cool story

[red sam flint]

This coming friday (8-5-05) I will be a guest at a colonial dinner re-enactment, and will be asked to tell a short story. My persona is a privateer/pirate, so it would be nice to tell a pirate tale. Does anyone have a short story, possibly humorous, that I could pass on? The date of the dinner is 1798.

Thanks,

Red Sam Flint

[Fox]

This may not fit, depending on your background, and is a little late (1801) but it made me chuckle.

In the late 18th century the English sea-dog Sir Sidney Smith was on half pay, unemployed by the Royal Navy in which he was a captain. On his own initiative and from his own purse he fitted a ship and joined the war against Napoleon in the Med. He was remarkably successful, and his greatest victory, the defence of Acre against the French caused Napoleon himself to say of him "that man made me miss my destiny". Despite his success, or perhaps because of it, and for other reasons Smith was never a very popular officer in general but he did make one or two good friends. With the end of Napoleon's Egyptian campaign Smith was recalled to England. One of his friends, General Doyle, was sad to see him go and wrote him a letter shortly before his departure, of which the following is an extract.

You have too long known my sentiments upon those subjects, to make it necessary for me to trouble you with them at present; indeed it has been always a source of pride to me, that our ideas have constantly been in unison as to the mode of carrying on the war; but as those have been, for the most part, diametrically opposite to the opinions of some of the sober undertakers of the army, I begin to give some credit to the idea of your being in a certain degree mad; and therefore, if you are no longer allowed to animate us by your example, do, for heaven's sake, bite a few of us before you go;