today would call the larboard watch division of the crew, and that Count Maurice's quarter, aka the dog watch, is what we would now call the starboard watch of the crew.

The same passage also has proof that the Dutch East India Company did use the modern system of one through eight bells as early as 1680.

There is a Bell in the Ship, by which notice is given them of the time. It is rung at the setting of the Watch . . . . There are Hour-glasses set up conveniently for him that stands Centinel, and the Helmsman to see; and as soon as the first Glass, which is but of half an hour, is out, they strike one stroke on the Bell; when the second is out, they give two, and so on, adding one for each half hour, until the Bell is rung again. Then another Officer comes and calls his Men together out of his Quarter, and releases the other.

So how come the procedure in the Sea-Man's Vade Mecum for ringing the bell every glass only in fog? Maybe they have a much louder and more prolonged ringing in mind? Or maybe English and Dutch practice were different?

Whenever someone says "dial-up," I must link here. And here. And here. And last but not least, here.

The British Horological Institute says that the bell was rung to sound the time on board ship as early as the 15th century. It says the bell was rung every half hour, although it doesn't specifically say that that started in the 15th century also.

My time sailing the 112 foot brig Lady Washington might provide some insight here. Soon after I reported onboard as a new and unproven crew member, we had a bit of a crew shortage. We had the captain, a cook, and three deckhands.

How did you handle the watches, Coastie? Did the cook or the captain stand a watch? Or did just the three deck hands stand watch, with one of them forming (gulp) a one-man watch?

And wouldn't you have to call both watches on deck every time you tacked? One person at the helm, at least one person hauling braces, one person hauling the tack, and one person hauling the jib sheets? I'd think that would leave people short of sleep.

Falconer mentions that on a warship they would strike the bell every half hour and call "All's well" at night; not clear whether this was done in the daytime also. Also, on French ships, the pilot rang the bell every half hour, and the men on watch were supposed to answer by crying out "A l'autre," so he knew they were awake and keeping watch; this same ringing of the bell every half hour was also the signal to man the pumps if necessary. But note that there's nothing about how many times the bell was struck each half hour, so that doesn't prove that Falconer's contemporaries gave one chime for the first half hour and eight for the last half hour, like we're used to. (Especially not on the French ships; if some of them stood 8-hour watches, then they'd have to ring that puppy 16 times to change the watch!)

Ships certainly had bells in the GAoP (the Whydah Gally's was recovered) but were they rung every half hour? Maybe not. The 1704 Sea-Man's Vade Mecum has special instructions to the commander of a prize ship to start ringing the bell every glass (half hour) if a fog came on. That would seem an unnecessary instruction if it were already normal practice to ring the bell every half hour anyway.

I can't find any reference in Dampier, Jameson, or Best to using the ship's bell. Best in 1612 tells time the same way a modern landsman would - "2 afternoone" or "this morning at 7" - not with reference to bells.

Most of us are familiar with the traditional watch-standing system of seven periods, namely:

First watch: 8pm-12am

Second or middle watch: 12am-4am

Morning watch: 4am-8am

Forenoon watch: 8am-12pm

Noon watch: 12pm-4pm

1st dog watch: 4pm-6pm

2nd dog watch: 6pm-8pm

But is this the same watch system that would have been used throughout the Golden Age?

The oldest reference I know of to dog watches is from Falconer's Marine dictionary in 1783. He says that the watch "is always kept four hours by our British seamen, if we except the dog-watch between four and eight in the evening, that contains two reliefs, each of which are only two hours on deck." This agrees in every detail with the watch system familiar to us today. But Falconer says this was only the British system. In 1783 France, a seaman's watch could be 6, 7, or 8 hours, and in Turkey and Barbary it was usually 5 or 6 hours.

The concept of the watch as lasting four hours must be at least as old as Dampier. He wrote that during the 1699 portion of his voyage, "we had not a good Glass in the Ship beside the Half-watch or Two-Hour-Glasses." If half a watch were two hours, obviously a full watch must have been four hours. But this would not show that the dog watches were used yet, or that the watches started at the same time of day as in Falconer's time.

The watch constituted some kind of fixed time period on the ship at least as early as 1612. English East India Company captain Thomas Best at that time often recorded his speed as so many leagues per watch, generally 5.5 to 10 leagues. If we assume he is using a three-mile league, and that the watch is 4 hours, that suggests speeds of about 3.6 to 6.5 knots, which would be credible speeds for a ship of the time, so it is possible that a four-hour watch dates back to 1612. Best also writes "This night, in the begineing of the first watch, our men espied a frigott," suggesting that the first watch was at night, and at least could have started at 8pm like the "first watch" that we know.

"Minimum" is a tricky word here. Captain England once captured a sloop off West Africa that had only two men on board. I'm guessing that was just an anchor watch, and the rest of the crew were on shore. When Ned Low's men released George Roberts, he sailed a sloop with just himself and two boys, but he would never have done that willingly, and they would have been utterly exhausted after a very short time. 13 to 18 men would have been a more typical crew for an 8-gun merchant vessel, judging by England's other captures.

As for fighting, again, theoretically any number can fight. You need a bare minimum of three men to man a gun: one man to each tackle and a gunner to do the priming and handle the linstock. A fourth man to do the loading is far preferable, and is enough for the four-pounder guns typical on a sloop. Assuming that your ten-gun sloop has five guns on each broadside (most ten-gun sloops would not have mounted a bow or stern chaser), you need 15 men to fire the complete broadside, very clumsily and inefficiently. 20 could make a creditable show of it. If the sloop has only four guns to a broadside, with the other two mounted as chase guns, then you can fire your whole broadside with a minimum of 12 men, but 16 would be ideal. In practice, many merchant vessels didn't have enough men (or ammo!) to work even one complete broadside.

Of course, this is stretching the crew very thin. With a 12-man crew, the minute you take any casualties, or somebody gets scurvy, at least one gun will fall out of action. And the captain may be stuck manning the tiller himself if all his men are busy at the guns. If the rigging gets shot up and needs repairs or a riddled sail has to be replaced, men will have to abandon the guns to go take care of the job. So it pays to have more crew than the bare minimum.

Jameson is a superb source. I had no idea the book was on line. Thanks, Bo!

Hatches are through a deck and companionways are through a bulkhead. Then the combinations and complications begin! For instance, access to the fo'c'sl in a vessel too small for a true Fore Castle, bulkhead and all, you would have a forward "scuttle". A raised hatchway with a sliding hatch cover and either doors or drop-in splash boards.

To get direct to the question, "The companionway to the Great Cabin or Capt.'s Cabin". Anything built upon the deck is called deck furniture. Each part, of course has a specific name yet there are overlaps and combinations. "The Lore of Ships" is an amazing book in that it covers all the different aspects of vessels, construction, propulsion armament and defence from log canoes to the USN Long Beach Nuclear Missle Cruiser!

Thank you for the tip. It seems I was confused. I thought the companionway was the ladder or stairway that led from one deck to another. What is the correct name for the ladder or stairway, then?

On tall ships in the movies, there's always a door at the back of the main deck, in the bulkhead that forms the break of the quarterdeck, that leads back either directly into the captain's cabin or into other compartments. What is the name for that door?

I know that doors are traditionally called "hatches" on ships, but calling the door at the back of the main deck the "aft hatch" would probably risk confusion with the cargo hatches cut into the deck itself.

Thank you for all the replies. It does make sense that flogging an officer would gneerally have been foolish and extremely rare, regardless of whether it was legal.

Was there also a distinction between officer and man when it came to inflicting capital punishment? I think of common sailors as being hanged for capital offenses, while the first example that comes to mind of an officer being executed is Admiral Byng, who was shot. Was there a general rule that officers were shot while foc'sle hands were hanged?

But I also remember Ducasse telling Benbow after their battle something along the lines of, "as for those cowardly captains who deserted you, hang them up, for by God they deserve it." So maybe officers could be hanged too, at least in the French sea services.

I have this vague impression that it was illegal to flog officers, but I don't recall where I found it.

There's at least one 19th-century account of a naval officer being flogged, in Fraser's magazine, but the circumstance is exceptional. The admiral who ordered it was impaired by alcohol and brain damage, and went to great lengths to atone for it after he recovered his senses, while the author implies that the flogging was illegal but was carried out anyway because no one dared question orders. It's not clear whether the illegality lay in the victim being an officer, or the many other irregularities surrounding the case (such as the fact that the victim wasn't even accused of any crime or offense). I also see some evidence of British Army junior officers being flogged occasionally, around 1903, but again it's not clear whether this was legal. Indeed, by the time the British Army case occurred, flogging had been outlawed altogether on British merchant vessels.

So what was the situation during the GAoP? Was it legal to flog officers, and how often (legally or illegally) was it done?

Daniel, I can't remember - did both captains forbid talking, or only the crazy one from the first part of the voyage. Because as I recall, he was an extreme example even for a captain. I can remember how he whipped the one fellow, and when the sailor started praying and crying out for Jesus, the captain said "Jesus can't help you! I'm your God now!"

That seemed a litle crazy to me.

Good question; certainly Thompson was an exceptionally brutal captain, and he did tell that man that Jesus couldn't help him.

I looked on line and dug up Dana's actual words. He was writing that he wanted to "correct a mistake prevalent among landsmen about a sailor's life," namely that seamen are "very idle at sea." As one of his counter-examples, he then wrote: "No conversation is allowed among the crew at their duty, and though they frequently do talk when aloft, or when near one another, yet they stop when an officer is nigh." (Seethis online version of Dana, at p. 16). So it seems that Dana certainly thought that the no-conversation rule was universal, or at least wanted his readers to think so.

First off, the Vasa was heading out on her maiden voyage and the gunports were open for ceremony. That being said, sometimes a few gunports were opened in hot and calm weather in order to air out the ship, which when packed with so many sailors, could get rather rank. As for the sails, the first thing they would do is to furl the t'gallants, which would do the most to decrease the heel of the ship. Although taking in the courses and double reefing the tops'ls would be one sail configuration to ride out a storm, for a suddon squall I would furl everything except the fore topm'st stays'l and a double reefed fore course. Usually with squalls, they are sudden and don't have the time to build up very big waves. Therefore, keeping sail area as low as possible without getting becalmed from large waves is a safe way to go. If the waves were big enough to poop the ship, then there is no way that any competent sailor would have the gunports open. Also, with the sail area all forward, the strong wind would keep the ship heading down wind. Of course, the same thing would happen if you just had a reefed fore tops'l set instead of the course, but there would be more heeling and more stress on the rigging.

One possible scenario that I would suggest is that while taking in sails (it would take a little while), fore tops'l blows out and the mate orders the course to be re set in order to keep the bow downwind and prevent the broaching from having too much sail area aft. Just a few thoughts I had; hope it helps.

Coastie

Excellent points. I hadn't considered that a squall wouldn't build up big waves right away, and of course only a sudden squall in the darkness with no warning would account for the gunports being open and other lack of preparation.

I'll try a rewrite based on the fore tops'l blowing out and the mate setting the course. In that case, would it be necessary to cast off the gaskets and let the whole course fall free immediately, to prevent the ship's head from coming around and broaching? Or would the men on the yard be able to (I'm not sure how to say this) let the sail out a little bit at a time until they reached the lowest row of reef lines, and then reef the course, thus reducing the risk of it blowing out? I'm guessing the first is right, as a double-reefed course wouldn't be enough to prevent broaching because of too much sail aft.

Also, you mentioned that you would furl everything except a double reefed fore course and the fore topmast staysail, but did merchant vessels have fore topmast staysails as early as 1712?

About the captain; my conception of him is that he isn't a drunkard or flagrant incompetent, he's the kind of guy who looks on the surface like he knows his job, but he's just not very good when the going gets tough and he has to reach beyond his surface knowledge.

As regards the "Company" marks, I would suggest the marks be on the weapons themselves, rather than the crates or barrels. Barrels can be disposed of and the goods put in new packaging, before or after being taken to shore, but if the weapons themselves carry the marks, either of the Comapny, or maybe just of the Deptford or Woolwich armories, then they can at most be defaced, which leaves them still obvious contraband.

It's fine if McCool doesn't run his ship like an ordinary pirate ship, but a pirate captain can never run a ship as autocratically as a Navy or merchant captain, because he doesn't have the power of the government to back him up. One man can sometimes intimidate a whole crew, as Long John Silver did so masterfully in Treaure Island, but only up to a point; even Silver eventually got thrown over by his men. One thing you might consider is having McCool adopt a similar arrangement to Bartholomew Roberts, who divided his crew into Lords and Commons; that way, he can threaten the Commons not only with his own sword or cat, but with the weapons of all the Lords.

Two other things I wanted to mention. The name Heart of Gold will inevitably cause many readers to think of Douglas Adams' comedy book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I don't know if that was a deliberate allusion on your part or not, but you should be aware of it.

The other thing is that it's not quite clear why Robbie Balfour ended up getting killed by the Royal Navy. If the crew didn't vote to go on the account until after Balfour died, that would suggest that Balfour wasn't himself a pirate. You mention something about his doing "less legitimate" trade practices, but smugglers wouldn't normally be fighting it out with Royal Navy warships.

OK, thanks for the help.

I think you're right that I have the ship over-armed; I see the Batavia had 26 guns and the Doddington 24. Did any of the Indiamen have separate gun decks below the main deck?

No doubt that the mate is risking hanging for mutiny by his actions, but it doesn't seem too incredible to me that he might risk hanging later to avoid drowning right now. He may try to talk his way out of it later by pretending not to hear or understand the order, in the style of Nelson putting the telescope to his blind eye.

About the wheel, I was going by Harland's Seamanship in the Age of Sail, p173, which says that "The steering wheel was introduced as late as 1704, the innovation starting in large ships and gradually working down to smaller vessels." I took that to mean that it started in the very largest ships, like the 100+ gun first-rate ships of the line, but I suppose it could already have worked down to the Indiamen by 1712.

Also, when I said the Cynosure was frigate-built, I didn't mean the Napoleonic-era sense of the word frigate, like a naval ship that escorts convoys and does reconnaisance. I meant the 18th-century architectural meaning of "frigate-built," that is, having a sharply raised poop deck and fo'csle, like Culliford's Mocha Frigate. As opposed to the more flush-decked "galley-built" type of ship, like the Whydah Galley, Adventure Galley or Greyhound Galley. Falconer talks about this some here: here. I think Indiamen were typically built this way, but does that match with what you've seen in the museum?

I know of at least one case where a ship had her gunports open (and sank as a result) when not going into battle: the Vasa. But maybe by 1712 that's no longer realistic. (Was the Plyades going into battle in 1869 when she took water through her lower gunports?)

All the same, it looks like I'll have to go back to the drawing board, if I can just think up a situation that makes more sense. Please, any more suggestions would be outstanding.

Can any of you old shellbacks help a sailing novice write a realistic scenario for my novel?

What needs to happen in this scene is that the captain makes a disastrous mistake that could destroy the ship, and the ship is only saved by the prompt action of the first mate (thus beginning to show the heroine that her contempt for the mate and attraction to the captain are ill-considered).

Any scenario that meets the above criteria will work, but the scenario I had in mind goes like this. The ship is a heavily armed frigate-built East Indiaman-type merchant vessel named the Cynosure. It has twelve sixteen-pounders on the gun deck, twelve more on the main deck, and twelve twelve-pounders on the quarterdeck. It has an appropriate rig for 1712, which I guess would be three masts with courses, topsails and topgallants on main and fore masts, a spanker, mizzen topsail, and mizzen topgallant, and a spritsail, but I'm guessing no spritsail topsail.

The Cynosure is sailing southward off Angola on a calm and moonless night when she gets hit from dead astern by a strong squall. Because of the darkness, no one sees the squall coming, and the ship has most of her sails set. Cue horrendous pitching. The captain orders the courses and topgallants furled and the topsails reefed to their smallest possible size (which I am assuming is the right thing to do in these circumstances). The crew gets the courses furled and the topsails reefed; the topgallant sails blow out before they can be furled.

Now as I understand it, there are two basic approaches to riding out a dangerous storm in the Age of Sail: either "lie to" with the ship's head as close to the wind as it will go, or scud before it with most or all sails furled and the wind astern. The captain decides to lie to, because he's worried about being pooped by following seas, and maybe concerned about being driven onto shoals that lie some miles downwind. So he orders the helmsman to bring the ship's head around to starboard, but forgets that nobody has had time to close the gunports yet; nobody was expecting foul weather, so the gunports were open. As the Cynosure begins to turn up into the wind, she naturally heels over to port, and starts shipping water through her port side gunports. The mate, who has not forgotten about the gunports, quickly grabs the whipstaff from the helmsman and turns the rudder hard back to port, putting the ship back on an even keel before she can be swamped.

But would the mate's action work? Would the following seas break the rudder if it were turned abruptly to port with the ship's starboard quarter or broadside turned toward the wind, thus rendering the mate's action as disastrous as the captain's? If so, would there be anything else the mate could do to save the situation?

Is this scenario even remotely plausible? Can it be improved? Is there another, more realistic way to bring about the mate-saves-the-ship-from-the-captain's folly scenario?

It's very entertaining so far. Very well written, great imagery with the storm and the confrontation in Finch's office, nice character contrast between the flamboyant McCool and the dour Malachai. I loved the abrupt ending to the duel - finally, a scene that recognizes the fact that dueling was illegal and not something you wanted to get caught at! Good element of suspense regarding the mysterious contents of the barrels.

Criticism: there's some verbal flab that needs trimming. Like the "utterly" in "utterly drowned," or the "Well" in "Well, there had to be a first time for everything."

Several events strain credibility. I'm pretty sure McCool wouldn't be able to identify the Union Jack on a vessel that had only just come hull up; even with a spyglass in broad daylight, he'd be doing well to recognize a flag more than two miles away, and under these dark misty conditions it would be much harder. Also McCool's "graciousness," in sparing the crew the cat would not be appreciated, since pirate captains couldn't normally impose a flogging anyway without a vote of the majority of the crew. I'm also wondering why they just didn't deface the Company marks on the barrels, or cover them with tarpaulins, or something like that, although maybe it will make more sense once we discover what's in the barrels and what they're being used for.

I'd love to see more; so far it's been fun!

I think I read somewhere in Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast that sailors (as opposed to officers, obviously) on the Pilgrim and the Alert were not allowed to talk to each other while they were on deck or aloft. The reason wasn't stated, although I can imagine that the officers might prefer not to have to shout over a lot of other people's voices when they needed to give an order. This would have been about 1835 or 1836.

Was there a general rule of compulsory silence aboard sailing ships dating back to the 17th and 18th centuries? Or was the rule on Dana's ships limited to America, or to the 19th century, or both? I assume the pirates would not have had such a rule; at least, I've seen no such rule in any of their articles. But would their merchant and naval contemporaries have been accustomed to having to work in silence?

Come to think of it, there's nothing about staying silent on watch in the Royal Navy Articles of War of 1757, either, so long as you don't say anything mutinous, seditious, insulting, etc.

Try this link, going through the front door into the database:

http://www.slavevoyages.org/tast/index.faces

(Hey Daniel, where ya' been? You should try re-enacting. It's sort of fun. Got any more new pirates for the database? )

Don't have the money for real re-enacting, alas. I've been raising my family. Starting next autumn, I'll be studying to become something even more bloodthirsty and rapacious than a pirate: a lawyer!

I'm writing a second pirate novel now, tentatively titled Marooner's Cay. I have to get it done before autumn buries me under a ton of law books.