Daniel

This is great stuff, especially the pictures by Callenish and Mrs. Barbossa. More, please! I wish I could draw like this. I've tried drawing some of the characters from my pirate stories, but all my faces look like Jack-o-lanterns.

Real men wear pink!

Well, remember most ships taken by pirates were not wrecked. The pirates usually either took the ship for themselves or let the ship go after ransacking it. The three exceptions that come instantly to mind are a ship that Stede Bonnet destroyed to keep news of his piracy from Barbados, a slave ship Bartholomew Roberts destroyed as a warning to the port he was attacking, and a Boston ship Blackbeard destroyed because Boston authorities had recently hanged some pirates. In all three cases, the pirates burned the ship, so there would be very little wreckage left. It's interesting, I think more wrecks of pirate ships than prize ships have been located today. I know of four pirate ship wrecks that have been located: Blackbeard's Queen Anne's Revenge, Billy One-Hand's Fiery Dragon, Kidd's Adventure Galley, and Bellamy's Whydah. I don't know of even one wreck of a pirate prize that has been located, though maybe someone else does...

This is so silly that I will not even respond to it. You believe what you want, leave the knowledge to others. I hadn't see those pictures of the beurtschip you found. You're right, it does have lower decks on it, which would disqualify it from being a boat under Falconer, though maybe not by the sources Foxe quoted. It is true that belief does not qualify as fact. Since, in regard to sailors and ships, all you have done is state your belief, it indeed does not qualify as fact. I, on the other hand, have provided sources as close to the period as I can find, that so far stand unrefuted. I will add that of course I would not apply the period definition of a ship to modern ships. But we are talking about a period vessel here.

Well, so you say, but on what basis? Did somebody in period say that? One thing that I believe qualifies the beurtschip as a boat is that it appears to be open. I don't see any portholes or any other sign of a lower deck. But even if it isn't, it still can't be a ship, in 1625, without three masts. I'll agree with Wikipedia that that is one meaning of "sailor." But that would in no way disqualify waisters, foc'slemen or afterguard, all of whom could be found enlisted in the Navy and serving in those roles on Navy ships.

As I understand it, "brig" the shipboard prison and "brig" the sailing vessel share a common origin. In the 18th century (post-GAoP, I think), old brigs that weren't seaworthy anymore would be dismasted and used as prison hulks for miscreant sailors. Thus brig acquired its second meaning as a prison, which was later applied to a prison room aboard ship. Its use in movies set in early 18th century or before is probably anachronistic. I do recall reading in GAoP sources about sailors being confined in iron "bilboes" that held their feet. I'd have to dig out old notes to know the names of the sources though, and I never found out where aboard ship the bilboes were.

I agree that it wouldn't make much sense for the pirates to have a skull and crossbones in town. The Jolly Roger was intended to warn your victims to surrender while there was still time. When you're not actively robbing people, there's no point in displaying it. If I were actively seeking to justify bringing a Jolly Roger to the ren faire, I would say I was plundering the fair. Granted, Jolly-Roger-era pirates usually didn't attack shore settlements. But George Roberts did report that Ned Low's pirates robbed a small island settlement somewhere (Tenerife, was it?). Granted, even Roberts does not say that Low flew a Jolly Roger at the time. But I suppose you could kinda sorta justify a Jolly Roger ashore that way. And for faire purposes, it does have the great virtue that it tells people right away what your persona is.

In this thread I found myself falling afoul of our good Capn Enigma, who protested my use of nautical terms. First, we disagree about the use of the words "ship" and "boat," when I described the beurtschip as a "cargo boat." Now, frankly, I never heard of a beurtschip before that thread. But Gentleman of Fortune gave us a picture of one, and from what I see, that is no ship, because it only has one mast. I don't know what to call that spar holding up the weather clew of the sail, but it clearly can't support the sail by itself, so it's not a mast. A ship, in the 17th, 18th cand early 19th centuries, was a vessel of three or more masts, square-rigged on all masts. Falconer, for example, says that a ship is properly a "vessel furnished with three masts, each of which is composed of a lower mast, top-mast, and top-gallant-mast, with the usual machinery thereto belonging. " Lauchlan McKay's Practical Shipbuilder from 1839 defines a ship as a "three-masted vessel," which would include barques and barquentines, but still would not include our beurtschip. Is the beurtschip a boat? I think so. Darcy Lever's A Young Sea Officer's Sheet Anchor defines boats simply as "small vessels." Falconer says a boat is "a small open vessel, conducted on the water by rowing or sailing." Only Brindley's Naval Architecture would exclude the beurtschip from being a boat. Capn Enigma and I also clashed on the word "sailor." It went like this. Capn Enigma: "You did not seriously consider that those kind of boots were worn by a sailor (the guys working in the rigging) for one second, right? " Daniel: "Certainly I did. Not every sailor is a topman; there are fo'csle hands, waisters, afterguard, and officers too. " Capn Enigma: "Those are in ascending rank order servants, NCOs, warrant officers and officers. They are emphatically not sailors. " I have always used "sailor," "seaman" and "mariner" interchangeably, as a general word for the guys who are attached to the ship and know how to work it. Maybe I was wrong about that. But what Capn Enigma has said can't be right. Starting with Harland, Seamanship in the Age of Sail, chapter 6, this is what we find about waisters. "'[W]aisters' were 'green hands and worn seamen, employed as sweepers and cleaners.'" There's no way these green hands could be "NCOs" as Capn Enigma has it. Furthermore, NCO is an exclusively military rank, so that would suggest there could never be waisters on merchant ships. Harland further notes that the afterguard is the "men who are stationed on the quarterdeck and poop, to work the after sails. It was generally composed of ordinary seamen and landsmen, constituting with the waisters the largest part of the crew, on whom the principal drudgery of the ship devolved." Again, these were ordinary seamen and even landsmen, not "warrant officers" as Capn Enigma has it. I can find no warrant for the idea that fo'csle hands, waisters, and other guys who spend most of their time down on deck heaving braces, tacks and sheets aren't sailors. As described in Harland, most of them are "seamen." Falconer's entry on "seaman" uses the term interchangeably with "sailor." "SEAMAN, (homme de mer, Fr.) a mariner or person trained in the exercise of fixing the machinery of a ship, and applying it to the purposes of navigation. The principal articles required in a common sailor to intitle him to the full wages, are, that he can steer, found, and manage the sails, by extending, reefing, and furling them, as occasion requires. When he is expert at these exercises, his skill in all other matters relative to his employment is taken for granted. " So to sum up, foc'sle hands, waisters, and afterguard were usually seamen, and seamen were sailors. Over to you, Capn.

I don't have the vocabulary to understand a lot of that. Was was a "toutpie?" "Surtout" I assume is French for "overall," but does that mean something like what we call overalls? "Chapeau" is a very old word. "Chapeau de fer" was a word for a style of steel helmet as early as the 13th century.

The spelling in the original text is "dublet." I modernized it to "doublet," I hope correctly. I included the children's clothes in the list because some percentage of pirate crews were young boys, although I don't know whether it was a significant percentage or not. My colleague Tony Malesic mentioned one pirate trial where a boy of 14 was hanged, and his lawyer claimed him to be even younger. I believe Douglas Botting's The Pirates reports a captured pirate crew that included boys as young as 10, though I'll have to double-check to be sure. Finally, in keeping with the standard maxim that the characteristics of pirates are largely the characteristics of seamen generally, there are certainly many recorded instances of boys going to sea at quite a young age. So while there certainly weren't many physically immature pirates (average age of a pirate was 27 per Cordingly), there could have been enough for it to make a difference what clothes they had available. Adult female pirates, in contrast, were not only vanishingly rare, but almost certainly wore men's clothing when they did occur, so I excluded women's clothes. GoF, demity waistcoats and scarlet parragon coats were not fancy? I have no basis to contradict you; I'm just surprised to hear that such items were in financial reach for the general public.

Those are in ascending rank order servants, NCOs, warrant officers and officers. They are emphatically not sailors. Your various objections merit a thread of their own, which I am going to open when I have time. But I don't want to get this thread too far away from these boots. In the interests of keeping the thread on topic, Falconer's Marine Dictionary says that the word crew "comprehends the officers, sailors, seamen, marines, ordinary men, servants and boys." So if I amend my above statement to "these boots might have been meant for sale to landsmen, rather than being worn by a crewman," will we all be cool? I will agree with Foxeand GoF that these boots do not by themselves prove that seamen wore boots pre-GAoP. And so far they are, indeed, by themselves. I have no brief to carry in favor of bucket boots on seamen or pirates.

I've received no communication, but my posting ability has apparently been restored. Thank you to my unknown benefactor.

Well, here's a clue from Cane Quest. I have no independent confirmation of this. The page refers to Kurt Stein's Canes and Walking Sticks and to Francis Monek's Canes Through the Ages, but the inadequate footnotes do not make it clear which, if either, of these sources leads to the purported wills and French ordinance. Barring outright fraud, there is a picture of Robert Burns' sword cane at SCRAN, from when Burns was an excise inspector c. 1789, so there is at least one pre-Victorian sword cane visible on the Web.

I realize that the persuasive value of any novel is zero, but merely for the record I'll mention that Louis L'Amour's Fair Blows the Wind has the gypsy Kory armed with a sword-cane. But perhaps there's a point there. Would it be worthwhile for petty merchants, gypsies, Jews, and other fellows low on the social scale to have sword-canes? People who were generally considered not to be socially entitled to wear a sword, or who may even have been prohibited by law from doing so, but who wanted to defend themselves? This is speculative, I realize, unless someone actually can find evidence of a pre-Revolutionary sword-cane.

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!)

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.

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?

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.

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.