Lascars Bios and Info

[The Chapman]

LASCARS BAY

New historical story thread.

What’s it’s about:

Starting a new thread for story writing within the ‘pirate’ time period genre. The other threads are getting into story arcs that are pretty well formed, and it might be fun to start something similar but with enough differences to make things interesting.

Who and what would be dandy:

A wide catchbag of characters: sailors, merchants, workers, hangers-on, shopkeepers, people ending up in places due to accident or flight, etc., variety and normal people. I’m much more interested in the activities of a runaway indentured servant than that of a ‘Gentleman of Noble Birth’. Shore activities and commerce of the period also involved many women characters and functions other than whores and wives; let’s look for some variety. Also, let’s keep in mind any place or ship where pirates and seamen congregated was a world melting-pot; nobody needs to be stereotypically ‘British Isles’.

There were a lot of fascinating people roaming the world; I think it’d be cool to explore a wider world-view.

There are a lot of re-enactors and interested persons on this forum who are continually learning about their time period. Inhabiting a character is an excellent way to practice or grow into a character, persona, or for that matter, caricature. This is about fun (FUN, DAMMIT!) and exploring and learning. Don’t worry too much about making mistakes. It’ll get there. A great thing would be, to be able to point out a series of posts for info on the time period, but not to the point that anyone gets scared out of posting, for fear of getting flamed for not being ‘correct’. And an interesting read can smooth over minor bobbles.

The setting is a corrupt GAoP Colonial port in the Caribbean. I tried something in the Indian Ocean but it was just too obscure. Port Royal is taken, is looking after itself quite well, and I think an actual historical place is too limiting. I think it’s better to let the setting create itself a little, like Springfield, or Duckburg, or Gotham City.

[The Chapman]

Billy Bio

Billy is West African; he ends up on a slave ship through either sale or capture, I’ll let his back story work out over time. He comes from the area that is roughly now Ghana. He is ‘rescued’ by a pirate ship and joins their crew. His ambition is to take his loot share and get land somewhere, although not in Africa, and be a grower and farmer. A couple of wives, some slaves of his own, you know, pastoral bliss.

[The Chapman]

Byrd Bio

Byrd is from a hanger-on Puritan family in England with contacts among the Dutch in New York. He is a step- step- son of a reasonably successful estate holder to whom he is not related by blood at all. He is low in the ranking of inheritance, and he uses his intelligence and craft to get what he wants, which is money.

He is sent to the Colonies to look after his father’s interests in a merchant concern, where he spends his time manipulating the merchant partner for what he can get. Unfortunately, it develops the merchant has been concealing his true state of destitution, and when the merchant dies, Byrd is left with nowhere near the money he should have had.

He finagles a post to the Company in India, and on arriving there spends his time stealing from his bosses, whoring around, generally misbehaving, and doing his own trading deals under the table.

During a fairly routine trade voyage to Sumatra the ship he’s on is captured by pirates, and due to a series of unpleasant events, Byrd turns over all his belongings and those of his shipmates, and joins on to save his own skin. He develops to be a fairly good pirate, as he possesses no scruples to speak of. He has been with the crew of the Samuel for three years. He has kind of a problem; although he did have money stashed with ‘friends’ and some measure of identity in New York and in England, whether anyone thinks he’s alive still is open to debate; and at this point it might be better to not turn up again.

Byrd is about five feet nine or ten inches, slim but well-muscled, and is somewhat vain about his physique. He has blondish hair and weirdly lit blue eyes that are almost an aquamarine color; they are very distinctive. His facial features are handsome, and I think I’m basing him somewhat on a mix of Christian Bale and a young Paul Newman.

See? You always spend more time on your villains.

[The Chapman]

Thomasse Bio

Thomasse (rhymes with ‘dumbass’) is an accountant/bookkeeper type who is made captain of a merchant ship during one of the endless trade wars, and who gets a privateer’s commission later on. He is not really a sailor, or much of a captain, but is very good at delegating work and has an odd skill at keeping the peace among his crews. Thomasse is every Burger King assistant manager. He is well-liked, generally, but somewhat ineffectual. His crews keep electing him as a kind of default setting, so there is some sort of a captain and no-one fights over it.

The crew of the Samuel vote to continue looting shipping after the cessation of hostilities of whatever war has just been fought (does it matter, really?), and by a slow process, finally start looting, robbing and raping on British merchant ships.

Thomasse knows he is in big, big trouble, but doesn’t know how to stop it or get out of it.

[The Chapman]

THE ISLAND

The island is based on any one of the small port islands in the area. I personally think Montserrat, with a more rugged interior, middling plantation development, and dependent more on trade (illicit or otherwise) for revenue and activity.

Lascars is drier, and therefore much less prone to yellow fever and malarial problems than, say, Jamaica, mostly because I feel obligated to at least mention the ferocious death rates on other islands from disease. Fewer mosquitoes, less death.

Almost everything is trade. It’s pretty obvious that without corrupt administration Port Royal would have been pretty much of a nowhere burg; and the major influence creating the character of that port was its use for illegal merchandising. Wealth in the New World at the time was based in significant part on smuggling and privateering/piracy, and really, with the exception of occasional flukes of trendy cash crops, that’s how rich people made their money (the old fashioned way: they stole it).

So; Lascars is mostly a natural bay turned into a port/boom town, being used for transfer of goods. Since most Caribbean ports were engaged in large-scale fencing operations, I see no reason to mess with success. Lascars: the biggest pawn shop in the Atlantic!

[The Chapman]

A rough idea sketch of the bay.

[Caudley & Higgs]

Sarah Caudley:

Goodwife Caudley is an average age, plump woman. Round and soft in every way. She has pink cheeks and sandy blond curls that are barely contained under her cap. Caudley is the mother of at least 6 or perhaps its 7 children. It's so hard to tell with them all running every direction and there always seems to be another. She's a soap maker by trade, running her own business while her absentee husband is away at sea. Caudley is generally a cheerful sort, though dangerous with a wooden spoon.

Sarah Higgs:

Goodwife Higgs is an overly tall, lanky woman of about average age. Everything about her is lean, long legs, long fingers, long nose. She resembles a horse at times and has the sharp laugh to go along with her looks. Higgs has flat dark brown hair kept too short for a woman really. She runs the dye works in Lascars Bay, which explains her strangely colored hands. She has never married, has no children and shows little desire to do either. Higgs has a sharp, cynical wit and enjoys seeing the irony in life.

[Heinrich Skau]

Heinrich Skau is a tavern keeper, an ethnic German from Bohemia, and a refugee from the Thirty Years' War, as he is nominally Protestant. He does not like the French or Spanish as he perceives them as Catholic. He's old and crabby, and his prostate bothers him.

He has a 'mulatto' female companion with whom he fights a lot.

His appearance is paunchy, with skinny legs, and not athletic, with a large graying mustache and stubble. He shaves his head and wears a battered hat.

[The Chapman]

Heinrich Skau: "What else would Patience make? Lazy slut…"

The use of the words ‘slut’, as described in several books I’ve been reading lately, seem to insist that use of this word in time period was not to be taken as pejorative. One source describes its use as ‘playful’.

In Pepys’ use the term ‘slut’ is used to describe his girl servant, and other working types and cooks, as in ‘admirable slut’, and I’ve seen another use, in Dampier, of a description of Dr. Foster’s wife as ‘the nastiest wasting slut’.

As far as I can tell, it specifically refers to cooking, housekeeping, and general household-oriented issues. Pepys’ use of the term in reference to his ‘beloved’ daughter seems to imply the making of a mess. I don’t recall an occasion of Pepys calling his own wife a ‘slut’, but then, she doesn’t seem to have done much cooking or cleaning. The thing is, the term ‘slut’ applies to maids, cleaning girls, wives without servants, etc.

As far as the usage of the term in greater society, it seems to me the age was characterized by a great deal of both physical and verbal crudity. It wouldn’t surprise me overly much if a word previously used as a vulgarity and insult (which it was) would have been picked up as stylin’ verbiage. I wonder if analysts and etymologists really know how to balance that inescapable duality, in which big stuff was accomplished, and big thoughts thought by big thinkers, in combination with stunning vulgarity and crudity. Kind of like the present day.

It brings to mind for me the current usage of ‘ho’, which, believe me, is in constant use as essentially non-pejorative and ‘playful’, at least in the community in which I live (for instance, while at ShopKo last week I saw a young man shopping with his about three-year-old son. This guy had tattooed on his neck, in plain view for the world to see, the words, “Ho Love”. Is this a playful use? It’s certainly routine in the social milieu in which I reside). Now, how long is the use of, say, ‘Ho’ going to last? Is it truly non-pejorative? Would Pepys have used it in referring to his little mistresses? (Actually, I think likely so. He strikes me as that kind of guy).

Anyway. This comment has to do with the use of the word ‘slut’ in context on a post in Lascars.

[The Chapman]

Some thoughts about Billy.

Billy wears what I called a death charm; that’s not technically what it is. It’s a protectant charm to ward off bullets.

A few years back I was hanging out at the local watering hole with my friend H, who is an immigrant from the Cote-d’Ivoire. Make a long story short, we had more than a few and started in on that age-old question:

Which is better, the M16, or the AK-47?

He, of course, came down solidly on the side of Comrade Kalishnikov; and then, incredibly, after a few more drinks, informed me in all seriousness that you could purchase from a magician a charm which would ward off bullets; and not only that, but he had first-hand knowledge of their efficacy, as he had seen it with his own eyes.

I still feel bad about my reaction, because it was obvious from my face that I kind of, well, didn’t believe him, and he clammed up about it and changed the subject; when what I really wanted was to get information from him about procedures, what these charms looked like, how and when you wear them, etc. Hell, I got blessed by an old Gypsy woman on my way into a war zone; I’m not going to say that didn’t help.

BUT; and this is the kicker, for me. H wasn’t some superstitious villager out of the sticks. This guy was a research chemist for a food additives company! He has a degree from an extremely prestigious European university! This is an educated, articulate guy! And he tells me you can wear a friggin amulet that WARDS OFF BULLETS?! I damn near fell off my stool! I mean, Holy -----!! What the-?

It’s an excellent example of the tenacity and long life of FOLK BELIEFS. It bugs me when people try to separate the past from the present; because, kids, a lot of the belief structure from four hundred years ago is still here, running underneath, roiling. It’s just not as apparent as it used to be; but don’t doubt it’s not still there. Don’t doubt it’s not hanging around in the souls of the descendants. Four hundred years, my friend, is not a long time. Don’t get it in your head that it is.

Anyway. I got even with H. He asked me about the Stars of David he was seeing associated with US Blacks; and, gleefully, I explained Mystical Black Identity beliefs to him; and remember, he’s an actual African! HA HA HA HA HA!!!

I think if I’d been planning ahead I could easily have sold admission to his facial expressions. It was too funny for words. He sat speechless at me regaling him, and finally managed to gasp out, “…That’s CRAZY!!”

And I thought, ‘Crazier than buying an amulet to ward off bullets?’

[The Chapman]

Brazilian Jews were scattered around in the New World after the Portuguese retook Brazil from the Dutch. Jewish merchants were very much a part of business life in the Caribbean, but, as usual, they were discriminated against and ghettoized, on Barbados and Jamaica, and the other islands.

British merchants attempted to regulate and legislate the amount and level of Jewish merchants' involvement in the Caribbean trade; and personally I don't find it at all unlikely that a refugee merchant from Brazil would find his niche as the middleman between pirates and the ultimate destination of goods: 'legitimate' British merchants.