Misson

I kept coming across this word in the literature on 16th and 17th century surgery: Noisome At first I thought it meant "lending itself to noise" or something like that, but I soon realized that didn't make sense in context. From context, I figured it must mean "very smelly." But that turned out to be wrong too. From freedictionary.com: noi·some (noism) adj. 1. Offensive to the point of arousing disgust; foul: a noisome odor. 2. Harmful or dangerous: noisome fumes. And here it is from one of the many places I've found it in: "A badly placed sick berth could be very deleterious to the health of the occupants. Some of the sick might be placed in the ‘fore-part of the hold which was damp, unwholesome and filled with stench from the bilges.’ This would be a particularly noisome place low down in the ship, for the ballast in the very bottom was very foul and unhealthy. " (Goddard, Jonathan Charles, “An insight into the life of Royal Naval surgeons during the Napoleonic War, Part I,” Journal of the Royal Naval Medical Service, Winter 1991, page 212)

Ooh! Ooh! I'd like to see the list of the hobbies and foolish questions. Actually, the average temperature went down last year, so this should have been presaged by an increase in pirates. This is predicted to continue for at least the next decade or so which (according to different scientists who don't mention the pirate population at all) is either due to an abnormal lack in sunspots - which has a direct relationship on global temperature that can be readily observed - or some complex mess of an idea about slowing and/or changing currents in the Atlantic Ocean which is purported to be caused in some intricate way by anthropogenic global warming. Feel free to chose whichever explanation (pirates, sunspots or some complex notion about the ocean currents) that makes the most sense to you. Still, the increase in the number of pirates causing temperature change theory could still be correct and, if so (And why not? It's almost as viable in explanation as anthropogenic GW causing dramatic world temperature increases), there should be a continued increase in the number of pirates for about ten years if the scientific predictions are right. (Which one could further extrapolate to mean there will be a fourth POTC movie, because I can't see anything but a decline in pirate re-enacting without one.) As for the FSM, that is a lame response to a lame idea which was in turn a lame response to lame idea put forth by a small group of people trying to change the education system in a way that met with their minority view (the majority opinion be damned - you ignorant savages must take your cod liver oil) which ultimately links back to that magic bullet "separation of church and state." This caused several of the people who originally penned that phrase to upset their headstones as they rolled about in their graves. Either that or there is some complex mess of an idea about the the gravestones being upset by changes brought about in some intricate way by anthropogenic global warming.

I think you're probably right. Here is something from Woodes Roger's journal of the privateering voyage of the ships Duke and Dutchess, which began in 1708: "This morning our Men went in our Boat to hall our Fishing-Net, and caught some very good Fifh much better than those in St. Vincent." (Rogers, A Cruising Voyage Around the World, 1712, p. 27) The fact that he recorded it makes the event seem somewhat exceptional. Combined with the fact that some days he only records the weather and wind direction, it suggests [but certainly doesn't prove] that fishing was not a regular thing for the crew to be doing - at least not on that voyage. (And they would have had plenty of reason to procure food as the voyage was expected to take several years.)

A Cruising Voyage Around the World by Woodes Rogers. Tiny print in that wonderful old style. The random spelling I can take, but the s's that look like f's drive me cwazy... At least Rogers isn't quite as bad as some other period authors.

Whenever I mod, I like to paste new topics to older ones that have already been covered if the post seems relevant. For example, the Beyond forum often gets questions like "What do you do in real life?" repeatedly. How many times do the venerated older members have or even want to answer such questions? So when it comes up again with the inevitability of summer rain, I just append the new topic to the old one - a very useful mod function. This also gives the new members a chance to see the depth and history of the forum.

Fascinating. They left the part out where the song they use is Didn't Leave Nobody But The Baby. Just out of curiosity, what brought this splurge of cut-and-pasted information about?

I know fish were caught off Newfoundland and salted for use in Great Britain and (if I am remembering it correctly) for the BRN warships. Surgeon James Yonge spent at least two summers in Newfoundland while the fishing was going on to earn money as a sort of traveling fishing camp surgeon in what he refers to as a sort of slow season for him. Part of his pay was in fish that he could sell. He describes this all in his Journal. The copy I have is edited by F.N.L. Poynter, The Journal of James Yonge [1647-1721] Plymouth Surgeon printed by Longman’s, Green & Company of Great Britain in 1965.

You guys are gonna make me break out my old textbooks, aren't you? Thinking further on all this, while it is true that companies and governments put their mark on items, if I recall this all correctly, these weren't concerted efforts to create a marketed "brand." They were implemented as ways to identify their work/creations. (Possibly if they had to fix it in the case of manufacturers? Each item was handmade, so no two were alike and so having to identify your work for some reason probably called for marking it. I guess.) At least I think that's how early marking efforts were interpreted. Actually, my little company has to mark certain fabricated items we create (coolers we create for glass plants) primarily so that the glass company can identify our work if a cooler doesn't function properly. I wouldn't exactly call it product branding, although it could be viewed in that way from a certain angle. To be honest, I finished my MBA in 1996 and never thought much about the textbooks again...until now, that is. I have noticed that a lot of medical instruments didn't have manufacturer marks on them until the 19th century, although this is anecdotal and not statistical.

I wonder if the salt at that time would have a different effect than it does today? (I don't presently have a single shred of information, I'm just wondering.) I suppose salt in any age would cause fluid retention and that is that. Still, given the lifestyle and resulting lifespan of a typical sailor (according to one book, most were in their 20s), heart disease would probably not have been one of their most immediate concerns.

It makes sense to me that their caloric intake would be higher. Their activity level would have been far higher on average than it is today. Actually, from the various sources I've read, they either didn't understand this or didn't care until the late 18th century (post-period). As I mentioned previously, this is why the ships were so crowded - the navy put extra men on board during period because they expected a large percentage of them to die from diseases (particularly dysentery & 'fevers' on any BRN voyage & scurvy on long voyages).

Not so fast, there mate. I submit that coinage was the original product branding, the product being the sort of government being offered/foisted upon the masses. To quote loosely: "Whose picture is on the coin?" "Caesar's." "Then render unto Caesar...etc." Who's "logo" was on the the doubloon, eight real, ecsudo? Branding, says I. You should write to the people who published my marketing book. That's an interesting point - it puts a whole different spin on product branding. In fact, product branding is nothing more than a concerted effort to obtain government branded coins and papers and so the whole thing is another big, lovely circle. (Note: I am among the most guilty of hijacking threads. I try to avoid the temptation but...nah. Actually, the mod for this forum could split this entire group of posts out into a separate thread and then move the thread to Twill. I've done that in Beyond before.)

I am just trying to figure out your source. (Your response does not tell me anything.) It might say something about re-making clothes from it, however. (Actually, probably not. They didn't understand the role of vermin in infection yet. That was my original thought, though.) Hadn't come across that one yet. What's your source? It sounds like it'd be worth my reading it for my little project. That is surprising. Many things seem to have been along class lines on land. In fact, this carries over even today in Great Britain to some degree. Admittedly, I haven't read much about land during period, however. True. But you keep saying that they drank coffee from x vessel and that's what they did during a 25 year, and more broadly, a 40 year time period. You then tell me that it wouldn't be drunk out of tankards. Period. Never? Is it just that black and white? This is the only way they drank coffee during the GAoP. That makes no sense to me. Human behavior is only black and white in a group for very short time periods, and then usually under duress. Humans are whimsical, tool-using, creative creatures. Just looking at the various medicines and procedures written about to treat the same illness shows the infinite number of possibilities these folks embraced in their professions and daily lives. So creative behavior existed. It couldn't be applied to coffee containers? If I said (as some books I've read hint) that all sea-going medical procedures followed Woodall's The Surgeon's Mate until 1693 when John Moyle's book Chirurgus marinus: or, The sea-chirurgion was printed [and even beyond that. Druett seems to think that the next important source for sea surgeons was John King!), I would be making what I perceive as the same mistake I feel you are making in pronouncing coffee to be served in only the sort of cup you found in some reference. This is what I am calling the silliness of adhering to only things we can directly point to. (Note that I'm drawing another parallel to something I know about from period which may seem off topic if you don't follow my odd logic.) The world is not, and I contend, was not, one way and only that way because one drawing or document or even a few documents pointed in a particular direction. This is to toss all human creativity out the window. If you go back, my point (minus the asides - like this one) about using my coffee mug for cereal and whatnot was that in 300 years people having the amount of information on our period that we have on theirs would say coffee mugs were for coffee because our information shows that this is why vendors designed the cups that way. Then I admittedly extrapolated present-day behavior and said lazy bachelors (and, indirectly, pirates) are lazy bachelors in any age. Which I can't prove...and you can't disprove. At the end of this, if someone were to make a corset for tankards with the Mercury logo on it, I'd want one, even though I think the more disprovable aspect would be that pirates would brand a tankard with a logo (regardless of whether they may or may not put a corset on it for some reason.) In fact, I would say their flag was their brand and that appears to be as far as they carried it. (And they stole their flag designs from each other when pirate groups split apart, so even that wasn't unique.) Logo product branding really came about in the 20th century. Although, if I recall my Marketing classes, you can find some examples of something very much like branding before that. And so forth. I'm apparently not going to convince you to deviate from what you can prove and you're probably not going to be able to convince me that everything was as strictly done as I believe you're suggesting. So feel free to take a final shot at me and let's be done with it. Shake hands over a nice Merlot and all that.

Cheaply made is a poor description for period - poorly made is a better one. I was actually still thinking of the coffee vessels, but your comments are very interesting. Are these wills from Williamsburg/Colony citizens? In studying sailors alone, I have not come across the idea of re-manufacturing clothing. On a related note, there is much back-and-forth in the Naval literature about supplying pressed men with clothing because what they came equipped with was vermin and filth-ridden. My sources seem to indicate that this was pretty much the state of the lower classes in Great Britain. (While several sources talk about the infestation of ships by pressed men, in regard to dirt, I am thinking particularly of things said in Guy Williams The Age of Agony. This book focuses more on land-based medicine and population than my other sources.) Williams has a lot to say about lice and scabies among the common folk, which would also be brought on ship via clothing and unclean men in the eighteenth century. Still, the navy didn't seriously consider supplying clothing or uniforms gratis during period. I don't have the dates (being outside of the period I didn't record them in my notes), but I believe I read that it was in the late 18th that navy started supplying clothing on BRN vessels. I did find that clothing was sold to sailors right before period (and so, probably into period, although this is not technically proven) on BRN vessels, as quoted in this thread. However, re-manufacturing clothing is a nice example of creativity in using materials. Actually, I was assuming that if some other vessel was used for coffee among the common class it may not be known today. This is assuming that the lower classes had access to coffee. I know physicians during period hung out (and gathered patients) in coffee houses during the eighteenth century. However, the common folks did not generally go to physicians because payment was beyond their means. So I would guess that people of the higher classes frequented coffee houses, not the common folks. (I'm making mental connections here. Is this where your information about coffee vessels comes from? Perhaps drawings of coffee houses? Or is this from the Colonies?) I also believe I have read an account (although I confess I've forgotten which one it is - I have read several and it didn't seem relevant until now) of a man captured by pirates describing the pirate captain insisting on coffee in the morning before conducting any affairs of the ship. Pirates were about as catch-as-catch-can when it came to...just about everything. I could easily see a pirate drinking coffee from a tankard or bottle or whatever else might be at hand. Which also makes me wonder what the common folk might drink it from as well. If they drank it at all. Perhaps the Town Criers have illustrations?

That is an extremely cool database.

Well, I was talking about what is recognized as the triangle trade or slave trade route. Alas, they bypassed New England. See the fancy diagram here: http://www.nmm.ac.uk/freedom/viewTheme.cfm...heme/triangular (Hmm...not Madagascar, but Africa. Madagascar was where the pirates hung out.)

And vice versa. Many people have this idea that everyone from the 19th century back were hidebound and non-creative in their approach to things. Why would this be so? Human creativity is actually as common as dirt. Since we're citing, as someone pointed out to me, there is a notion that all antiques are well-made. This arises because the antiques that survive are, in fact, well-made. However, the common articles of a bygone era are cheaply made for every day use and thus do not usually survive. The further back you go, the better made something will generally have to be to survive. However we often assume that the rare, surviving well-made items were common when, in fact, they were not. We don't always know what was common. Most of what we have to record that era comes from the upper classes who had the better made items and could write and pay for portraits and such from which we infer ideas about what is period correct.

I don't have the whole account handy, but in Aaron Smith's book The Atrocities of the Pirates, the pirates who captured him [whom he oddly never names] take a ship (or maybe it was two different ships - it's been awhile since I read it) with a cargo of rum and coffee - and they keep only the coffee! I don't remember if they sink the ship full of rum, let it go or just throw the rum overboard and keep the ship. In the account reproduced in Captured by Pirates, edited by John Richard Stephens, Stephens notes that the rum was of little value to the pirates, but the coffee could be sold at a port in Cuba. If I remember, I'll bring the book in and cite the whole thing. From what I read, the primary things brought back from the Caribbean in the trade or slave triangle (England to Madagascar to the Caribbean and back to England) were sugar, coffee, tobacco and rice. Alcohol and weapons were indeed mentioned in some accounts I read as the primary vehicles of trade in Madagascar. So this sort of jives with your comments.

On that webpage, they have a section called "Myths and Legends" which basically says the food wasn't that bad and corruption among victuallers was almost non-existent. A reading of the book I cited in my previous post, John J. Keevil's Medicine and the Navy 1200-1900: Volume II – 1640-1714 will show otherwise for period. I would guess that at least half of his sources are the same ones they cite: the Admiralty archive, in The National Archives at Kew, London. However, further down the page, they seem to say that their focus is on the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It was in the late 18th century that several influential people became interested in the health of BRN mariners, so this would tend to support their statements. In fact, several surgeon's journals decried the conditions on Naval ships in the journals they were required to keep (beginning around the 1704, if I recall that correctly), but they had little standing and almost no pull and were largely ignored by Admiralty. Several accounts from surgeon's journals from the 1770s onward show the rise in status of surgeons on BRN vessels, which occurred in parallel with the rise of health-promoting men of stature such as Gilbert Blane and physician Thomas Trotter. Interestingly, Samuel Pepys was actually one of the first BRN reformers in the mid-late 17th century, but his influence waxed and waned as various wars came and went, his health failed and political intrigues robbed him of his role in that late 17th century, right before GAoP. From reading Keevil's fascinating (and well documented) book, you get the impression that during the GAoP, health and feeding were not of much concern to the Admiralty - as astonishing as this may seem.

Being so important to health (not to mention being quite gross), I am including a chapter on diet in my barber-surgeon's tome. First off, one thing I have found on quantity of food in the sailor's diet that appears to pre-date the sources cited above (although still not quite period): “The diet was so restricted in variety and so deficient in the essentials for well-balanced nutrition that it is no wonder scurvy and other diseases were so prevalent. The regulation ration for the middle of the seventeenth century was as follows: In addition to a gallon of beer and a pound of biscuit daily, on Sundays and Tuesdays two pounds of salt beef; on Mondays and Thursdays one pound of salt pork and one pint of peas, or if pork was lacking one pound and a half of beef instead; on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays one-eighth of a pound of butter and one quarter of a pound of cheese. The standard fish sizes were twenty-four inches for cod, twenty-two inches for haberdine, and one-half-sized stock fish was supposed to measure sixteen inches. Even more serious than the limited variety of the foodstuffs was the fact that through imperfect means of preservation and the outrageous dishonesty of the contractors they were nearly always more or less decomposed and wholly unfit for human consumption, but if condemned and returned they were often enough repacked and sent to other ships.” (Vogel, Karl, “Medicine at Sea in the Days of Sail,” Milestones in Medicine, Edited by James Alexander Miller p88-9) Now, here are just a few of the fun quotes - all of these regarding the BRN, who is the primary source of info on diet I've found: “…weevils crawled; they were bitter to the taste, and a sure indication that the biscuit had lost its nutritious particles; if instead of these weevils, large white maggots with black heads made their appearance (these were called bargemen in the Navy), then the biscuit was considered to be only in its first state of decay; these maggots were fat and cold to the taste, but not bitter.’ Sailors were known to be particularly suspicious of hardtack that contained no weevils or maggots, believing it to be too bad even for these ever-prevalent pests.” (Bown, Stephen R., Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentleman Solved the Greatest Medieval Mystery of the Age of Sail, p. 20) “James Patten, a surgeon aboard Cook’s second voyage, remarked that ‘our bread was…both musty and mouldy, and at the same time swarming with two different sorts of little brown grubs, the circulio granorius (or weevil) and the dermestes paniceus…Their larvas, or maggots, were found in such quantities in the pease-soup, as if they had been stewed over our plates on purpose, so that we could not avoid swallowing some of them in every spoonful we took.’” (Bown, p. 19) “Ship’s cheese quickly went rancid, cloaking the entire ship in a cloying cloud of noxious stench. If it didn’t turn putrid, the cheese hardened like a rock, so sailors carved it with their knives into buttons for their clothing.” (Bown, p. 21) “A brief scan of the report of Antonio Pegafetta, an Italian mariner who kept a journal of [Magellan’s] voyage, sheds some light on the conditions they endured: ‘They ate biscuit,’ he wrote, ‘and when there was no more of that they ate the crumbs, which were full of maggots and smelled strongly of mouse urine. They drank yellow water, already several days putrid…Mice could be sold for half a ducat a piece, and still many who would have paid could not get them…’” (Bown, p. 33) “The salt was so strong and concentrated on the cooked meat that if it was not eaten quickly, white crystals would form on the surface. It burned the sailors’ mouths as they ate, increasing their thirst for the carefully rationed supply of water.” (Bown, p. 21) “The Navy Office was now [1650s] required to supply perishable stores for periods of unprecedented lengths, and although in some cases the food was destined for use in warm or even tropical climates, no advance had been made on those methods of preservation devised by Sir Hugh Platt in Queen Elizabeth’s day. The Commissioners, like their predecessor the General Surveyor of Victuals for the Navy, had to deal with many contractors, some of whom were dishonest; they also had to buy cheaply; on many occasions the food remained in store-ships for months before its use, and in the absence of foreign bases the squadrons in distant waters had to depend principally on the source of supply…The privateering ventures had not been his concern: making their own precarious arrangements, they hoped to live off the Spanish settlements that they attacked. Life among the privateers had in any case been held of less value, and the rewards were sometimes great.” (Keevil, John J., Medicine and the Navy 1200-1900: Volume II – 1640-1714, p. 4) In July, 1689, Edward Russell, who like [Arthur] Herbert had come over with William from Holland, was patrolling the south-western approaches to guard against a French descent on Kinsale. On July 31 he reported that in his squadron, the Blue, the seamen only ate when compelled by hunger, many ships were ‘extremely sickly’ and that ‘the beafe proves full of gaules…and no longer agoe then yesterday, in severall of the buts [butts - containers with about 162 gallon in them]of beare [beer], great heapes of stuff was found at the bottom of the buts not unlike mens’ guts, which has alaramed the seamen to a strange degre’. It was said that dogs which had eaten the seamen’s victuals died and that the beer remained undrinkable even after boiling.” (Keevil, p. 172-3) “The need to maintain ships in the Mediterranean for long periods [in the Third Dutch War] again revealed the limitations of the victualling department. In spite of Pepys’s endeavors, the rare victuallers brought provisions which were underweight, or improperly preserved, or already decomposing. Only small quantities could be obtained in Spanish ports, and were subject to such uncertainties as the granting of pratique [proof to local port authorities that a ship is free from contagious disease]. The problem was increased by the poor quality of the provisions with which ships sometimes set out from England: on February 18,1668, when Allin was still in home waters, his flagship, the Monmouth, took in ‘some provision of beef, pork, peas, bread and beer, but the butter and cheese was so bad that we returned all the cheese being rotten and 8 or 9 firkins [a white oak barrel] of butter, it stank so.’” (Keevil, p. 114) Now, who wishes they were living in the grand old GAoP? If you really want to know about awful diets, I could post the various things I have found that were used for subsistence by marooned and shipwrecked survivors...but that's another chapter still. Lest you think it was all bad, here is a more stomach-friendly quote regarding merchant marine food - about whom I've found precious few quotes: “In the merchant service where the individual commander had some discretion and authority the conditions were not necessarily so bad. [Captain Luke Foxe of Hull said in 1631]: “…was victualled compleately for 18 moneths…. I had excellent fat Beefe, strong Beere, good wheaten Bread, good Island Ling, Bitter and Cheese of the best, admirable Sacke and Aqua Vitae, Pease, Oat-meale, Wheatmeale, Oyle, Spice, Sugar, Fruit and Rie, with Chyrurgerie as Sirrups, Iulips, Condits, Trechissis, antidotes, basoms, gummes, unguients, implaisters, oyles, potions, suppositors, and purging Pils; and if I had wanted Instruments, my Chururgion had enough.” (Vogel, p. 89-90) However, I should note that I have read another account that says merchant food was almost as bad as the food on BRN ships.

Only problem with that theory is they didn't drink coffee out of mugs... Never? If you were three hundred years in the future, would you think that people drank wine or ate cereal out of coffee cups? I do this all the time (coffee cups - lazy bachelor Misson's container of choice). Until I wrote this, this fact (or data point would be more accurate) probably hasn't been in print. (Or maybe it has. Since the 60s, we have become so fascinated with ourselves, schools have provided most people with the ability to write and the web has given everyone (it's free to residents at most libraries) an outlet. So I could be wrong.) Having spent the last 6 months searching out every authentic pirate account I could find in the quest for data on period surgeons, I was amazed by how little there is out there. And what there is contains scant info on day-to-day behaviors during period. We only know what people did from a remarkably small group of data that was put down by those in the classes that could write and who had the time and inclination to do so. This is why I think it's silly to insist upon absolute adherence to what we know. What we know is a very small subset of what was. I'd be more inclined to believe that lazy sailor bachelors who could do so also drank things out of whatever they had handy - especially pirates, who did things like knocking the tops of bottles with weapons and tools rather than open them properly. Should we wear spandex? No, clearly not. We can pretty well pinpoint the arrival of spandex in history (more or less). However, humans are whimsical tool using, creative creatures and if they had coffee, a pewter tankard and a piece of leather...why would they never assemble all three? If you don't like the coffee explanation, what if the pewter tankard was left out on deck by lazy bachelor pirates in the hot Caribee sun long enough to be warm to the touch? (Ok, it's a stretch that it would get that hot.) Or it was left close to the fire on shore? Or several other possibilities. (This is all probably a discussion better suited to Twill, however. In fact, I'm sure it's be hashed out there so many times that my contributions would be of little merit.)

It would make more sense if it were snakes ("Snakes! Why'd it have to be snakes?") instead of rats ("He would have never made it past the rats. He hates rats, he's scared to death of them."). Snakes are biblically reviled and an astounding number of the sea myths come from the bible. Rats were an every day occurrence. According to one book I read, when a ship became becalmed and the food ran out, the rats were often caught and sold to the highest bidder. (Think about that one over dinner tonight...)

Is there any evidence for a pirate crew name-branding their sea totes? While I like getting things as right as I know how to, I think slavish adherence to what we can absolutely prove is sort of silly. (Blasphemy, I know.) And unrealistic. As in statistics, its the silent, uncounted majority that often reveals the true story of the event. I've little doubt that someone, somewhere, during period wrapped their mug in something such as leather to protect their hand from the heat of the coffee (which is period) and liked it. So they kept on doing it and may have endeavored to tie it somehow. It's nigh impossible to prove otherwise.

Townsman's wallets are cool. However, would a pirate usually have such a thing? If we were going to have something made, I vote for a tankard of some sort. That's a pirate appropriate item. If not that, how about those lace-up corsets for mugs? I think it was Silkie who had one last year.

I was looking for something completely other when I came across this quiz on superstitions of the sea. I got 5 out of 10 right without cheating.

Oh, ah. I just typed in another bit from Williams on patients and pain: “In the period with which we are dealing, patients taken into the ante-chamber had no…happy relief. They would be given gin, or rum, or some soporific drug, to make their ordeal just a little less harrowing. Then, they would be exhorted to be brave, to be determined and upright, and to clench their hands, while unspeakable things were done to them.” (Williams, p. 111)