Buccaneer huts

[Daniel]

Reading Dampier, I noticed that after he and his group split from Sharp's buccaneers and landed in Panama, they had no tents. I guess there were none in the vessel, since their brother buccaneers were otherwise pretty generous, giving them flour, a launch and two canoes, and several days preparation time. Dampier mentions that they built "Hutts" each night for shelter.

Anyone know what kind of huts the buccaneers might have built? I imagine we're talking about something like a Boy Scout lean-to, as I can't imagine there being time (or energy after a long march!) to build much more. Are there any pictures? Anyone built one?

[Mission]

Here is something from Père Jean-Baptiste Labat's book The Memoirs of Pére Labat 1693-1705, translated and edited by John Eaden (1970). He is describing his buccaneer holiday.

"Here I had a large ajoupa built. An ajoupa is a hut made of light poles covered with balisier [Heliconia bihai] and cachibou [Asplundia insignis] leaves to keep out the rain. I sent the pig and other things I had prepared to the ajoupa at daybreak and, most important of all, the wine to be cooled in the river." (Labat, p. 52)

If you do a Google image search for an ajoupa, you'll find all sorts of different structures, most of which share the sloppy-looking roof design that Labat hints at. This seems like the best example I saw with a quick glance:

[Daniel]

Wow, thanks Mission! I'd about given up on this question.

The ajoupa in your picture looks too big to be practical for buccaneers, but I can imagine smaller versions being broken down into pieces and carried. And down in Panama, Nicaragua, or Colombia, rain is your main worry, not keeping warm, so the all-roof, no-walls construction makes sense.

[Mission]

I don't think they would bother carrying it at all. The way I read Labat he is suggesting it be built out of the materials at hand. (Remember, you're in the Caribbean where plants grow like...weeds?)