Two quick buccaneer questions

[MorganTyre]

What sort of style tent would have been typical for a hunting buccaneer to use while in the field or would a tent have been used at all? Also, is anyone aware of any sites/books with more info on the bucan method of cooking other than a general description of it being a way of barbequing?

[Capt. Bo of the WTF co.]

As they were a nomadic hunter, they built temporary lean-to type shelters, or a primitive style of hut similar to the native type of the region. This is not to say that tents were never used, but rarely.

The Time-Life series of books on seafaring is the only source I know of at present that has a period painting showing a boucan in operation. It is basically a smokehouse like we used on the farm when I was a kid, but built of native trees and materials common to the Carrib. Ours was built out of cinder-block and a wood frame roof with a tin top, but it woked the same as the painting in the book on Pirates in the Time-Life series.

A fire is started under the drying racks, and allowed to burn until a good bed of coals is obtained. you then place the meat on the racks and add green wood chips to the coals to produce a smoke cure. You have to add fuel at various times, but do not allow the fire to become too hot, just enough to maintain a bed of coals to burn the green chips and smoke the meat. Usually 4 to 6 hours will do in a regular smoker, but it really depends alot on the thickness of the cuts of meat and how good you are at it.

I'm sure their is better info out there but this should help you on your way to discovery. Bon Fortune!

Capt. Bo

[JoshuaRed]

William Dampier gives a GREAT, detailed step-by-step. If I can dig it out over the next couple weeks I'll transcribe it here.

[Fox]

When Dampier went to live among the logwood cutters of Campeche he took with him a tent he described as a "pavilion" - which suggests something round. IMHO a bell tent is more likely than an old medieval style pavilion.

In "Histoire générale des Antilles de l'Amérique habitées par les Français" (1671) Pere Dutertre described buccaneer shelters called "ajoupas, which were open shelters covered in leaves to keep off the rain, in which they put the cattle that they had killed".

[Red Dog]

Some info I read somewhere spoke about the Chausers working in teams and each carrying a shelter half, simmilar to our modern infantry of today. Two Buccaneers could combine the halves and it would form a type of "pup tent.

It also mentions that the wood used in the construction of the boucans was green and the fule was any hard wood that burned to a white ash.

I'll find the info and supply the source, I just have to check through the 30 or so books I've read in the past 3 months.

[Red Dog]

sorry, to add to my above post, the fule wood was to give off white smoke. Not white ash.

On page 23 of "Piracy, Days of long ago" by Kenneth W. Mulder it has a great discription of the boucan and the smoking process.

[Patrick Hand]

About the logwood cutter's huts, barbecues and pavillions.......

"Their huts were thickly thatched with palm leaves to keep out the hot heavy rains, For sleeping they had a "barbecue" or wooden frame, raised three and a half feet above the ground and placed against one side of the hut. "Pavillions." rudimentry mosquito nets fashioned from sailcloth- "out of which here is no sleeping (because of) moskitoes" - were stretched over the frame and fastened to wooden stakes at each corner. Another barbecue frame covered with earth formed a cooking place; while a third served as a seat. During the rainy season men stepped "from their beds into the water perhaps two feet deep, and continue standing in the wet all day, till they go to bed again."

Diana & Michael Preston "A Pirate of Exquisite Mind" (the life of William Dampier)

(I don't have a copy of Dampier's "Voyages and Descriptions" )

[Capt. Bo of the WTF co.]

The method of building the huts were to dig trenches into the earth and set logs side-by-side in the vertical or "standing" position, for the walls. This method was brought into the Acadia and Louisiana by the early french settlers who had been to the Caribbean islands and borrowed this technique from the native inhabitants of the islands. This would explain the standing water in the huts, as the walls would have acted as dams.

I was in St. Genevieve, Mo., yesterday as part of a History class assignment, so this info is fresh from the tours I went on. St. Gen. is the oldest surviving example of the French Colonial architecture surviving in the U.S., and many of the structures were built as early as 1780. Very cool place to visit. We went in 1750's garb just for fun, and they were having their annual "French Heritage Festival" this weekend. We didn't know about it before arriving, so it was a pleasant suprise.

[Red Dog]

Has anyone tried to duplicate this?

[Capt. Bo of the WTF co.]

I have seen one example at Marthasville, Mo. that is built this way. LaCharrette was the name of the town when first settled in the 1780's, and L&C Corps stopped there on both directions of the journey. In 2004, a local historian researched the actual procedure and built one in their park for the L&C events. It's still there, and holding up well. I plan on going sometime this summer to photograph details for building a similar one at the Truman Dam Visitors Center soon. There are other examples throughout Missouri of this type of construction as well, but they are all later period, larger houses and the logs are set on a stone sill. This is the only one I know of that follows the actual burying of the ends in the ground, and suspending all the interior furnishings above the floor a couple of feet.

I went on a search and found the City's web-page, here is a view of the hut...

... It is made of native cedar logs and shake shingles just as the originals were built here using the Carribean method..."poteaux-en-terre" in French... Just change the wood to something common in the Carribean, and put palm branches in place of the shake and this is what they looked like.

[Red Dog]

Like the smoke barns in KY. first time I saw one of them, I called the fire dept. No joke.

Thanks for the pic, I think I'm gonna try to build a small one just to see if I can.

[Red Dog]

and my last post promoted me to ships Master, ah I remember the days of being a lonley little Deck hand like it was yesterday.....

[Red Dog]

Wow, not as easy as it looks, I've become rather popular with the local fire authority. Green wood is not the same as wet wood. OK, I would have starved to death as a Buccaneer.