'Confederate Privateers', Yaarrgh!

[the Royaliste]

That's right!!!....For the Civil War reenactment June 12-13, it be lookin' like the 'Royaliste' will don the 'Stars and Bars' to wreak havoc on the Union installation and Fort Reynolds on Angel Island, whilst fendin' off the Union ship 'Hawaiian Chieftain'......Troops on land 'n sea, black powder fillin' the air, you get the picture!!..Plenty 'o room on the Island for participants and observer's alike!!....RRRRR!!!!

[TalesOfTheSevenSeas]

Aye!!!! Bring yer spyglasses with ye' to Angel Island mates, for there will be much to see on the deck o' the Royaliste!!

A crew o' Confederate bad boys who have let the ship get way out o' line, captive Civil War era "damsels in distress" waving their hankies to the Union boys and begging for them to come to their rescue, and what wayward crew would be complete without a few "drunken ladies of ill repute" who have tagged along from the last shore leave?!!!

Aye!! All this and a ship-to-shore and Union vs Confederate sea battle too!!! C'mon out to the island and cheer for whomever you support!!

[Redd Oktober]

Arrr This'll be appropriate...seein' as how one side of me family fought fer the south (hailin' from South Carolina and Georgia, the first Overstreets...me namesake...settled the southern colonies back in the 1670's)...and I've heard tell a lot of 'em was seafarin' men (heck, me grandpappy used ter be a merchant marine, and me other a navy man).

[Desert Pyrate]

Now we need to trade our ARRRRs for rebel yells... A practice fer that sometime? O' course, CSS Royaliste will kick Arse as always...

[Connecticut Ben]

Rebel yell, ye say? Best get t' practicin' -- 'tis a most terrible sound: akin t' wild geese mixed in with th' yelpin' o'wolves!

Read about it here:

Rebel Yell

Listen to it here:

Hear the rebel yell

Strikes terror inta the hearts o' them bluebellies, yessir!

Cheers,

CT Ben

"But When do we SHOOT?"

[the Royaliste]

"Yip-Yeeoow!"........For a whole durn weekend, I get to imagine Capt. Raphael Semmes, takin' 60 prizes in less than two years, worth o'er 6 million!!.......'cept it don't say "The Lord Helps Those Who Help Themselves" on me helm....(Me Mudder used to tho.... Yeowzah, she be one 'o thm 'War 'o Northern Agression' Ladies from the great stae 'o Missouri!)..........Bring on them Yankee dogs..........................

[Desert Pyrate]

As one o' the descendents o' Stonewall Jackson hisself, I'll be proud t' be on CSS Royaliste fer a weekend.

[capnwilliam]

Aye, y'all, trois (I live in Louisiana) cheers fer the CSS Royaliste!

"Confederate Privateers"? Why, that's US! Actually it's CS! We are at

confederateprivateers@yahoogroups.com

and you are all most cordially invited to come aboard!

Sure do wish we could make the event! But we'll have spent all our plunder fer this year goin' to North Carolina next week. Is this Angel Island event an annual one?

Capt. William; known also as Capt. Coxetter

[TalesOfTheSevenSeas]

This is an annual event here on the bay... maybe you'd like to plan to join us next year?!!

[the Royaliste]

Aye capnwilliam!!..'Tis RR second year, an' hopefully many more, so....'cmon up 'n jyne us, eh??..........................

[Connecticut Ben]

Here be an example o' what ye be findin' on CapnWilliam's site, a period reference t' the garb o' the Confederate privateer:

"No two men are dressed alike. Many have on loose

"jumpers" or shirts made out of blue denim, similar in

texture in quality and color to the overalls worn by

laborers; others wear course shirts made of yellow

flannel such as may be seen in the south, while others

had nothing on the upper part of their bodies but

their undershirts. Their nether garments-the

extremities of which are in many cases pushed into

their boots-are of imaginable color and quantity

rivaling the diversity of hues, the variegated tints

of Joseph's coat. The majority wear ordinary cloth or

glazed caps, but some have on felt black hats, with

high sugar-loaf crowns, resembling spanish sombreros,

or hats of the Italian brigands."

From a New York Newspaper reprinted in "The

Confederate Privateers" by William Morrison Robinson

1928

'Tis Gold, eh? :)

Also, there be a goodly thread on Confederate Privateers here in the Cap'n Twill section.

Cheers,

CT Ben

(I feel a song coming on ...)

[capnwilliam]

Thank ye, Connecticut Ben and others, fer all the great plugs and info! The Pyrate Queen and I will definitely put next years's Angel Island event down fer consideration.

I haven't been to the SF area since...let me see, it's been since Chinese New Year, in either 1976 or 1977...with the exception of one trip I made there around 2001, to do a hearing for the Department of the Navy. But I was too busy then to get to see anything other than my hotel, the EEOC offices, and the few blocks I walked between the two of them.

Capt. William

[TalesOfTheSevenSeas]

Chinese New Year in SF is AWESOME!! One of my all-time favorite parades. Someday we may have to rig the Land Shark with Chinese junk sails, dress as Ladrone Chinese pirates and do that one!!

[the Royaliste]

RRRRRR-SO!! 'Loyaliste'...............

[Bully MacGraw]

Here is a link to a CSN unit in Northern Ca

http://www.ncwa.org/confederate/Jamesriver...ver.htm?unit=17

[Redd Oktober]

Arrr! Thanking ye kindly, Bully.

[capnwilliam]

That NCWA's James River Squadron looks like a great unit, Bully! Also, they have an historically correct reason why they're portraying sailors ashore rather than afloat (much like the Baratarians here in New Orleans portraying the 1815 battle).

I sure wish I could get involved with them!

Capt. William

[Bully MacGraw]

I have the honour of being a founding member of the group soooo many years back. It is nice to see that they are still around.

The group is well armed and trained to handle the big guns.

I hope they could come out and play with ya.

Cheers

[TalesOfTheSevenSeas]

I'll have to check and see which units will be out at Angel Island. It would be fun to contact them via email beforehand to enjoy a bit of camaraderie with them since we won't be on shore. We've really enjoyed working with the folks out on the island recently and have been having a "blast" with their canoneers on Saturday afternoons!!

[TalesOfTheSevenSeas]

Avast all pirates who are planning to be in on this event!

I was just contacted by El Cerrito High School. At midnight on June 12/13, they would like us to make a raid on the high school's pirate theme grad night, capture the school principal and douse him with a bucket o' water!!!

This will be quite an elaborate school function, with "Treasure Island" themed props.. complete with a 60 foot long pirate ship they are building in the auditorium for the event!!

Sound like fun?!!! I'll be emailin' out details soon!!!

[Anti-Bucaneer Cannoneer]

Greetings from the opposition!

I happen to be one of the Angel Island cannoneers who has crossed paths with the "Royaliste" on a few occasions. I thought you might appreciate a little background on piracy (whoops... "pyracy"... bad enough I misspelt "buccaneer" in my name!) in California during the Civil War.

The draw, of course, was gold. Gold was still coming from the California mines in the aftermath of the Gold Rush of 1849, and during the 1860's this was supplemented by the Comstock Lode in Nevada. As the Trans-Continental railroad would not be completed until 1869 the only good way to get gold to the banking centers on the East Coast was by ship... and you know who that attracts!

Fortunately for us Lincolnites, the Confederate-inspired attacks on the gold steamers and the port of San Francisco missed-fire. There was an attempt by a Confederate officer named Hogg to start a mutiny aboard a steamer bound from Central America and San Francisco, but he was captured before he could carry out his nefarious plot, and a revenue cutter off the Oregon Coast was reported to have been flying a rebel flag, which may have well been the skull and crossbones in the eyes of vigilant Union authorities. Besides these rumblings, two far more serious events occured, however.

In 1863 a chap named Asbury Harpending received permission from the Confederate government in Richmond, VA to purchase and outfit a ship in California with his own funds and use it as a privateer against Union shipping. Harpending did not let his almost total lack of military or naval experience dissuade him, and purchased in San Francsico the small schooner J.M. Chapman a pair of 12 pdr. cannon, small arms and a crew of 20 desperate men from the famed Barbary Coast. As San Francisco was a Union-controled port (indeed, California stayed with the North throughout the war), Harpending had to act in secret. With admirable nerve he had the rifles and cannon he purchased packed in crates marked "mining machinery," and on the night of March 14th he boarded his crew with the intention of sailing out under Union colors at dawn. His goal was a port on the coast of neutral Mexico, where the Confederate flag would be raised, and then he and his crew would begin terrorizing the gold steamers running down the coast.

Only problem was that neither Harpending or his hands could navigate the ship. Against his better wishes, Harpending had hired a man named Law to serve as the Chapman's pilot. Whether Law was a Union spy, coward, or his tongue got too loose in a local pub is not exactly known... what is known is that word of the raid found its way to the local Union officials, and they arranged for a boatload of Marines from the sloop U.S.S. Cyane and a tugboat full of San Francisco police to be waiting for the Chapman as soon as she cast off from her pier.

Harpending and his, err, confederates spent some time cooling off in Alcatraz while the government tried to decide if a case of piracy could be brought against them.

The second would-be Confederate 'pirate' attack on San Francisco emerged in the summer of 1865 when the cruiser C.S.S. Shenandoah was off the west coast. Although a regular Confederate navy vessel, the Shenandoah's captain, Lt. James I. Waddell, was essentially operating on his own authority at the time as the Confederacy had collapsed shortly after Lee's surrender in April of 1865. After decimating the U.S. civilian whaling fleet off Alaska in early 1865, Waddell turned the [/i]Shenandoah south with the intent of holding San Francisco for ransom!

His plan was to run past the fortresses at Fort Point and Alcatraz at night, ram the U.S. Navy's new ironclad on the Bay, the U.S.S. Camanche, capture her by boarding and then turn the guns from both ships on the city, which he would shell until the officials and business leaders there were ready to ransom the city in gold.

Needless to say, this did not occur. Waddell captured a Yankee ship with old newspapers on it remarking on how the war was drawing to a close, and he did not want to risk his crew's lives needlessly, so he sailed south until he met a British ship off of Mexico whose skipper confirmed that the war was truly at an end, but did Waddell surrender then?

No! He feared (quite rightly) that since he had sunk a number of Northern ships since hostilities had ended that if captured he would be tried and probably hung as a pirate (even though he was ignorant of the conflict's termination). Even though his ship was now homeless, he told his crew to buck up as they were to make for the nearest English port... which meant sailing all the way around Cape Horn and up the Atlantic to Liverpool (which, incidently, is where the Shenandoah had been purchased by the Confederacy over a year before). The Shenandoah was the only Confederate ship to circumnavigate the globe, and was the last Confederate military unit to officially lower its flag, on November 6, 1865.

So, I invite all pyrates to try and take our old post on Angel Island. Many before you have tried to get a foothold on the Bay and none have succeeded (seceded???) yet!!!

[the Royaliste]

*Hides linstock with lighted slow match behind back*

Ahoy, mate!!!...Glad to see that ye made it o'er here to 'Pirateville'!!...Mahy thankss for the historical info, we always enjoy learnin' a new tidbit 'o history!........And now, 'ere's to ye, we'll be seein' ye!......Wot say ye, crew???

[Stynky Tudor]

. . .El Cerrito High School. At midnight on June 12/13, . . .raid on the high school's pirate theme grad night, capture the school principal and douse him with a bucket o' water!!!

Clair, this raid sounds too cool! Make sure you post some pictures!

[Stynky Tudor]

Ahoy there Cannoneer and MacGraw, welcome aboard. . . Or, well maybe not welcome.

Arr, but thanks for History lessons. Until recently I lived in California for all of my life with half of that being in SF Bay area, I had no idea. Great stuff.

And feel free to stop by any time to say hi, plus Gary, the Royaliste could use some heckling.

Thanks again.

[the Royaliste]

Stynky, methinks she be a bit 'photoshort', her camera bein' in 'irons', so to speak, but...I'll spot her mine for a while!.... :)