Daniel

Pictures from the Hampton Festival. Regrettably, I was so busy talking with Cross and Jack that I forgot to take pictures with them!

Blackbeard and Maynard duel aboard the Serenity.

The Meka II returns to dock (not under sail, alas).

A pirate hanging in irons.

Blackbeard's crew being brought in for trial.

Don't let her near the clam strips!

Mistreating the prisoners.

Mistreating the prisoners is really fun!

Calico Jack and Calico Jenny. They played awesome seagoing songs that Jenny wrote herself. Top quality stuff. I couldn't afford to buy any of their CDs, but I encourage all of you to do so.

Calico Jenny.

Calico Jack.

The Shadow Players stage combat group.

The Shadow Players.

A lady of the Shadow Players awaits a challenger.

Looks like she found a challenger.

Nix one challenger.

The Shadow Players' master of the whip.

how could I have called this Book Chirurgia Curiosa, if had said nothing of it?[/url]

I just got back from Hampton last night (no money to stay overnight, alas).

It was SO FRIGGIN' AWESOME! I am totally pumped! I got to spend HOURS talking with Bosun Cross, Jolly Jack Tar, and Callenish Gunner. I also got to meet Capt. Sterling, Dorian Lasseter, Matty Bottles, Adam Cypher, and many others of the good ship Archangel. I got to ACTUALLY HOLD AND USE a backstaff and plumb Jack's knowledge of navigation! It took me quite a while to locate people from the Pub, but it was worth the search. And seeing the Ocracoke battle re-enactment, the singing by the Brigands and Calico Jack and Jenny, the fireworks,

I am definitely going to join this hobby at some point. Maybe not until after I graduate from law school, but this is going to happen.

Crickets chirping . . .

I guess this means that everybody's at Hampton. I'll see some of you there tomorrow, I hope.

Good article, Captain. Makes it very clear that the benefit of clergy in the colonies lagged behind the benefit of clergy in England in many ways.

According to the Old Bailey on line the brand was a letter: T for Thief, F for Felon, or M for Murderer. I assume there were not too many of the latter, given that murder was usually not clergyable, but it was given to persons convicted of manslaughter. Between 1699 and 1707 the brand was applied to the cheek (ouch!), but they stopped that when they found that it made the victim unemployable, and thus, presumably, guaranteed to turn to (or return to) theft.

I looked again and fonud I was wrong in stating that other countries had benefit of clergy. Benefit of clergy in England resulted from when King Henry II had to promise to let clergy be tried by church courts in order to get the Pope's forgiveness for Thomas Becket's murder. Other kings hadn't made any such promise, so the Pope was angry with Henry VIII only because he wasn't adhering to his predecessor's promise.

One of the bizarre little twists of European and colonial law was the "benefit of clergy." In England, by the 17th century, if you could read Psalm 51, the court pretended that this established you were a clergyman, and therefore not eligible for the death sentence. In the old days they would actually hand you over to a canon law court, but by our period that wasn't done any more; they just branded you on the thumb to make sure you couldn't plead the benefit twice, and might sentence you to up to a year in prison. Psalm 51 came to be known as the "neck verse," because it would save your neck if you could read it, or if you could memorize it and pretend to read it (very significant in an illiterate age).

In 1706, the "reading" of the neck verse was abolished, and the benefit of clergy became available to all first time offenders. The 1718 Transportation Act made the branded pleaders liable to transportation to North America (hence, I suppose, the passage in Moll Flanders where Moll's mother tells her that much of the population of Virginia has been branded in the hand).

The obvious question: are there any cases of pirates pleading benefit of clergy to save their necks? Not all offenses were clergyable in English law, particularly severe ones. (I think Catholic countries, which also had benefit of clergy, tended to be much more liberal in granting it; the Pope was very angry at Henry VIII for excluding certain offenses from benefit of clergy). Nicholas Trott, presiding over the trial of Stede Bonnet's pirates in 1718, said that a statute of Henry VIII had caused pirates to be "ousted of the Clergy," which suggests that piracy was not subject to benefit of clergy.

An 1830 law treatise draws a slightly different picture. It says that a statute of James I restored piracy to the benefit of clergy, as ruled by Sir Edward Coke, but that subequent law had again excluded piracy from benefit of clergy. The Piracy Act of 1717 declares that pirates "shall and ought to be utterly debarred and excluded from the benefit of clergy." But I don't know whether this was the first time since James I that pirates had been excluded from the benefit of clergy, or the act merely confirmed that an earlier exclusion of pirates from the benefit was still in force.

Part of the difficulty in calling the Barbary corsairs privateers is that the Sultan of Morocco, and his master in turn, the Ottoman Sultan in Constantinople, were most often at peace with England, Spain, and the other countries that the corsairs preyed on. The Ottomans in the early 17th century were locked in a death struggle with Poland; the last thing they wanted was more wars that would weaken their efforts against Poland. So the corsairs weren't privateers in the classic sense of private sailors and ship owners who help their monarch fight a war in return for plunder, because their monarchs weren't at war with their victims. Again, it's a lot like Port Royal, where Henry Morgan looted Spanish Panama after a peace treaty was signed, which made his attack legally piratical, but he conspicuously avoided punishment.

One reason that the Ottoman sultan wasn't willing to clamp down too hard on the corsairs, even though they endangered the very valuable and profitable trade between Ottoman Turkey and England, was that the Ottoman Sultan wanted the corsairs available to join his navy in case of war with Venice, Spain, or another Mediterranean power. The Ottomans' navy was all oared galleys, but the corsairs had developed tall ships, thanks in large part to those two fellows Foxe mentioned, Simon Danseker and John Ward. The Ottoman Sultan (or his mom, who was often really in charge) needed those tall ships in case of war, so he couldn't afford to stop them from taking the prizes that maintained their existence and their crews' training.

The Muslim corsairs who operated out of Algiers, Sale, Tunis and Tripoli from the 1500s through the early 1800s were called "Barbary pirates" by English speakers throughout most of history. But most secondary sources from the 1970s or so onward do not call the North African corsairs pirates, insisting that these corsairs were really privateers acting under commissions from the government, and that they should properly be regarded as privateers.

But, David Hebb makes a contrary argument in Piracy and the English Government, 1616-1642 (a very interesting book which I will report on later). Hebb says that the Barbary corsair ports, while each under their own Pasha (or Bashaw, the same thing), were all under the formal leadership of the Sultan of Morocco. He says that the Sultan of Morocco did not authorize corsair raids, and that the Sultan was in fact powerless to control the pirates. That, and the fact that the Barbary corsairs were treated as pirates by European laws, leads Hebb to call the Barbary corsairs pirates, just as most English speakers called them until a few decades ago.

Hebb doesn't say whether the pashas of the Barbary Coast cities gave their corsairs letters of marque or otherwise formally legalized their subjects' piracy. It seems obvious to me that given the huge traffic in slaves and ransomed prisoners that the corsairs brought in, all of which was done completely in the open, the pashas must have given some kind of legal recognition to the corsairs' robberies. Perhaps we should understand Algiers and Sale as being much like Muslim versions of Port Royal, and their pashas as being Muslim versions of Governor Modyford; places where pirates with dubious commissions or no commissions at all flourished, theoretically illegally but in reality encouraged and condoned by the government.

I'm not aware that Every's men took any Indian women aboard their own ship. They certainly behaved with some barbarity towards them while they were ransacking the Gunsway, but I think the idea that they kidnapped some comes from Johnson.

I've been wrong before though.

Patrick Pringle's Jolly Roger, p. 142, cites the contemporary Indian writer Khafi Khan for the story that after Every despoiled the Ganj-i-Sawai, they "then left the ship to go free, but took with them most of the women." I can't remember now where I read that the women were gone by the time the Fancy reached New Providence.

One specific case I know where Indians were on board a pirate ship was Henry Avery's. His ship Fancy took a number of Indian women from the Ganj-i-Sawai (Gunsway) aboard as prisoners. Many of the women aboard were upper class, and you would expect they would have been worth a good-size ransom, but there is no record of any effort to sell them back to their households. The women were not aboard when Avery reached New Providence, so it is generally speculated that they met a horrible fate: either abandoned in Madagascar, or murdered and thrown overboard.

European ships in the Indian Ocean employed large numbers of lascars (the word is Persian, roughly meaning "soldier"); Indian sailors usually from the Malabar coast, who might be either Hindu or Muslim. The East India companies tended to lose a lot of sailors to disease and desertion, and hired on local lascars to replace the Europeans. Lascars also might be valuable for their knowledge of local waters or markets. When they reached England, the lascars seem often to have had trouble getting jobs on a ship back to India, whether because of prejudice against them or just too many sailors chasing too few jobs. Many remained in London, and so many of them were poor that Parliament eventually ordered the East India Company to pay for taking care of them. (I don't know if the same problem occurred in France, Portugal, or the Netherlands, all of whom used lascars too).

In Zacks' The Pirate Hunter it mentions that when Captain Robert Culliford and his pirates stole the ketch Josiah in Madras, there were 18 lascars aboard. He sailed with them to the Nicobar Islands. Zacks describes them as "unhappy forced laborers." One lascar and one European made off with the Josiah, leaving Culliford, the other pirates, and the lascars stranded on the Nicobars. Culliford was later captured by the Elizabeth, but the lascars were not taken, and they had vanished when Culliford later returned aboard the Resolution/Mocha Frigate, their fate unknown.

Culliford then again captured a dozen lascars from a merchant ship, whom he used to careen the ship. He and his pirates mistreated them, and the lascars plotted a revolt, which was discovered by the pirates, who shot one lascar and tortured two to death.

Zacks also mentions that Captain Kidd had lascars on board pumping out the Adventure Galley when he came to Madagascar, and that Culliford stole them away. Presumably they had to be stolen because Culliford's extreme brutality to previous lascars would have dissuaded them from joining voluntarily, as the rest of Kidd's crew did.

George Roberts reported that when he stated religious reasons for not joining Ned Low's pirate crew, that "Some of them said, I should do well to preach a Sermon, and would make them a good Chaplain. Others said, No, they wanted no Godliness to be preach'd there : That Pirates had no God but their Money, nor Saviour but their Arms. Others said, That I had said nothing but was very good, true, and rational, and they wish'd that Godliness, or, at least, some Humanity, were in more Practice among them ; which, they believ'd, would be more to their Reputation, and cause a greater Esteem to be had for them, both from God and Man."

Quite some time ago, in a book called Pirates of New Spain, I remember reading about a good deal of Christian religious practice among the Anglo-French buccaneers raiding the west coast of Mexico in the late 1600s. The French buccaneers, after robbing and sacking a Spanish town, went immediately to the church and heard Mass! There was also considerable conflict between the Catholic French buccaneers and their Protestant English comrades; some of the English Protestants would smash and profane the "idols" of the Catholic church, believing it to be their sacred duty. This mortally offended many of the Catholic French.

I had a previous post that showed a Captain Roberts (quite possibly Bartholomew) using a quarto Bible to swear in new recruits, but he did it at gunpoint and was swearing "monstrous hellish Oaths" the whole time, so I wouldn't say he was necessarily a very religious sort. Cindy Vallar and Douglas Botting mention some other pirates swearing to the articles on an axe, a human skull, crossed pistols, crossed swords, or astride a cannon, but I can't say whether this was a conscious rejection of the Bible or merely an expedient when no Bible was handy.

How many boats have you read about from that time period that were very well-built?

Only one that comes to mind is the Charles, which Avery took and renamed Fancy. Contemporaries mentioned that she was already a good sailor, and then became even faster when Avery razed her afterdecks. I guess Tew's Amity must have been pretty good too; she was just a sloop, but made it to the Indian Ocean and back, then made it to the Indian Ocean again and still was fast enough to catch the Fateh Muhammad.

Could it be that that was the best they could do given the requirements of the ships and the materials available? Or perhaps with long-distance traveling ships being so much in demand they were trying to get the ships done very quickly and so quality suffered.

I'm just hypothesizing. I got a job working at a small machine shop just after graduating high school. The owner explained to me that there were three qualities of a job: good, fast and cheap. The customer could have any two of the three qualities he wanted, but never all three. It was up to them to decide which two were most desired.

My favorite way of summarizing that rule is "Fast, cheap, or good: pick no more than two." In this case, however, the ships were tremendously expensive and very poor quality, although the construction may have been fast.

Captain Kidd's Adventure Galley, brand spanking new out of Deptford, was so leaky that he had to abandon her in Madagascar in 1698.

In 1612, Thomas Best's Red Dragon, only a couple of weeks out of port and in calm weather, broke her main yard. Examination showed that the yard was made out of hemlock and was rotten, "which sheweth the badnes of the tree, the want of care in Mr. Burrell [the "great shipbuilder of the day"] and of honestie or skill in Chanlar."

During the 1620-21 expedition to Algiers, the English vice-admiral wrote that of his six royal ships, three were completely unfit for sea, "being very laboursome and unable to carry out their lower tier of ordnance in any gale of winds." His flagship, the Lion, had bolts i pieces, the false stem decayed, an unstable orlop deck without enough knees to support it, and labored all its oakum out of her seams in the least foul weather.

The Vasa, on her 1628 maiden voyage, proved so unstable that one gust of wind toppled her over and sank her.

My favorite of all: when the buccaneer captain Cornelius Essex set out from Jamaica in 1680, before he even got to Portobello, the bow of his barque had begun to fall apart so completely that he had to tie the whole front of the vessel together with ropes.

Why were 17th century ships, even the richest and most expensive ones made for the kings of the era, so prone to be completely unseaworthy? With Kidd or Essex, you could reasonably say that it was environmental factors: teredos and lack of opportunity to careen. But how on earth do royal shipbuilders keep their jobs (or even their heads) after giving their kings such shoddy work?

Well, since no one else is stepping forward...

These events can happen on Navy ships, although most of them could happen on other kinds of ships too.

Flogging a crewman

Hanging a crewman

(On Dutch ships) Keelhauling a crewman

Man overboard, with possible boat launch to rescue him.

Death or sickness of the captain, to be replaced by his senior lieutenant

Storm, leading to loss of sails, masts, or yards, which may then be replaced by jury masts or spares.

The "loose cannon" resulting from mere negligence or broken tackles. This is dangerous anywhere, but on a Navy ship, a loose 24-pounder is a truly fearsome thing: it will not only crush men, but smash right through bulkheads and wales and fall out into the ocean. If this happens below the waterline, the ship sinks.

Crossing the equator (the Equinoctial, as it is called in period), with the accompanying dunking for the first-timers while the old-timers play Neptune and his court.

The opening of sealed orders when one reaches the specified latitude (this is one of the few that's specifically naval).

Mutiny, which can be either the kill-the-officers-and-run-off-with-the-ship type that we know from the movies, or the more common "harbor mutiny," where the crew basically just goes on strike and won't obey further orders, but commits no actual violence. N.A.M. Rodger says that this second kind of mutiny was usually dealt with very leniently, and often led to the Admiralty replacing the captain instead of punishing the crew, although I suspect him of bias.

Arrival of freshly pressed men (this is another exclusively naval one), and surprising types of people sometimes get swept up in the press.

Outbreak of sickness; this was tremendously common although you never see it in the movies. Scurvy, malaria, yellow fever, typhoid, dysentery, cholera . . . if that's not enough for you, go ask Mission, I'm sure he can name plenty more. The ship now flies the yellow flag of quarantine, which makes even the people who aren't sick miserable.

Meeting a friendly ship and exchanging mail. The other ship isn't always happy to do this ("So back up your tops'ls and heave your vessel to / For we have got some letters to be carried home by you...")

Dragging the anchor and getting blown toward (or . . .gulp . . . onto) shore.

Accident to a crewman; besides falling overboard or getting crushed by loose cannons as above, you can get brained when a topman drops a marlinespike, fall from the yards onto the deck, have a yard fall on you, have a halyard break and hit you (particularly bad when the ramshead block is still attached to it), burn your hands sliding down a backstay, get your clothes or pigtail caught in a block, you name it . . .

Ship catches on fire, or simply explodes in a powder magazine accident (see Morgan, Admiral Sir Henry).

And of course, Navy ships sometimes get in sea battles, too.

One other thing. Barbossa's "bad makeup" is face powder, which he's taken to using since he became a gentleman privateer. I'm pretty sure the whole point is that it looks horrible because he hasn't a clue how to use it properly and it's all wrong for him anyway - as demonstrated by the stirring moment when he tears up his letter of marque.

Just got back from the 2-D showing. I enjoyed it overall; it grew on me as it went on. Like Blackjohn, I'd rank this third behind At World's End and Curse of the Black Pearl, but ahead of Dead Man's Chest.

I wasn't happy with the first act at all. The action sequences were poorly edited, it never looked like anyone was actually trying to catch Jack. King George was neither realistic nor menacing. Way too much canned exposition in the back of the coach.

The other major problem is how the movie wastes Penelope Cruz. My eyes love her as a pirate, but her character is terribly written, and her behavior winds up just being outright stupid. I'd like to see her back again with another character, but as an action heroine Angelica doesn't hold a candle to Elizabeth Swann.

The movie starts getting real momentum from the minute Blackbeard walks onto the set. This is, of course, Blackbeard the myth, not Blackbeard the historical pirate, and why not? Everything else in POTC is myth: ghosts, Davy Jones, Aztec curses, the Kraken, the edge of the world. His control of Queen Anne's Revenge truly eerie and impressive. I like the way that Ian McShane understates the character and plays him with a straight-up American accent; not historically accurate for a Bristol-born man, of course, but a nice change from our previous villains.

The mermaids were pretty cool, and seeing them destroy an entire ship was really impressive although I would have liked to see them a little less vampire-like, and to have Serena be more scary. When I heard that a mermaid's tear was necessary for the ritual, I had a vivid image of mermaids shedding tears while devouring the sailors, like crocodiles' tears that soften up the prey while they eat it; I would have liked to see that. Having a character who's at least a borderline religious fanatic, and yet is actually a pretty decent person, was different; I kind of liked it. I had no strong feelings about the zombies, but I thought the best way to deal with them would have been to chop off their weapon hands, then pick them up bodily and throw them overboard. The scenes on the island were so rich and lush, and the joy of Barbossa and Sparrow in recovering their ships is so wonderful, that by the end I was completely sold on the movie.

One thing I missed completely:

what happened to the Spanish after they destroyed the Fountain of Youth?

Latest figure I've seen is 89 dead, and there could be many more in the rubble.

The worst of the damage seems to be in an east-west corridor between 15th and 26th streets. 26th and Maiden Lane is where St. John's is, Academy Sports is between 15th and 20th on Range Line. The Dillon's, the high school, and the apartment complex on 20th Street are reported destroyed or heavily damaged. Freeman Hospital is still operating down on 32nd, so I guess that escaped the worst of the damage.

I lived in Joplin until last year. If I hear anything useful I'll try to put it here.

I liked Cutthroat Island too, though I could not stomach Polanski's Pirates. Like Cascabel, my favorite ever is the Heston Treasure Island; although there are many other good versions, that one's the best. Although, if you count The Princess Bride as a pirate movie, then it would be my favorite pirate movie.

There's one fantastically obscure but very good pirate flick from Hammer Studios called The Devil-Ship Pirates, with Christopher Lee dialing it up to 10 as the nasty pirate captain who fools a whole town into thinking the Armada has captured England.

Another very good and very different pirate film, now all but forgotten, is A High Wind in Jamaica - the title alone is poetic - with James Coburn and Anthony Quinn as pirates who accidentally abduct a bunch of schoolchildren.

Obviously, privateering articles. Here's a set of American privateer articles from the Seven Years' War.

The purser's papers are described in the 1707 Sea-Man's Vade Mecum right from your time period. Read with care, as some of the instructions may be more applicable to Navy ships than privateers.

They are to keep an exact Prick and Cheque-Book, of the Time and Entry, Discharge, Attendance, running away, death and Absence of all and every Man, Boy and Grommet belonging to the Ship, when they are at Sea; and out of that Book make and deliver under their Hands, to the Parties that are lawfully discharged, a Ticket or Pass, which is also to be signed by the Captain, Master and Boatswain, or any two or three, whereof the Captain, if present, is to be one, containing their true Name, Entry, Office, Discharge, and the Cause thereof. . . .

When the Ship to which he belongs is commanded to Sea, he is to demand from the Surveyor or Clerk of the Survey, and the Office of the Ordnance, true Copies under their Hands, of all Indentures and Proportions of Stores by them issued for the present Service and Supply of the Ship to the Boatswain, Gunner and Carpenter: and after the Ship enters into Sea Wages, to keep an exact Journal Book of the expences of all Provisions committed to their Trust respectively; requiring the Boatswain, Gunner and Carpenter, at their Perils, not to cut any Cable, take down or put up any Rigging, scale and Guns, give any Salutes, repair or new build any Cabbins, Bulk Heads, or Steward Rooms, &c. without giving Notice to him to enter the same; that he may upon each of their Accompts make a distinct Entry of the Quality and Quantity of each Material expended, specifying the Time when, the Place where, the Cause why, and the Party by whose Command the same were expended; and after the same entry made, take the Captain and Masters Hands to his Book, to justifie the Truth of the Entry, and the Boatswain, Gunner and Carpenters Hands, to prevent all future Cavils upon the Ballance of their several Accompts.

The pilot also had to keep two journals on a long voyage, and often keep other papers:

In long Voyages he shall have two Journals, in one of which he shall write the Changes of the Courses and Winds, the Days and Hours of the Changes, Leagues which he believes the Ship has sailed in each, the Reductions in Latitude and Longitude, the Variations of the Compass, together with the Towns and Shores he has discovered. And in the other he shall write out clean once in four and twenty Hours, Courses, Longitude and Latitude reduced, and Latitudes observed, and all other remarkable things discovered during the Voyage. . . .

If there be no Clerk, the Pilot shall be obliged, if required by the Master, to take an Account of the Goods brought on Board, and to make the Inventories of the Effects left by Persons during a Ship-board, which shall be signed by the Master, and two of the principal Mariners.

One small datum of GAoP pirate boot use. French buccaneer Louis le Golif, while marching to the attack on Caracas, reported that "I marched in front, as was right, with my pistols in my belt, my fine high boots and plumed hat, and a sword at my side." Jenifer G. Marx, "Brethren of the Coast, " in Pirates: Terror on the High Seas from the Caribbean to the SOuth China Sea, David COrdingly, ed., North DIghton, MA: World Publications Group, 1998, p. 37-38. It does not mention the style of boot, and of course it is on land, not on a ship (but, notably, not riding). I assume this was during Grammont's abortive attack on Caracas in 1680, although the book does not say the date.

Regarding the usefulness of being able to swim (and undesirability of wearing boots if you fell overboard): Harland devotes a whole chapter to the efforts of warships to recover men fallen overboard. Navy ships did rescue crewmen who fell overboard, generally by launching a cutter. If the seas were too heavy to risk launching a cutter, the ship itself would come about and try to rescue the man by throwing him a line, but that was usually in vain. Several pictures of actual rescue attempts and one picture of a ma overboard boat-launching drill are included. All these pictures are from the 19th century; it is possible that things were different in the GAoP.

No doubt boots would be a serious handicap if you fell overboard; but then, a cuirass would be an even more serious handicap, and yet many 17th century naval officers are pictured in cuirasses.

One additional matter: consider the practicalities of the situation. You're the captain of a ship. It's very important to you to prevent violence and disorder aboard.

Suddenly your mate reports to you that one of the female passengers is pregnant. She says her boyfriend is responsible. The girl's father is livid and threatening to cut off the boy's bollocks if he doesn't marry her. The passengers - or worse, the crew - are taking sides between boyfriend and father. And for whatever reason you have no pastor aboard or said pastor is unwilling to marry the pregnant girl to the boy. You want to defuse the situation quickly.

A natural solution is to call girlfriend and boyfriend on deck and declare, "Do you take this man to be your wedded husband?" Girl says I do. "Do you take this woman to be your wedded wife?" Boyfriend's cooperation is obtained because he doesn't want his bollocks cut off by the father. "By the power vested in me . . . " (actually the captain has no such power, but the participants don't know that) ". . . I now pronounce you man and wife." And if the ship is from a jurisdiction which recognizes common law marriage or private marriage, where the simple exchange of vows is enough, the fact that the captain's pronouncement wasn't even legally necessary to solemnize the marriage will never become relevant.

The painting looks even cooler than the photo!

Elena, this is a very interesting question, and I congratulate you for the good research you have clearly already done.

Have you seen this website of shipboard weddings? The vast majority are performed by a minister, but there are some exceptions. William Willcocks and Mary Thebder were married aboard the Young Australian on July 3, 1864; under the minister name it says "md by Master." Samuel Holt and Ida Timperley were married aboard the Resolute on August 6, 1865, and under the minister name it only says "Captain." These are the tiny minority, however; most shipboard couples are recorded as being married by a minister.

You might take a look at Stone's The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England 1500-1800. It has nothing about captains marrying people (I'd have remembered, I'm sure), but it has lots of stuff about private marriage and marriage law, and besides, it's a gold mine for any novelist who wants to understand how family formed character in the GAoP period. As you point out, the Marriage Act of 1753 put an end to informal private marriages between youngsters without the parents' consent in England. The Scottish law didn't change! Thus, after 1753, you saw English kids galloping off to Gretna Green, just over the Scottish border, where they could be legally married.

Regarding clergy on board; I don't know if seamen thought clergy were bad luck, but bad luck or not, the clergy were on the ships anyway. The very first article of the Articles of War required captains to "take care that prayers and preaching, by the chaplains in holy orders of the respective ships, be performed diligently." Merchant ships of 500 tons or more were required by law to carry chaplains. So if a captain was doing marriages, it was probably either 1) on a ship that was breaking the law or Articles of War, 2) on a merchant ship too small to be covered by the law, or 3) on a ship where the chaplain died or was too sick with scurvy or whatever to do his office.