Matty Bottles

Is this the one where theose two guys are running around with a cannon slung around their necks and then turn and fire it at the mutineers, with no discernable ill effects to the two dudes carrying it?

Yo, Sally, happy birthday!

QFT.

This isn't related to this specific incident, but Green Peace's war against nukes has claimed lives.

If you want pictures of a man with a muff there are probably some websites that can accomodate you.

I hope you make a complete recovery. I haven't tried this yet, but plan to. It's a bit too cold to pour outside in Wisconsin right now, I think.

Wow, Hugh, they really liked 'em thick and wild back then, huh?

I resolve to get to my 17th-century weight. I'm 5'9" or so, so I figure that 145 should do it. It'll take all my will power to reach 180, though. I'm trying to avoid 17th century health problems while I do it.

"Hello, Duffy's Tavern, where the elite meet to eat. Archie the manager speakin'. Duffy ain't here — oh, hello, Duffy."

Thanks, James! I'll take a look at this.

Are you going to light a faggot with your spunk? GUYS IT IS PC DEFINITIONS DON'T GET SO MAD! Okay, that WAS pretty childish. Sorry.

MOAR BETTER CAMREAS!

Ummm... have you seen curse of pirate death?

I should probably learn to make these rather than just making up my own patterns.

B-b-b-but Maddogge, we WUV you...

Hey! It turns out Blackjohn posted the following quote on his Pirate Brethren site. The quote is from the book 'Port Royal, Jamiaca': Her captain, Richard Baker, then took her to work on 'the wreck' for a while, and the following June she returned from it with a haul of 'whole and broken pieces of eight'. That makes me think that 'broken' pieces of eight were cut coins like we see so prevelant in the colonies after 1732. I think I would like to see one or two more instances of their use before I am comfortable using them in my kit*, though. *As though I am some serious historical type. My shoes are the farbiest things known to man and my pistol is fifteen years out of period (although oddly enough, stamed with the name of a gunmaker from the 1690's). Still, I get all keyed up about certain things, and this is one of them.

What are you using them for? What are they made out of? If the answers are 'fighting/fencing' and 'stainless steel' just get new ones.

Yeah, those new-world struck cobs are valued by weight, so they clipped off corners if there was too much. Also the production itself was fairly primitive.

Did you just try to derail your own derailment?!?! *aghast* Anyway, this is still about the piece of eight coin being proken into smaller pieces. I suspect the answer is a big, fat NO.

Jack, did you just derail my thread? *incredulous*

Thanks for clearing that up for me! Now I know to look for those coins as they existed, and that they just may have not been used (much?) in the colonies. This might be of assistance, taken from that site I linked to earlier: Although England restricted the export of its silver coinage, it is clear some British silver, as well as some British gold coins, found their way to the American colonies. Coins were brought to the colonies by settlers, by British officials and soldiers, as well as by merchants and sailors. Indeed, throughout the colonial period numerous tables were published listing the exchange rate of various foreign coins for a particular colony. In 1750 the Massachusetts legislature established rates of exchange for English coinage, an English guinea (valued in England at £1 1s or 21s) passed at twenty-eight Massachusetts shillings ( £1 8s ); an English crown (valued at 5s in England) passed for 6s8d local currency and an English shilling equalled 1s4d in Massachusetts money. From R. Saunders, A Pocket Almanack for 1751 , which was printed by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia, we discover an English guinea passed at a rate of £1 14s in Pennsylvania, and according to the 1759 edition of Father Abraham's Almanack by Abraham Weatherwise of Philadelphia, the English sixpence coin (6d) was valued at 9d in both New York and Philadelphia, while the English crown (5s) passed for 7s6d in Philadelphia and 8s in New York (Click here for the table).

I am looking for #1.

I've heard of the the 'piece of eight' being mentioned in materials from the GAoP, but there were also individual real coins, and two real coins, four etc. So the figure of speech 'piece of eight' could refer to the value of the coin (worth eight reales) but not necessarily the practice of physically dividing the coin into smaller sections. Sj'umlaut o'r'umlaut o'varen, does that book specifically mention the coins being broken up to make change or something? I am wondering if I it would be PC to use a piece of eight that had been cut if half, for example, or quarters. Also, Michael, I have a copy of a queen anne half-crown and a william & mary half crown, so they were around. You should check out this site; the page I linked you to is just about denominations of coins used in the colonies, but the whole site is a fantastic resource including some very detailed images of coins. It's great.

Hey, everybody! How's it going? Great. Anyway, I wondered something about pieces of eight: Since they were milled and their value more or less standardized in 1732, were they commonly subdivided in to eight pieces (or two bits or four bits or whatever) before this time? I can't find any specific reference to a 'bit' nor can I find any information on the numismatic sites specifically indicating that pieces of eight were subdivided during the GAoP. I think it would be cool to know - the Archangel frequently plays hazard at events (I know we didn't do it much at PiP this year, but for some reason I kept going to bed early with my dice) and I think it would be cool to do a demo that way with period coins and whatnot, btu I wasn't sure if the real de ocho was commonly split up like it was during the AWI.

Oh, wow, she's gorgeous!