Who's who on ship

[LadyBarbossa]

Now... for some of you who do much more research than I... may be a wee bit clearer on this subject...

I've a couple books and looked about on the web.. asked a couple people... however I'm still rather unclear on the titles and ranks of those aboard ship. I know some have multiple titles and some titles have the same meaning.

Is someone out there willing to assist in clearing up what is what and who is who?

Example... what the captain does and why they are there. Is the Quartermaster and First Mate the same rank? What is the difference between Master Gunner and Master at Arms?

All these and many other titles and ranks have not been clearly defined to me.

Help! Please?

[JoshuaRed]

Pirates tended to use the same common ranks of naval & merchant vessels, since that was their common heritage.

Captain was in many cases elected, but not always. He had 100% authority in matters of chase and battle. All other issues were subject to vote.

2nd in Command was his mate, or maybe the Quartermaster. Responsible for administering discipline and daily commands as well as being a liason between crew and captain. The Master at Arms was in charge of the firearms and weapons, which may not have played into pirate crews, if you are of the belief that pirates solely tended to their own private weapons....

[LadyBarbossa]

Aye... so that part in the "Code" with the weapons is what also confused me. I'm sure each vessel was set up differently yet similiar in structure.

Now.. Navigation is another that kills me since from research.. young lads of good Genteel standing we taught Navigation as well as Latin and other means to get them further in that day and age. So... if the Captain did know Navigation, obviously they didn't need a Navigator, correct?

A couple terms appear to be the same like First Mate and Quartermaster... another is the Navigator and the Sailing Master.

It all seems rather like "crossing wires" or they all nearly have the same stations as another to me. If not, it's where I have read these terms and titles are not all that clearly defined to me which again confuses the heck out of me.

I'm sure ships titles were varied depeneding upon the type of ship and the number of crew.

And thank you, JoshuaRed for your assistance. It is appeciated.

[JoshuaRed]

No problem! Though I'm sure others can provide far better details than me, I just happen to be the night wanderer still awake at the moment!

The Sailing Master was in charge of the running of the ship itself. The trimming of the sails, etc. A navigator would be one who would tell the sailing master where to point the darn thing.

[Captain Jim-sib]

Via Joshua Red

2nd in Command was his mate, or maybe the Quartermaster

For example: Calico Jack Rackum was 2nd in command on Charles Vane's brig Ranger. His offical title was "Quartermaster."

[blackjohn]

Previous threads on this and similar subjects...

https://pyracy.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=3154

https://pyracy.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=3278

https://pyracy.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=3694

https://pyracy.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=6075

[Fox]

This has probably been covered in the threads Blackjohn posted, but a couple of points anyway.

The exact command structure varied from ship to ship, and depending on the period in question.

I think it's not necessarily untrue to describe the QM as second in command on a pirate ship, but it's not really the whole truth, and is probably a little misleading. The most important point is that on no other type of ship did the QM have such a position, in naval or merchant ships it was actually a pretty low rank. There was a long thread about this before which I suspect Blackjohn has flagged.

On navigation: The more people who could navigate the better, quite often we hear of gunners and boatswains being able to navigate. On smaller ships (including many pirate ships) the captain and master were one and the same person (often just using the title "master"). By the GAoP the rank of navigator or pilot had more or less died out as a permanent fixture of the crew, and navigation was the responsibility, but not sole job, of the master.

My webpage on ranks goes a little more in depth.

[Daniel]

The Master at Arms was in charge of the firearms and weapons, which may not have played into pirate crews, if you are of the belief that pirates solely tended to their own private weapons....

The articles of John Phillips and Bartholomew Roberts both lead me to believe that pirates usually did tend to their own weapons and were held responsible for doing so.

Phillips' article 6: "That Man that shall not keep his Arms clean, fit for an Engagement, or neglect his Business, shall be cut off from his Share, and suffer such other Punishment as the Captain and the Company shall think fit. "

Roberts' article V: "V. To keep their piece, pistols, and cutlass clean and fit for service. [in this they were extravagantly nice, endeavoring to outdo one another in the beauty and richness of their arms, giving sometimes at an auction (at the mast) thirty or forty pounds a pair for pistols."

The reference in Roberts' articles to the pirates actually buying their pistols suggests that, at least in that crew, the pistols were not under the Master at Arms' control.

LadyBarbossa, pirate captains didn't always know how to navigate, viz. Walter Kenedy, described as a mere "pretender." On merchant ships, the mate sometimes knew navigation. Merchant captain George Roberts, known for being captured by pirate Capain Low, once got sick on one of his voyages. When he recovered, he went at once to his mate and demanded to know the latitude (dissatisfied with the answer, he then worked it out for himself).

[capnwilliam]

Aye... so that part in the "Code" with the weapons is what also confused me. I'm sure each vessel was set up differently yet similiar in structure.

Now.. Navigation is another that kills me since from research.. young lads of good Genteel standing we taught Navigation as well as Latin and other means to get them further in that day and age. So... if the Captain did know Navigation, obviously they didn't need a Navigator, correct?

A couple terms appear to be the same like First Mate and Quartermaster... another is the Navigator and the Sailing Master.

It all seems rather like "crossing wires" or they all nearly have the same stations as another to me. If not, it's where I have read these terms and titles are not all that clearly defined to me which again confuses the heck out of me.

I'm sure ships titles were varied depeneding upon the type of ship and the number of crew.

And thank you, JoshuaRed for your assistance. It is appeciated.

You must be careful not to confuse Naval ranks with pirate ranks: young lads of good genteel standing presumably didn't end up as members of a pirate crew!

Did pirates carry and care for their own personal weapons? Probably: and yet I doubt that they climbed rigging wearing cutlasses and a brace of heavy pistol. They must have stowed their weaonry somewhere. (?)

Capt. William

[PirateQueen]

Didn't the officers on Roberts' ship refer to each other as Lord, and collectively call themselves the House of Lords? :)

I think pirates would have used ranks they were familiar with, but also would have bucked convention, hence the tendency for the Quartermaster (or whatever they chose to call the person trusted to represent the crew in matters of importance) to have quite a bit of authority.

[LadyBarbossa]

Aye. Thank you, Foxe. Indeed that term of the Quartermaster and the First Mate/Leftenant has confused me (along with everything else)... since I know more of the Quartermaster to be - in Army terms - the one in charge of the supplies and it's distribution. And heard the term used both historically and fictionally as the "most powerful person on ship" as second in command and rep to the crew.

Again, thank you all, keep them coming. I've continued to scroll through my books... attempting to find answers again.

[the Royaliste]

Most armed ships were purpose-built; cutlass racks and weapons lockers came stock from the factory, pirates stole ships...no reason not to use the lockers and racks. Whether somebody was in charge or not would be speculative on my part.We individually care for ours stored in common racks.

ROYALISTE Headed East in 30 Days....

[Patrick Hand]

Humm.... that's kinda what I typed in the "new" thread bout weapons....

Still good to hear from you again Captain.......

[Fox]

On Quartermasters: The exact role of the QM and his position in any kind of hierarchy doubtless varied from ship to ship; on some pirate ships the QM seems to have occupied a similar role to the QMs on other ships - that is, he was one of several QMs (between 1 and 8 depending on the size of vessel), who were basically the officers in charge of the running of the quarter deck. They oversaw the steering, the logging of time, latitude and course, and generally were dogs of al work connected to the running of the quarter deck. (The quarter deck was where the ship was controlled and commanded from). They also had other responsibilities, such as the division of supplies (sometimes) and the division of plunder (particularly on privateers and suchlike).

The archetypal "pirate" QM was found on many, but by no means all pirate ships. In day to day practical terms he probably did a similar job to the non-pirate QMs, but he also had other duties. On a pirate ships the division of plunder was probably more important than on any other ship, and this was often the QM's job.

Where there is some confusion is over the question of the QM's authority. Some writers have suggested that the QM was the second in command of a pirate ship, but in fact this is not really supported by the evidence. In Lowther's and Phillips' articles for example, no extra shares are allotted to the QM though other officers are mentioned as getting an extra half or quarter share. Several of the proclamations offering rewards for captured pirates make no mention of a QM, or place him low in the list. However, some sources suggest that the QM had a kind of brake-power over the captain, but where any detail is given it tends to be suggested that the QM's power is only his as the representative of the whole crew's interest amongst the officers. He was rather like the factory line manager who was also the union rep. He had little responsibility, and little command, but as the voice of the crew he was able to object to the captain's decisions if the crew chose to. It is important to remember that the QM's voice of dissent was not his own, but the whole crew's.

On Mates: The question of mates, and their position in the hierarchy is quite difficult to grasp, but is actually quite simple once you know how it works. Many of the officers aboard a large ship had "mates" to assist them in their duties, and to take over from them if they were incapacitated. Thus, there were master's mates, boatswain's mates, gunner's mates, QM's mates, swabber's mates, etc. If someone was described simply as "mate", then it can usually be taken that they were a master's mate, ie, they were the subordinates of the ship's master. Their position in the hierarchy thus depended to a large extent on the master's. For example, on a large warship where the captain and half a dozen lieutenants outranked the master, and where there might have been half a dozen midshipmen, the mates were relatively low ranking officers (early 17thC privateer mates recieved 5 shares, as did the boatswain, carpenter, gunner, and a couple of other officers, the QM got 4; in the RN of the late 17thC the mates recieved 2s per month more than the boatswain, gunner, and carpenter, and 8s more than the QM). On a small merchantman where the master was in sole command the mates were more important officers, though obviously they had a much smaller command.

[Cap'n Pete Straw]

Lady Barbossa,

I told you (via earlier private e-mail) I had it somewhere... and I finally found it.

The following information is from Time-Life Books' "The Pirates" (from their "Seafarers" series). This is hardly authoritative, especially as this 1978 publication credits Daniel DeFoe as the true author of "Captain Johnson's General History of the Pyrates" -- a once-popular theory which has since been largely discounted. And, of course, what was true on one ship may be different on another.

I will retype as much of the narrative as I can here, but will skip lengthy expository sections in the interest of brevity. Nonetheless, I expect this will be a somewhat long post...

* * * * * * * * * *

One of the most remarkable characteristics of pirate life was the almost total absence of those features of ordinary society the pirates detested -- overbearing authority, class distinctions, lack of say in important matters ... the pirates shared their ship and worked for nobody. They elected their captain and they could depose him... Except in the heat of battle, major decisions were generally taken by a show of hands... The pirate captain ... had no constitutional authority and was entitled to no special priviledges aside from a double share of the loot...

Next to the captain the most important man on a pirate ship was the quartermaster ... the strong man of the ship. He was the ship's magistrate and empowered to punish minor offenses like quarreling or not looking after weapons properly, though serious offenses could only be tried by jury. He was the only man on a pirate ship who was allowed to administer flogging -- though so detested was this form of punishment that it was allowed only when sanctioned by a majority vote of the crew. The quartermaster was also the first man to board a prize, and he was responsible for the selection and division of the plunder... He [too] was chosen by majority vote and he could be deposed by it.

...The pirates had all the other officers usual on a man-of-war -- if they could get them. These officers were sometimes elected, but more often appointed by the captain and quartermaster.

There was sometimes a lieutenant, who had no particular function except to assume command if the captain was killed.

The sailing master was more important -- it was he who was in charge of navigation and the setting of the sails.

Theboatswain was responsible for maintenance, ship's tackle and stores, and the day-to-day work of the ordnance, gunnery training and the gun crews in action.

Other invaluable specialist officers or "artists," as they were called, included the carpenter, the sailmaker and the surgeon.

The surgeon on board a pirate ship often spent his time treating veneral disease among the crew members. Against the main causes of death and incapacity in tropic waters -- yellow fever, malaria and dysentery -- he was virtually helpless. During a battle he would be required to dress wounds and perform amputations. If there was no surgeon, the carpenter stood in for him: the tools were much the same.

Members of the pirate orchestra ... were seamen who had been impressed from captured ships because of their ability as musicians. [They] were continuously on call to play a jig or a hornpipe at a pirate dance or to serenade the pirates as they took their communal meals... during a battle they were ordered to play nautical tunes and aggressive war notes on drums and trumpets to demoralize the enemy and encourage their own men.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

So, there you have it. A pretty good starting list, I believe. I also have the "Men-Of-War" book from the same series. I will thumb through it and see if it adds light to this topic.