Daniel

I dunno if this applies to the so- called Golden Age as well, but buccaneer grenadiers usually carried a dozen of them in a utility bag on the left side, along with the sword.

As the grenades were cast iron, breaking them was not really a problem.

And FYI: Every buccaneer chucking a grenade into an enemy fortress received a bonus of 5 Pieces Of Eight above his normal share.

Thank you!

About this "utility bag": is this something that attaches to a belt or is slung over the shoulder?

I had been under the impression that grenades were sometimes made from hardened clay or glass, not just cast iron.

GoF, thanks for the pointer to Boarders Away. (As for launching grenades by the hand mortar, thanks but no thanks. I already read what you wrote on your site about them!)

I don't know that I'd call Cordingly's book "one of the top sources on pirates". It's a decent entry-level primer, and Cordingly is a good aggregator of the standard period accounts. But even just a little digging beyond his work will make his generalizations obvious to the researcher. The best thing to do with books like that is dive straight into the bibliography and collect THOSE sources.

Fair enough. I wouldn't claim infallibility for Cordingly; I've caught him in errors myself. If there's something in Rediker, Ritchie, Johnson, Exquemelin, et al that contradicts his claim that pirates wore their very best ashore, OK. I just want to see it. (I have read each of those, except for Rediker, but I certainly could have overlooked something against that quote from Cordingly).

Greenighs, sorry if I dragged you into something I shouldn't have.

That's fine, if it's among your own crew. In an open port like Port Royal. or even Charleston, there are plenty of people about who are not of your crew or are not even pirates.

Sorry, I've got to agree with Kass on this. Rather than keep something I've plundered for an occasional wearing ashore or take the chance of it making me a target for the King's men or other thieves, rogues and vagabonds, I think it far more likely that it would be sold for cash that I could use for rum and women.

Another factor to be considered here. Where are you going to keep this? The average seaman does not have a closet below decks for all his plundered finery. A small seachest and maybe a seabag is about it. Coin and jewelry makes more sense and is easier stored than a bloody great velvet coat.

Hawkyns

I see the point. I don't doubt that in some cases finery would have been sold for coin. However, as the sources indicate, sailors did reserve their best clothes (doubtless only one suit, for the space reasons you mentioned) for going ashore, and sailors in Charleston or Port Royal would have been just as vulnerable as pirates. So apparently the risk, though no doubt real, was not a complete deterrent.

Possibly pirates and other sailors dressing up for shore leave may have stuck together to guard against cutthroats from rival crews?

Oh well. Then I must be completely wrong.

Back to the bucket boots and velvet coats, kids. I obviously don't know what I'm talking about. Three pirates in 100 years wore velvet according to someone...

And hear that? Throw away your jackets and plain shirts. You must wear BLUE jacket and CHECKED shirts and RED waistcoats or you're not a pirate!

Do you really believe this drivel, Greenighs? I have heard you argue better than this before...

Yup, you're completely wrong, Kass.

The sum total of your evidence was woodcuts of landsknechts. Greenighs threw one of the top sources on pirates back at you. Strawman arguments like "back to bucket boots" suggest that you don't have any real evidence to refute Greenighs with. If you've got evidence instead of strawmen, show it.

Furthermore, if I am a sundry low-life type like a pirate, why would I parade around my fellow peers consisting of thieves and robbers while wearing something that they just might decide to relieve ME of?

Because, if any of them did such a thing, they would be mutilated and probably die?

Article 2 of Bartholomew Roberts' crew: "If any man rob another he shall have his nose and ears slit, and be put ashore where he shall be sure to encounter hardships."

Books like the Sea-Man's Vade Mecum and Defensive War At Sea emphasize the use of grenades or "granadoes" in naval warfare.

It occurs to me that grenades would have been very inconvenient to carry, as you can't just stick them in a belt like a firelock, sword or dagger. You could put them in a very large pocket or pouch, I suppose, though there would be the risk of breakage. Does anyone know how these weapons would have been carried? Did men carry them all the time, or were they kept in the arms chest and simply passed out right before the enemy got in throwing range? Were they lighted by the gun crews' linstocks?

How effective were these grenades? I speculate that they were substantially less lethal than modern fragmentation grenades, and would most often have stunned and injured opponents rather than killing them outright (death perhaps following some days later from infected fragment wounds and burns). Does anyone have good sources on the lethality of Golden Age grenades?

Thanks for the info. I would definitely like to "walk back the cat" on this intelligence failure, starting with Pete's Dutch friend.

Those boots may not be from the Batavia, but they are clearly shown in some kind of display case. Maybe they're just in a shop display case, but if that is a museum case, I would like to know the real origin of those boots.

I don't think the Woodes Rogers report is describing a crossing of the Line, in the sense of the equator. It refers to the "Tropick." All period sources I've seen call the equator the "Equinoctial," not the "Tropick." I assume this source is referring to the Tropic of Cancer, not the equator.

It is sometimes speculated that Bartholomew Roberts' articles, with their prohibition on gambling and bringing women aboard, were Puritan-influenced. Certainly Roberts was Protestant, as he had been elected partly to ensure that a Catholic captain would not replace Howell Davis. Still, there's no real evidence that he was Puritan; his articles are equally well explained by a desire to avoid conflict amongst the crew.

The Restoration of King Charles II in 1660 was the end of Puritanism's heyday. The Puritans became one of the many groups lumped together as "Dissenters" or "Nonconformists," excluded from political power or office in the Church of England. Some went to the Americas, but generally to New England, not the Caribbean, and they are better known for going into business than into piracy.

I find Brethren of the Coast to be a superb site.

Le Diable Volant has some great sources on it also.

Piratesinfo.com is good, but I find the forum to be more valuable than the rest of the site.

Wait a sec; was Evans' body recovered? I was proceeding from the assumption that his body had been lost when he drowned.

Well, I see that there isn't any footgear in the inventory whatsoever, so be it sandals, buckle shoes, or bucket-topped boots, it went over the side with him. I doubt a master would have been barefoot...

What about the sea book? Would that have been a log/rutter? Or a manual?

Not only do I read Military History, I have submitted an article to it on the capture of Gibraltar and am preparing another on the battle of Cape Fear river where Stede Bonnet was captured.

Congratulations! I'll drink to that!

Where might the script be staged when perfected?

Incidentally, Cordingly also mentions that while the death penalty was authorized for sodomy, imprisonment or the pillory were more common punishments for this offense. (He is referring to the Golden Age of Piracy; in the 1750s the Articles of War imposed a mandatory death penalty for "buggery").

Let me just throw a figure at you for the fun of it. In his research for his excellent book "Sailors", the historian Peter Earle looked at the lives of thousands and thousands of English merchant seamen of the 1650-1775 era. He found ONE case of homosexuality.

Well, OK, but there are other studies that show a little more gay action than that. Cordingly reports that there were 11 courts-martial in the British admiralty courts for sodomy in the Seven Years' War (with seven convictions for "indecency" resulting). He also mentions that there were 50 documented cases of homosexuality amongst Chinese pirate defendants, 1796 to 1800.

I think it's pretty clear that the majority of pirates were straight, though.

Note: John Russell was not a captain. He was Low's quartermaster, though Roberts estimated that his influence with the crew was greater than Low's. However, even Russell was not always able to sway the crew to agree with him, as in this case.

I have bought this one and read it. There's a fair degree of overlap between it and Konstam's previous Osprey book, Pirates: 1660-1730, but I still found it well worthwhile, especially for the beautiful illustrations that Osprey is so good at providing. Lots of new information on the Adventure Galley and the Fiery Dragon, plus much more detail on Captain Edmund Condent than I have encountered anywhere else.

Like all Osprey books, this one is short, so there's no space to include small technical details or info on sailing techniques of pirates. That's the other major drawback.

For the price, I would say it is definitely worthwhile.

All I can tie is a square knot/reef knot, sheet bend, bowline, sheep shank, clove hitch, and cow hitch. And I can only tie the bowline by the lubber's method, not the sailor's method.

I learned a roband knot once, the kind they used to tie sails to the yards, but I forgot how.

I own an Encyclopedia of Knots, which has lots of neat knots in it that I don't know how to tie. One of the neatest I think was called the thief knot, which leaves two ends, one secure and one not secure. So you can tie it at the top of a wall or cliff, throw both ends down, climb down the secure end, and then jerk on the insecure end to undo the knot and bring your rope with you. Unfortunately, I never learned to tie it.

Since so many o' ye all are re-enactors, can ye tell me if swinging aboard on a rope is actually a practical way to get on board the other ship?

Where do you anchor the rope you're swinging on? Do you throw it onto your own yard, or the other fellow's yard? It seems to me that if you stood at the gunwale you'd almost have to throw the rope onto the other ship's yard, because otherwise you'd swing backward instead of forward.

And if you don't swing aboard, how do you do it. Jump from one gunwale to the other? Get down in boats and use ropes to climb up the hull? Throw planks down from one gunwale to the adjacent ship's gunwale and charge across?

Was the Mary Rose the one that sank when she heeled over and took water through her lower gunports?

Claire, that's a magnificent picture. Ye done well, mate!

OK, I'm back home and have access to Cordingly. My memory was wrong; Cordingly talks about bows and arrows, but I see no reference specifically to longbows.

Page 27, describing the 1572 Nombre de Dios raid: "When the rain ceased, many of Drake's men found that their guns and bows were useless because powder, matches, and bowstrings were soaked."

Page 30, describing the attack on the treasure ship Cacafuego in 1579: "The first bombardment from her guns...was followed by a withering fire of arrows and musket shot."

I assume at least some of these were ordinary longbows and not crossbows, because crossbow projectiles are normally called bolts or quarrels, not arrows.

"SInce medieval days...no contrivance for fighting has matched in discomfort and inconvenience and use contrary to nature the floating castle called a ship of the line in the age of fighting sail. With its motor power dependent on the caprice of heaven and direction-finding on the distant stars, and its central piece of equipment - the mast - dependent on seasoned timber that was rarely obtainable, and control of locomotion dependent on rigging and ropes of a complexity to defy philosophers of the Sorbonne, much less the homeless untutored poor off the streets who made up the crews, and communication from commander to his squadron dependent on signal flags easily obscured by distance or smoke from the guns or by pitching of the ship, these cumbersome vehicles were as convenient as if dinosaurs had survived to be used by cowboys for driving cattle."

- - Barbara Tuchman, "The First Salute."

I believe I read about Drake's bowmen first in David Cordingly's Under the Black Flag, but I don't have it ready to hand.

However, my local library has a copy of John Sugden, Sir Francis Drake, New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1990, and on page 55-56 it describes the weapons handout in Drake's expedition right before the Nombre de Dios raid of 1572. "He [Drake] got his assault force to an island at Cativas, where each man was issued a principal tool or weapon. There were six shields, twelve pikes, six firepikes which could also act as torches, twenty-four arquebuses, sixteen bows, six spears, two drums, and two trumpets."

Apparently some of the "bows" referred to may have been crossbows rather than longbows, because on page 57 Sugden says that "even the strings to their crossbows were too wet to be efficient." But I am pretty sure I recall Cordingly referring specifically to longbows being carried by Drake's men.

Sugden gives his source for this as an account written about 1592 by Philip Nichols, the Rector of Mylor, who compiled it from lost eyewitness reports. This account was published in 1626 under the title Sir Francis Drake Revived.