"The Strongest Man Carries the Day," Life in New Providence, 1

[Brit.Privateer]

I've written a new post for my blog about what life was like in New Providence. It's called "The Strongest Man Carries the Day," Life in New Providence, 1716-1717.

http://csphistorical.com/2015/07/26/the-strongest-man-carries-the-day-life-in-new-providence-1716-1717/

Find out all kinds of interesting information about life in this pirate stronghold during it's peak years. Learn about the geography of the port, where the pirates came from, what structures they lived in, what women did in the settlement, and more. The beginning of the article includes a convenient click-to-jump-to table of contents.

['Beer Belly' Bellamy]

I read that post at your blog - thank you very much - good work!

Maybe it's to pedantic, but I really would love to know how the buildings at Nassau were constructed and how they looked like. Are there any books available about the constructing of buildings of that period and perhaps of that area of the globe?

It is not really easy to search the web for this topic as a not native english speaking guy and amazon is a real pain to search without the proper tags!

(https://pyracy.com/index.php/topic/19482-how-would-a-pirate-vilagetown-look-like/)

[Swashbuckler 1700]

For some reason if we forget some things like laughably large fort I think, based on the little i know about Nassau, that in the Assassin's Greed 4 game the port was depicted rather well considering it's overall accuracy or accuracy of any such fictional product.

However I always thought it was far too large town in the game and the article reinforced the image. Yet there are some other comments too below:

In the game it is a shanty town while probably bigger than the real town was. Also, it somehow reminds me of classical old western shanty towns so I don't really feel the building details themselves are that accurate.

Also when I was looking at West Indies nature when thinking about the Pirates's live conditions I found out that the nature and climate of New providence and Bahamas in General is interesting too. And it seems that the game has many things wrong. I remember rain forest like surroundings and swamps in New Providence map of the game and it seems that it wasn't the case exactly in reality. It is rather dry and even harsh place for wildlife. Of course it isn't the same everywhere but the image one gets from the game doesn't seem accurate. Also instead giant Coconut palms we see in Assassin Greed 4 Black flag it seems that the Bahamas had mostly pines and then some own native palm species (like these). (As a funny note the coconut trees are actually not native in eastern side of to the Americas at all. They only entered the Caribbean after Spanish brought them from Africa and Asia starting from 1500s. In 1700s they wouldn't be universally everywhere yet. However nowadays large coconut trees are synonyms for tropical paradise islands.)

The game also has giant rocks all around (as it makes it more interesting). I have an impression that the Bahama isles are really flat with only a few rocks.

Well I have never been there (oops) or anything but I have seen many photos etc. These are just my humble remarks about the accuracy of one depiction of the town and the islands

Pines and palmettos, I think this photo is fro the New Providence island. (found from here )

To me it seems that this is often the Bahamian landscape. Not much rocks or mountains.

Edited July 28, 2015 by Swashbuckler 1700

[Brit.Privateer]

I read that post at your blog - thank you very much - good work!

Maybe it's to pedantic, but I really would love to know how the buildings at Nassau were constructed and how they looked like. Are there any books available about the constructing of buildings of that period and perhaps of that area of the globe?

It is not really easy to search the web for this topic as a not native english speaking guy and amazon is a real pain to search without the proper tags!

(https://pyracy.com/index.php/topic/19482-how-would-a-pirate-vilagetown-look-like/)

Determining the way the buildings of Nassau were constructed isn't that easy - as you can tell by the endnotes on the article. In trying to piece together the evidence, I presented what I found. If you want to find out more, you'll have to look at the sources I put in the endnotes and explored from there. Learning about seventeenth and eighteenth-century building construction is a large task. But, if you just want something to get your feet wet and to get you familiar with some basics on period building techniques, a good intro guide is Home Building and woodworking in Colonial America by C. Keith Wilbur. After that book, future reading on period architecture doesn't seem so scary anymore.

['Beer Belly' Bellamy]

Thank you very, very much!!!

From first sight this seems to be just that kind of book I was looking for and luckily german amazon offers it. I placed my order instantly.