Pirates of Paynetown

This has been one of my favorite pirate events but I have to admit that this year was a bit off for several reasons:

• The main organizer, Nate, has been overwhelmed by his first child and by modifying a historic building so a lot less preparation went into this year's event. It is running on "auto-pirate".
• The weather was not kind to us. Friday was very hot - in the mid-90s. Saturday was a bit cooler. Sunday started cooler but got hot again in the afternoon.
• The event seems less like a pirate event and more like a generic one. In previous years there were a lot more displays and jolly roger flags visible.
• Attendance was down. One entire unit came down with the flu.

That said, it was still an enjoyable event.

Not a lot happened Friday. It was too hot. Also, there was not much breeze for sailing. Last year we had a dusk cannon firing and an improvised ship battle on Friday. This year we had cannon firing both Friday and Saturday but no ship battle.

On a personal note, my wife injured her knee Friday and could not walk without crutches.

I didn't get much sleep Friday night. Some musicians camped next to us played past 3 am. They ran out of period music around 1:30 and degenerated into "do you know this?" followed by a snatch of music. At five, my wife needed help going to the bathroom. At six the wind picked up, threatening rain so I had to quickly get things under cover.

The wind did cool things down. There was a slight drizzle a while later which blew over quickly.

The Saturday battle was cut short by an actual rainstorm. We go off a couple of shots before the guns became too wet to fire. The rain didn't last long.

Sunday's battle was far better. The Priddy Princess joined in as a British ship so we had a battle between it and the other boats. This was the second time I got to use the full-sized swivel gun on the Black Sheep. It was quite loud, matching the bigger pieces in the camp and outclassing the Princess's smaller swivel.

As always, the event had a variety of historic boats with people often going out sailing or rowing. The breeze was light so no one sailed very far from camp but it was common to see one or two boats on the lake.

Flint and Silver

I wrote about John Drake's Treasure Island prequels after reading the second novel in the series, Pieces of Eight. That one was on the bookshelves when I was in England in May so that's what I read first. It was good enough for me to get the first book in the series, Flint and Silver.

First, I want to stress that these are not children's books. They are aimed at adults who enjoyed Treasure Island as a child. The object of the series is to tell the back story of who Captain Flint was and how his treasure came to be buried on a desert island. It also tells how Silver lost his leg and gained his wife and parrot.

Flint and Silver is the story of how the two men became pirates, joined forces, then split apart. It is well-written in period-sounding, nautical language that any pirate will enjoy.

Of the two novels, Pieces of Eight is the better. There are a few oddities about how Flint and Silver is constructed. Drake is anxious to get his characters together so the chapters are not in chronological order. When the heroine, Selene, is introduced, Flint and Silver have already been sailing together for some time but the chapter where they actually meet come later. Be sure to pay attention to the dates at the top of the chapters and it all makes sense.

Another quibble - the book glosses over the time that the two spent working together.

Regardless, it is still a fun read.

Flint and Silver

I wrote about John Drake's Treasure Island prequels after reading the second novel in the series, Pieces of Eight. That one was on the bookshelves when I was in England in May so that's what I read first. It was good enough for me to get the first book in the series, Flint and Silver.

First, I want to stress that these are not children's books. They are aimed at adults who enjoyed Treasure Island as a child. The object of the series is to tell the back story of who Captain Flint was and how his treasure came to be buried on a desert island. It also tells how Silver lost his leg and gained his wife and parrot.

Flint and Silver is the story of how the two men became pirates, joined forces, then split apart. It is well-written in period-sounding, nautical language that any pirate will enjoy.

Of the two novels, Pieces of Eight is the better. There are a few oddities about how Flint and Silver is constructed. Drake is anxious to get his characters together so the chapters are not in chronological order. When the heroine, Selene, is introduced, Flint and Silver have already been sailing together for some time but the chapter where they actually meet come later. Be sure to pay attention to the dates at the top of the chapters and it all makes sense.

Another quibble - the book glosses over the time that the two spent working together.

Regardless, it is still a fun read.

Pirates of the Caribbean 4 Trailer

Pirates of the Caribbean 4 Trailer
Uploaded by teasertrailer. - Full seasons and entire episodes online.

Navigation

Yesterday the Santa Maria celebrated the 518th anniversary of Columbus leaving port (the actual date is tomorrow but special events work better on weekends). Since the event is called "Navigation Day" I brought some of my personal collection of navigational tools and gave some talks on period navigation. At the same time, I've been reading Flint and Silver. A major plot point of this (and of Treasure Island) is that Long John Silver and his crew of pirates do not know how to navigate. This was also a plot point in Captain Blood. This got me thinking about period navigation. What was it that made navigation so difficult?

Any time a ship was out of sight of land it used "dead reckoning." This boils down to keeping careful track of what direction you are going and how fast you are traveling and figuring your position from that. The basic tools were the compass, the sandglass, the traverse board, and the log line (with its own sand glass).

Every half hour the helmsman would turn the glass and put a pin in the traverse board. The traverse board looked like the face of a compass and had eight concentric rings of holes. Each ring corresponded to a turn of the glass and each hole corresponded to a point on the compass. There were 32 points.

At the same time, the ship's speed would be taken with a log line. This was a spool of cord with a piece of wood on one end. The piece of wood would be thrown overboard and it would pull the cord out after it. The cord had knots at regular intervals. A sand glass would be turned. When the sand ran out you would see how many knots had unspooled and mark that on a scale at the bottom of the traverse board.

At the end of a shift, the results would be written on a slate and given to the navigator. He would use this to plot how far the ship had come and which direction and mark it on his charts.

This is where things get complicated. Each chart might have its own scale. Trying to match positions from one chart to another could be difficult.

Any changes in course would affect the accuracy. If the course was changed five minutes into a shift it would still show the same as if it had been changed 25 minutes into the shift.

The effects of currents had to guessed. The only way of measuring a current was to drop a sounding lead into the water and see if the line bowed out some.

The majority of people at that time could add and subtract but not multiply or divide. Some multiplication and division was needed.

There were other tricks that came from instruction or practice. If the bottom was close enough for a sounding, you would put some fresh tallow into a depression in bottom of the sounding lead. This would bring up a little of the bottom. Really detained charts of known waters might include information about the bottom - sandy, gravel, silt, etc. Even if you were out of sight of land, silt meant that a river mouth was near.

You could check your latitude with various instruments that measured the angle of the sun or North Star. There was no way of figuring longitude at sea.

Sailors left all of this to the navigator. Without charts and the logs, there was no way for them to tell anything but the rough direction, anyway. All that mattered to them was not getting lost.

The Black Tot

Yes, that's Black Tot, not Black Spot.

Back in the good old days, British sailors got a daily rum ration called the tot. In fact, from the mid-17th century through the early 18th century, they got two rations of a half pint each per day (for a total of a pint a day). To be sure that the rum was not watered down, they would mix it with gunpowder and try lighting it. It it still lit then it proved that it was still strong. This point was just over 50% alcohol which is why today's 100 proof is 50% alcohol.

In 1740 Admiral Edward Vernon started issuing rum diluted with a quart of water per pint to reduce drunkenness. This mixture, known as grog, may have been named form him. His nickname was "Old Grogram" because of the grogram cloak that he wore.

The tot was gradually reduced to 1/8 pint, once a day by the 20th century.

In 1970, the British Navy decided that even that was too much and abolished the tot. The last tot was issued July 31, 1970, known as Black Tot Day.

Don't feel too bad for the Brits. Their beer ration was increased by one can a day at the same time.

In contrast the American Navy had ended the rum ration September 1, 1862. Instead of beer, the US Sailors got free coffee.

BBC News has more here.

The tot ended before the rum stores were emptied. What was left was saved. If you have some spare cash and a desire for history, you can buy a bottle of official navy rum for 600 pounds. See here for more details.

Early Slops

It's been over a year since I did any research on slops. That time I relied mainly on second-hand sources. A friend at Jamestown asked for justification for slops on the sailors there so I did some original research of my own.

I started with this guy from Gentlemen of Fortune.

They list him as being from 1720. He looks earlier so I looked up the artist. This led to the British Museum. I did an image search on their site and hit gold. This one is Dutch from 1600 and is perfect for my purposes. He is wearing slops, a cassock, and a thrum cap. This is fairly close to what I have worn when doing an early 17th century impression.

 Next are some harbor views from Flanders, from 1647.

All of these have one or more people with some sort of slops. There is also this one. Notice the sailor sitting on the left.

Finally, this site has a woodcut from 1577.

A few points. First, this shows that slops were fairly common from the 16th century and were worn at least into the early 18th century.

I have seen some sites say that they were used as overalls. These etchings do not show any sign that the slops were being worn over breeches. 17th century breeches were very full and would show if they were worn under these slops.

Finally, there are arguments about the bottom of the legs - were they hemmed or not? You can make a strong case either way from these etchings. Some, especially the earliest, looks like they are. The later ones might not be or could have been at one time but the hems are worn.