Dissecting the Pirate: 2 Guayacil

[Mission]

I once wrote an article about a local girl who had all four of her limbs amputated to save her life when she got meningitis. (It's on my old web page here if you want to read it.) She now gives motivational speeches.

[Swashbuckler 1700]

I once wrote an article about a local girl who had all four of her limbs amputated to save her life when she got meningitis. (It's on my old web page here if you want to read it.) She now gives motivational speeches.

persistent girl.......

[Brit.Privateer]

This is a fovorite of mine (really Foxe) it Depicts the Raid on Guayacil.

FROM FOXE

Brief history: Woodes Rogers commanded a privateering voyage in 1709 or thereabout, raiding the West coast of South America. one of the successes of the voyage was a raid on the port of Guayacil which is depicted here in an engraving from Woodes Rogers' 1712 published account of that voyage.

ok lets talk about what we see.

I've been doing quite a bit of research into maritime clothing during the 1680-1740 as of lately, and I have been searching for the origins of this picture. I have looked through all the various editions of Rodger's Cruising Voyage Round the World up to 1740 and have not found this image in any of them. I've even engaged a couple other people in helping me finding the origins of this picture, but to no avail. I think there is a thread somewhere around here or at the Brethren's forum that states that this image comes from the 1760s. I wish I could find that thread, but anyway, I would more than likely agree with them. As far as I can tell, this image is not period. While it portrays an event in the 1710s, the illustration came from some decade well beyond it.

I post this now because I see so many people still post this as evidence for period attire. I wouldn't use this one, since from what I can find, it is no where a period representation of the event. I have found that quite a few publications mistakenly date illustrations to the event or person that is depicted (and not from when it was made). This is especially true in those late 19th and early 20th century publications that helped quite a few people set foundations for martime history and maritime clothing.

Moral of the story: Be carefull what you use for evidence. Have the artist, year it was made, and the book it came in if it was part of a book.

[Swashbuckler 1700]

This is a fovorite of mine (really Foxe) it Depicts the Raid on Guayacil.

FROM FOXE

Brief history: Woodes Rogers commanded a privateering voyage in 1709 or thereabout, raiding the West coast of South America. one of the successes of the voyage was a raid on the port of Guayacil which is depicted here in an engraving from Woodes Rogers' 1712 published account of that voyage.

ok lets talk about what we see.

I've been doing quite a bit of research into maritime clothing during the 1680-1740 as of lately, and I have been searching for the origins of this picture. I have looked through all the various editions of Rodger's Cruising Voyage Round the World up to 1740 and have not found this image in any of them. I've even engaged a couple other people in helping me finding the origins of this picture, but to no avail. I think there is a thread somewhere around here or at the Brethren's forum that states that this image comes from the 1760s. I wish I could find that thread, but anyway, I would more than likely agree with them. As far as I can tell, this image is not period. While it portrays an event in the 1710s, the illustration came from some decade well beyond it.

I post this now because I see so many people still post this as evidence for period attire. I wouldn't use this one, since from what I can find, it is no where a period representation of the event. I have found that quite a few publications mistakenly date illustrations to the event or person that is depicted (and not from when it was made). This is especially true in those late 19th and early 20th century publications that helped quite a few people set foundations for martime history and maritime clothing.

Moral of the story: Be carefull what you use for evidence. Have the artist, year it was made, and the book it came in if it was part of a book.

Well thin migth help

http://jcb.lunaimagi...2~2&mi=4&trs=28

lol in Wiki there is the right date http://en.wikipedia....i/File:Guay.jpg

Hmmmm so what I believe is wrong here (dismissing my earlier posts in this tread) ... Unlike this image suggests the tricornes were not so universal in gaop than they were in later 18th century when this pic was made. Same with the long trousers they were less popular... Thought many sailor in Gaop used them especially those with Rogers (so that is not technically inaccurate) and even the style of shoes was different than in this later picture.

However for anyone who like to know stuff of the early 1700s the lack of pictures of seaman and pirates is dire

For example can anyone point out any English picture of English sailors (if not counted General history) dating lets say 1705-1735?

I, while not a real researcher,(I dare to claim) know a large percent of the period pictures that can be found online (it is actually interesting that how much of the museum images etc. have been converted in computer form.)

Edited January 8, 2013 by Swashbuckler 1700

[Swashbuckler 1700]

And Pritt.Privateer this is perhaps the one tread where it is said that this is a later picture. See my post in the page 2 that I quoted. Of course some others migth have said that in one other tread.

And looking my old posts here I apology for multiposting, bad grammar as well as some oddly written comments and some lack of discretion in my comments.

I am about to tell terrible truth that that Guayaquil pic is not from GAoP . Foxe has admitted it somewhere and there was some museum fail that happened. That pic is from 1760s or 1770s even wiki has got it right http://en.wikipedia....i/File:Guay.jpg and here http://jcb.lunaimagi...blisher%2CTitle and e.g. Woodes hairstyle is not from the period so artists did not know too well what things were like in Roger's time. Artwork describes Woodes Rogers and his men in 1709 but it is not too accurate or from that period but it is made in late 1760s so 50 after.... So the date 1712 is not real since there has been said that it is from Rogers's journal bublished 1712 but it is not there it is from later editions.

Also (sorry) Both Ivanhenry's and Foxe's gallery have wrong dates for that Woodes pic... In Ivanhenry's site also this pic that makes pair with the another one is got a wrong date http://jcb.lunaimagi...2~2&mi=8&trs=28 but both sites are good since this is only error that I have found.

This leave us even less pictures from the period

but there is still some pics and pics from 1730s and 1740s are quite good source but when pic is 50 years ofperiod it is not good but it is still a little illustrative......

That last section is ofcourse just my humble opinion and some people historians in any rate (like the another writer of the book "Pirate: The Golden Age" ,A historian who I have critisised with too hard tone here), like to go with the really specifically time correct evidence even if it is really sparse (and thus ignore evidence (of thing like clothing or habits) just because it is few years later than the goal period). I would prefer to also take look at just a bit later evidence if it is much greater (and if it is know that not much has changed between the evidence and the period) (I think one decade later or so) to get a better picture of that earlier era as well.

Meaning here that my humble opinion is that for example when reconstructing pirate appearance of the era E.G 1700-1730 it is good to look evidence of 1730s or even 1740s with the specific period evidence just to get a better picture if the evidence of the goal period 1700-1730 is sparse.

But as for using circa 1770 picture to reconstruct the early decades 1700s I see the evidence far too late to be a good source. This ofcourse was just my humble opinion.

Edited January 8, 2013 by Swashbuckler 1700

[Brit.Privateer]

Man, Brown University keeps on putting stuff up on that digital library collection. They must be putting up things much more frequently than I thought (must be some busy employees or graduate students over there).

Well, as for the whole question of when it's okay to use what evidence when, it's not the easiest question to answer. If your goal is to try and get an idea of what sailors looked like during the Golden Age of Piracy, I would generally cut things off at the year 1740, for after that date you get a flood of illustrations and paintings presenting sailors during The War of Jenkin's Ear (or King George's War), which I don't think will present trends of 20+ years previous. I'm still trying to determine if there is a tangible relationship between the occurence of wars and the changing of sailors fashions during this period.

In general, just be careful about trends in sailor's clothing. A lot of people around here seem to assume that "They did it later in the 18th century..." or "They did it i the 1750s and 1740s..." so "...therefore, they probably did it during the GAOP." Well, I hold to N.A.M. Rodger's observations that too many historians up until recently assumed the same thing about the conduct of the Navy overall through the 18th century. Yes, many things had similarities over the course of the 18th century, just like a car in the 1960s will share similarities with a car today in the sense that they both have 4 wheels, axels, a trunk, and windshield, etc...but there were also tons of differences too. Using our car analogy, 1960s car had real steel bodies in much different shapes than today's plastic bodies, etc... For clothing, it's the same thing.

Hat styles change 4-5 times over the course of 1680-1815 by my count (and each time the primary hat style changes, there are always a number who wear a couple other distinct styles). Sailors go from wearing predominately breeches to trousers (and the use of slop breeches or wide kneed breeches thrown into the mix), the length of trousers changed over time (to being up around the calf to sitting on top of the shoes), the cut of skirts on jackets and waistcoats gets shorter over the time to the point of requiring a change in the construction of the breech's/trouser's fly. Shoes goes from mainly buckle to mainly shoe laces (among other things). Even the popularity of particular colors changes; blue is much more popular in 1800 than it was in 1700 for maritime clothing (though blue was worn in good numbers). And then there is the matter of what sailors wore while on the job vs. not working vs. on shore leave.

Maritime clothing isn't the easiest thing to study because of scarcity of sources. You have to search high and low to find out new data. It wasn't until recently that people could pull together enough data and images to make reasonable generalized comments on maritime clothing during particular periods of time like the GAOP. If you wanted to get images and data, until the past 10-15 years, you more than likely had to go to quite a few libraries and archives and dig for tons of hours to find just a few scraps of data or period images (which relagated the job to mostly historians to doing it, for not many people beyond historians and archivists had the time and money to do such digging). Who knows what will come up in the next few years as more and more things get added to various digital archives online. Also, it is getting easier to obtain previous people's research. That's the key to the game, find what has been previously written and discovered and then trying to add to it. Previously, doing that went at a snail's pace, now with modern techology we can crawl (and maybe get walking by decade's end).

[Swashbuckler 1700]

I see. good points indeed.

Not to defend the bad habit of using too late evidence but merely just to show that there was no really big change that occurred in 1740s and 1750. And of course with pictures

Still I must say it seems that the war you mentioned had clearly not much effect to sailor's fashion. Here we have a mid 1730s sailor and a later sailor from 1750s. Well the jacket is different but that is pretty much the all.... Not to say that we can unreasonably stretch the periods as we like but to tell that we can see that changes happened little by little...

And to correct myself there is indeed a one English made picture of English sailor from the period 1705-1735 and it is this. But even this has no certain date but it is likely from 1718

and again we can found a counterpart for him from a later print (see the man with the small whip on the left) http://industryandid...crop_grey.jpg

Edited January 9, 2013 by Swashbuckler 1700

[Swashbuckler 1700]

It is possible the there is another dating error in this gallery http://www.picturetrail.com/sfx/album/view/6655055

Good gallery but it seems that one more later picture is there with wrong date

There there is The Sailor's Farwell print that is said to be a print of 1737 well here it has a later date http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/128166.html

the date seems to be 1787. Perhaps the error happened since "3" and "8" can look pretty similar...

[Gentleman of Fortune]

Seems like most pics of "period" tricorns are on folks with both feet on land. They just seem un-practical for ship borne use IMHO.

But get a sailor on land, and well... anything can happen.

Regardless, I just don't think you can go wrong with a quality Monmouth cap...

Cheers

[Swashbuckler 1700]

Yep. Thought the English admiral figure earlier in this page ("Englisch admiral zur See" (English admiral at sea)) tells what he wore at sea (The (1703) book where it is from focused on the clothing of different people so it is a quite good source) . So officers could, at least sometimes wear the tricorns at sea as well as on land. Also it is good to notice that in gaop there were no naval uniforms in RN so back then you could not distinguish the navy and merchants officers from each other too well. To prove this claim I could raise eg. the period pictures or Chinese statues of early 1700s East India company merchant captains which look alike the naval captains of RN. And the fact that merchant captains were quite similarly equipped than the naval officers raises the diabolical question about pirates stealing officers wardrobe. Thought it might be said that merchant captain's wealth varied between different captains and we have good pictures of merchant captains dressed in practical clothing, like fur edged coats and caps of different sorts, for sea voyage.

In any case the sailor's Monmouth cap is the most accurate choice for an ordinary sailor or a correct pirate. But the tricorns are there at least for the rich and fashionable merchant captains and navy officers.