Daniel

"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!

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?

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.

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.

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.

There's an entry for the ''Whydah Gally'' (spelled ''Whidaw Gally'' in the database). Most of the details are already on line on Wikipedia or the Whydah Project homepage, and the entry matches up well with those sources: 300 tons, 18 guns, captained by Lawrence Prince at time of capture. But here are some additional details I don't see in the obvious Internet sources. The Whydah was owned by Roberts George (misprint for George Roberts?), and sailed from London on her last mission. She loaded slaves at Whydah (as you'd expect from her name), and had already unloaded them at Jamaica at some time in 1716. Thus, when Bellamy captured her in late February, 1717, it would have been at least two months after her arrival at Jamaica. Unfortunately, there is no data about the slaves she had been carrying. The database gives a "standardized tonnage for the ''Whydah'' of 343. This is an effort the researchers made to render the various tonnage measures uniform, although they admit it may not be reliable. For pre-1786 voyages, they say the standardized tonnage is an attempt to measure the registered tons. The database also ahs an entry for the ''Concorde'', which of course became Blackbeard's ''Queen Anne's Revenge'', but I see nothing on it that is not already available at qaronline.org, especially in the excellent essay "A Brief history of Blackbeard & Queen Anne's Revenge." (61 slaves had died in the crossing before Blackbeard seized the ''Concorde'', 31 in her voyage the previous year, and 55 on her 1713 run. Even considering his actions at Charleston and Ocracoke, Blackbeard did humanity a favor by taking that ship).

Just found this: there is an entry in the database for the Onslow's last voyage before Bartholomew Roberts seized her. According to their research, the ''Onslow'' was a South Sea Company ship, not a Royal Africa Company vessel as Johnson's ''General History of the Pyrates'' has it, although Johnson is one of their sources. They give her tonnage as 360, or 268 "standardized tonnage," and suggest she was frigate-built with 26 guns (the tonnage figure differs from Richard Sanders' ''If a Pirate I Must Be'', p. 186). She had left London on June 13, 1721, with a crew of 50 men. Sources listed are as follows: CO390/7: The National Archives (Kew, UK) Colonial Office CO388/25,376,379: The National Archives (Kew, UK) Colonial Office T70/922,92-7: The National Archives (Kew, UK) Treasury CO390/7: The National Archives (Kew, UK) Colonial Office T70/1225,23: The National Archives (Kew, UK) Treasury HCA1/99,pt3,CapeCoastCastle: The National Archives (Kew, UK) High Court of Admiralty T70/4,23-4: The National Archives (Kew, UK) Treasury Defoe,228,229,252: Defoe, Daniel, History of the Pirates (London, [1724] 1814).

Pirate scholars, ahoy! When you have a chance, go over to http://www.slavevoyages.org/tast/database/search.faces. Click on "General Variables," then on "Voyage Outcome," then on "Particular Outcome of Voyage." Then on "Current Query," click "Select," scroll down, and check off all the pirate subcategories; I suggest the four that start "Captured by pirates or privateers," then the ones that say "Captured by pirates - slaves sold in the Americas by another ship," "Some slaves removed by pirates/privateers," "Either shipwrecked or captured by pirates before slaves taken aboard," and "Captured by Algerian pirates." Then click "search." You will come up with names and dates for 137 slave ships that were captured by pirates or privateers from 1567 to 1830, often showing other data like the victim's tonnage, number of guns, type of rig or hull, although unfortunately there is no similar data on the pirate vessels. Most importantly, a comprehensive list of sources for each capture appears at the bottom of every entry. If you then go over to "Timeline," and change the variable from the "number of captives disembarked" to "total voyages," you'll see a timeline of pirate attacks on slave ships. 1719 is far and away the peak year, with 13 ships captured by pirates or privateers, with a grand total of 33 taken from 1717 to 1723. At least as measured by its effect on the slave ships, 1717 to 1723 is the true Golden Age of Piracy. There are other noticeable outbursts of up to 5 ships captured in a year clustered around 1747, 1757, 1818 and 1828. These are presumably associated with privateering in the War of the Austrian Succession (jocularly known as the War of Jenkins' Ear in Britain), the Seven Years' War, and the Latin American wars of independence. Pirates and privateers evidently took a much lesser toll on the slave ships during 1689-97 (War of the Grand Alliance and the Pirate Round): just 5 documented captures from 1689 to 1696. And from 1660-1680, the glory years of Port Royal and Tortuga, not one of the 671 known slaving voyages in the database fell victim to a pirate or privateer. I don't know how complete the database is, but the amount of data is astounding: almost 35,000 documented slaving voyages. At some point I'd like to cross-reference with Johnson and see how many of the captures he documents are referred to in the database. Dig in, pirate historians, and let the pirate world know what you find!

I want to write an article about the history of the cutlass, or the hanger, as the two seem to be synonymous. The Old Bailey proceedings on line are great for learning about criminal use of the cutlass (mainly on land) from the 1680s onward, but I think the cutlass is at least a hundred years older than that, and I'd like to have more info about earlier cutlasses. Also, I'd really like to have more info about who made cutlasses and how. Somewhere there must be some records of the Navy Board ordering cutlasses and paying the manufacturers (or maybe a middleman) to get them. Anybody know where to look?

The second most famous pirate flag, after the skull and crossbones, is the bloody flag or pavillon nomme sansquartier. It's well known that it was used by pirates and privateers, but we don't normally associate it with colliers. Well, I stumbled across the bloody flag in the Proceedings of the Old Bailey (indispensable for any GAoP researcher). In 1768, some collier captains who were sick of waiting for London's dockside coal-heavers to unload their ships ordered their sailors to take the coal ashore themselves. The coal-heavers, who saw their bread and butter being taken away, took rather unkindly to this, and threatened to murder the sailors. At least one of the collier captains responded by hoisting a red "bloody flag" to his masthead, ostensibly as a signal for the sailors to gather and resist the coal-heavers. The sailors referred to it as the "flag of defiance" as well as the "bloody flag." For all their fearsome flag, things didn't go very well for the sailors, who were unarmed in the face of the coal-heavers' cutlasses. The coal-heavers tricked some of the sailors ashore, murdered one, and beat several of the others black and blue.

Great episode! Loved it! I am completely shocked at the outcome of the splinter test. All those splinters, but almost no penetration. And even less splinterage with higher muzzle velocity. Amazing! Many contemporary sources talk about the sailors' fear of splinters, (notably The Seaman's Vade Mecum and Defensive War by Sea), but apparently the danger was much overhyped. One mistake they made was to test only with pine and oak. In England, oak was legally reserved for the Royal Navy (Joseph Jobe, ed., The Great Age of Sail, p. 75). The popular Jamaica sloop's hull was made of red cedar (Angus Konstam, Pirates: 1660-1730, p. 45). Still, I would guess they'd have got much the same results with cedar as with the other woods. As for the eyepatch test, I'd say they proved pretty well that it would have worked as advertised to preserve night vision. Of course, that's completely different from proving that pirates ever actually did such a thing. My main reaction, though, is: I wanna do that obstacle course! I wanna, I wanna, I wanna! It was absolute genius to test the laundry on pitch-stained clothing. Absolutely, working with all those pitch-smeared lines would have got pitch all over your clothes. And amazingly, that dehydrated urine actually would have worked (again, no proof that pirates actually knew that or did that, though). Nix on the orange stains, though. Oranges wouldn't have kept for a week on board a pirate ship. Even lime juice wasn't used until after GAoP. The sliding down the sail bit was great fun to watch too. I'm amazed they came as close to pulling it off as they did. So, what other questions should we ask Mythbusters about? How about, can you actually throw a line and grapple onto a yard and swing onto somebody's ship with it? I'd like to see it done. Or how about experimental testing on "Red sky at night, sailor's delight, red sky at morning, sailors take warning"? Or as long as they're brutalizing pig carcasses, is it actually possible to run somebody through with a cutlass (i.e. in the front, out the back) one-handed? Can a person actually float to shore by holding on to two wine casks, as Bartholomeo Portugues reputedly did?

I was reading Samuel Pepys' diary and stumbled across relevant evidence that those four double camlet coats were indeed rich clothing, possibly richer than the two justaucorps. The annotation mentions that "Camlet was a mixed stuff of wool and silk. It was very expensive, and later Pepys gave 24l. for a suit. (See June 1st, 1664.) " 24 pounds wasn't chump change. At the very least, a pirate can justify wearing a rich camlet coat, though doubtless such wear would have been reserved for shore visits.

Rhett's job as a South Carolina official could be dangerous; according to this petition, he got shot while doing it. I'm not sure what happened to this case. A warrant was issued for Daniell, the alleged shooter, to be arrested and brought to trial. Daniell defended the case through a lawyer named William Blakeney. Then the record ends. At a wild guess, some settlement was reached and Rhett dropped the case.

I thank you for the interest Coastie, but I had better not go posting the article as yet, as the history magazines I'm dealing with have websites and may want to buy first world electronic rights. As for e-mailing, let me consider for a little while. Honestly, my article has very little new in it. Other than the stuff I've posted here, which is cool but basically tangential to Bonnet's last battle (I only have one paragraph on Fayrer Hall in the finished article), my article's only original contributions to world scholarship are the tonnage of the Sea Nymph (50 tons, assuming the Sea Nymph later bought by Woodes Rogers is the same one that fought in the battle), and disentangling some of Bonnet's motives for returning to piracy. Ignatius Pell, Bonnet's boatswain, made it clear that up to the very day of the battle of Cape Fear River Bonnet still intended to go privateering in the Caribbean as soon as hurricane season ended, and thus his piracy was clearly intended simply to tide him and his crew over the summer after Blackbeard left them so unexpectedly short of provisions and ready cash. I also contribute a little to dispelling the notion, once popular, that Rhett was a novice at naval warfare, but that job has largely already been done by Lindley Butler.

Here's the petition where Fayrer Hall sues William Rhett for slandering him as a pirate. It's extremely lengthy, and inexplicably repetitive, so I've taken the liberty of bolding the section where Rhett lays his charges. I swear, pleading style in the early 18th century must have been to write everything as one long run-on sentence. I suppose that makes it harder for the judge to interrupt you if you're reading the blasted thing in open court.

Yes, the Darien scheme is what you're looking for. Bartholomew Roberts was Welsh. I can't believe I forgot that Kidd was Scottish, originally from Greenock. I just usually think of him as a New Yorker, since he lived there so long. Cordingly estimates that about 10% of Golden Age pirates were Scots. The transcript of Stede Bonnet's trial shows four Scots out of 29 defendants: Neal Paterson, Willliam Scot, and George Dunkin, all from Aberdeen, and Bonnet's gunner George Ross, from Glasgow. All four were convicted of piracy and sentenced to death. Note that not all Scots pirates would have been Highlanders; the Scottish Lowlands were much more populous, after all.