Matty Bottles

Hey, it's my birthday! Thanks for all the birthday wishes, everyone!

Now that's interesting. I would have expected linen or hemp hammocks, but not cotton wool. I have a few old blankets that would probably make great hammocks.

Jose Gaspar Was a crooked old tar Never caught by the fuzz because he never was

The idea of the sachet was that if the idea did not survive the first five minutes (meaning I couldn't stand the smell), the satchet could be pitched in the fire without the clothes themselves having to be burned...

Mr. Cross is a delight, and his kit is killer, too. That waist coat of mine always pops open and obscenely reveals my shirt to the world. I won't use that configuration of buttons again.

Thank you for the grease ideas. I have considered a small sachet of food materials to hang around my neck - rancid salt pork and salt beef and fish - but I have resisted storing the more putrid ingredients, or those that have the potential to be putrid over time, with the clothes. I actually washed them a few months ago, because I decided to see if I could replicate the odors I want with clean clothes. So far it seems to be a success. I tried stagnant water once before - I actually went for swim in my shirt and slop house, lightly salted my clothes, and then wrapped them up tightly in a plastic bag. After a week I opened the bag, and my senses so grossly assaulted I left them in the garden to be rained clean. It turns out that the body of water I went swimming in was once the outlet for a gelatin factory, and there was an unusually high level of animal nutrients in the water and a corresponding spike in microorganisms. And could that sentence sound any snottier? Wet wood is a real idea, though. The wood chips themselves have very little smell of their own. I could just wet them and use them to line the base of the scent chamber.

Thanks for the recommendation - I'll check it out. BBC costumes are usually pretty good. I guess they care about history over there.

I'd like to echo a lot of these same sentiments - Greg, you got a lot of us started on the path to documentable accuracy. It's so good to hear from you again.

Extra Old is quite good.

I believe the Gunnister man had a knit drawstring purse. Just a bag, really. A small knitted bag.

So I went as Bane. This is me and Logan, just chilling: What did you guys dress as?

I have found a bunch of Mary Rose-style shoes, generally around $75, and you know what? I think they would work. The wreck of the Belle had at lease one open-sided shoe without the large tongues we associate with the period. If you were doing an early GAoP sailor's impression, I think they would be just fine.

Those are sons and daughters and brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers out there, and some guy behind a desk in the midwest who thinks he knows it all thinks it's an insurance scam? Or doesn't think we should maintain a coast guard because $20 of his tax bill supports it? I swear, our civilization is growing more and more uncivilized.

The Monday-morning quarterbacking on the internet is going full force this morning. "Why were they out there with a storm coming?" "Lost power? How come they didn't put up the sails?" "Sounds fishy - must have been an insurance scam." "I don't want to pay for this fiasco - fine everyone onboard $100,000." I forgot that everybody on the internet is an expert on every goddamned thing ever.

I don't point anything at civilians anyway. I've been cut by my flint just casually handling the gun, so I don't want them touching my firearms at all, but this is a good point about safe firearm handling, a skill we should all cultivate with civilians and fellow reenactors alike. I don't mean to minimize that. And it's everyone's responsiblity. I once lined up in a skirmish very early on the line started to stagger, so that if I pointed my weapon straight ahead it was a little behind line with the ears of the man five over. If I pointed it safely away so that the blast wasn't going to hit anyone's ears, it would go over the crowd, which I wasn't thrilled about either. But if I got in line with them, the man next to me, and the man next to him, would be behind me and my ears would get the blast. If we had lined up correctly, we'd be fine.

PM sent.

I had the same problem with Port Washington as I did with PiP - everyone assumed that I knew people because I was on the Pub. But I'm only on the pub sporadically, and even then I don't feel like I've met someone until I've actually MET them. So I wind up sort of never learning who is who, or getting to know a handful of people out of a large pool.

Congrats on the baby boy - I have two now. If you ever get a post in Milwaukee or Sturgeon Bay, let me know. We can get together and drink rum.

40 lbs.? Holy moly! Are you starting a new kit, or does the old one fit better now?

My biggest hurdle to authenticity (besides shoes and a sweet beard or 'stache) has always been my weight. But I love me some fried cracklins, what can I say?