Raphael Misson

Personally I think she's approaching this from the wrong angle - pirate re-enactors seem more to come from many far flung places and gather whereever they find an event that's reasonably close (sometimes) or that they like. To focus on one geographic area where a pirate re-enactor lives is to dramatically limit your pool of research subjects. You'd be better advised to find a re-enactment group dedicated to an event that happened in the Portland area. It seems to me that this would draw local re-enactors more readily than piracy. (Especially piracy in Portland. Was there ever any pirate activity in Portland? I don't know of any.) For me (in Michigan, where there were probably also never any pirates.) 1. I've been interested in pirates since I was a kid, got involved with re-enactors here in 2004, started re-enacting in 2007. 2. Almost entirely from this board and most usually from the long-term [say a year or more tenure] posters. 3. Like any group, as I got to more events, I find the people I particularly enjoy hanging around with and go to the events they go to (when they are close and affordable given my particular needs for an event.) 4. I do not belong to any other pirate re-enacting groups. (This question seems vaguely stated to me.)

You have all the information I found. I figure it is better than no information. My understanding is that female nurses on ships was an extremely short-lived practice, though. As for GAoP pirate vessels, I have only found a few person accounts and none of them mention women on pirate ships (Philip Ashton is the only one that comes immediately to mind for true GAoP.) There are several privateer accounts - Dampier, Edward Cooke, William Funnell, Woodes Rogers, Bartholomew Sharp, Lionel Wafer et al, but none of them mention women on board as I recall - or I'd probably have posted it here. Much of what you read in the General History seems to have come from court accounts. They always talk about interviews with prisoners, but that seems to have been less important to the substance of the text than the court transcripts from what I've read. (Ed, please correct me if I'm wrong.) The only two true GAoP female pirates I can think of are the famous Bonny and Read who were on the same ship. And they were both hiding their sex, suggesting it was not generally acceptable. (If they weren't, I might still suggest it was because that ship had gradually acquired a different standard based on the way the account reads.)

But I've never met you. It sounds like something fun for a haunted house and I must admit I was surprised I had never heard of it. (I've been involved in Houses for well over 20 years now.)

I watched the first disc on DVD. It's not bad. It's not really PC...in fact, there are many things about it that aren't PC that bucket boots are just a small thing. But if you throw that requirement out the window and just enjoy it on the POTC level, it's fun. As Blackjohn said, the first episode has a lot of interesting gadgets that he's cobbled together (which indeed borrows far more from Swiss Family Robinson than it does from the original book.) As for having a lot of stuff, remember that the original Crusoe spent more than a little time retrieving things from his ship (something SFR also borrowed). Of course, they had to make a raft to go out to their respective ships, which makes more sense to me, while his ship conveniently went right up on the beach and spilled its contents all over the place. The book notes that Crusoe's clothes gradually fell apart over a period of years (which Defoe probably got from the original Selkirk account). However if there was as many bodies as are suggested in the opening scenes, this guy could have stored up a lot of clothing from them and their sea chests to replace the clothes of his that apart over time. So that's not THAT absurd as presented. The second and third episodes have skulls, so they are good for me. The whole ancient water god thing was silly, though. As was the complicated alter/puzzle thing. One detail that pleased me immensely was that the remains of the sacrifice victim's bones were not assembled like we see in displays. That would never, never, never happen, despite decades of movies suggesting otherwise. Oh, and couldn't he find something useful to do with the gold cannon? I mean, gold is a nice soft metal and he could have found all sorts of utilitarian things to do with it. My only gripe so far in general is all the flashbacks. Ok, I realize they're trying to use them to 1) give us backstory and 2) give the series a mental hook (without them, it's has a sort of Gilligan's island thing going on as Crusoe pines for escape while he and Friday do clever things to outwit nature, invaders and (apparently) some supernatural stuff. Still, they are somewhat annoying. (Did anyone NOT suspect that Sam Neill was up to no good by the end of the first episode?) Still, overall, not too bad. Not exactly 'must see', but I'll get the other discs through Netflix and watch 'em with popcorn and my 12-year-old-kid pirate appreciation hat on. I give it 3.5 stars out of 5 so far.

This is interesting, coming from someone heavily involved in preparing medicine chests and young Surgeons for the East India merchant ships (and later the British Royal Navy itself) during much of the middle 17th century. He's explaining how to make laudenum. "Hee that intendeth any part of this composition for women, must forbeare the muske and ambergrece, and use with it rather foure graines of good castroium, I meane in that one dose he intends to give the women; but in this I digresse from my scope of the Sea-practise, where women in long voyages are rare creatures." (John Woodall, The surgions mate, p. 230) [Emphasis mine.] The voyage to the Caribbean was considered a long voyage, incidentally.

Did you try it out? How well did it work for you?

There. A nice Weeble.

Tusk! (If you don't want something with sound playing on your computer, wait 'till you get home.)

Let's not get all crazy and slopping over with emotion here. I mean, I'll be glad to get you a nice Weeble or something, but hugs? I mean to say, what? (Mission the distant... )

I agree - Crow for the role.

To check for bone fractures and hidden metal objects? (I can't see X-ray vision being a real boon, except to doctors and security personnel.)

How'd I miss this? Happy very much belated birthday, Cheeky!

Yeah, that will be interesting. We were actually talking about last week or so ago in this thread.

That would be cool. What a great way to and a great place from which to do it.

Cheers! Have one for me!

As regards the fire pits, Spike noted that dinner would be provided on Saturday and Sunday, which should reduce the need for them. It would seem to make sense to centralize the fire pit for Mercury and Arch Angel camps in the Silkies Hide, wouldn't it? That fire was big enough last year that multiple people could use it - and did. I recall both both crews mentioned using it (although Arch Angel did have a second fire for some reason) and Willie Wobble's group using it (although Willie tried to set up his own special fire without a pit for another reason). The Hide was a wonderful concept - why not take advantage of it as much as possible?

No, we'll haul you out to sea. Or at least throw you in from the beach and try and nudge you out a bit with sticks or something.

"Now raise your right hand for the pledge! Right! Now, repeat after me. I..." "I..." "_your name_" "Your name." "Schmucks! ...pledge allegiance..." "...pledge allegiance..." "...to Hedley Lamarr..." "...to Hedy Lamarr..." "That's HEDLEY!" "That's HEDLEY!" "...with liberty and fraternity for all." "Amen!"

What if you're at war, say with someone like the Nazis who wish to conquer your society? There really isn't any such thing as strictly right and wrong, there is only our perception of it. The best we get is consensus that something is right or wrong, which is usually spelled out as the rules or laws of a society when the majority agree. Even then there is usually a lot of grey, which is part of the reason the courts are so overbooked. "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." -William Shakespeare

Hey, good idea putting this in its own topic Sterling! I am going to split the OT posts out of the Footprint thread and put them in here. (It will change the thread as the older posts will be on top - sorry for any confusion.) I have shipped things to the fort when Harry was there and it worked quite well. Without Harry, though, we should try to organize this this year as Captain Sterling suggests. With this in mind, one of the original posts on how to ship stuff to the fort can be found here. However, since Harry is not there, I would not depend on the folks at the fort to know what to do with your stuff until the details have been sorted out, so you would be well advised to coordinate shipping as suggested unless you want your stuff to go missing.

That's cool, but for the donation and the tax stuff, I actually need to talk with someone at the Fort, not a volunteer. Harry allowed me to give Bucky to the fort as an in-kind donation which requires park folks to submit paperwork on my behalf to the Florida park commission.

I was sort of wondering about that. I also wonder if they will want to keep Becky? I doubt Spike has room at his place for her... Who is the contact there? I want to ask them about donating her to the fort. Harry helped me with some forms and tax information on Bucky and I want to see if that is still jake.

You could also climb the rope ladder.

Hm. I may wear my non-pc tennies for this bit. That water looked somewhat impure as I recall. I have no inclination to bathe in it.

Probably observation, the same way many other such things were discovered. Something happens by accident and observant, thoughtful people notice the results and then experiment. Look at the way Fleming discovered penicillin. (If he'd have been a neat freak, it never would have happened.)