Posted on 01/30/2018 10:49:31 AM PST by SunkenCiv
Were 18th-century pirates literate? What sort of books did they keep on board ship? ...
During conservation work on artifacts recovered from the wreckage of Queen Anne's Revenge -- the flagship of the pirate Blackbeard -- 16 tiny fragments of paper were discovered in a mass of wet sludge removed from the chamber for a breech-loading cannon.
The largest fragment was only about the size of a quarter. Paper is an extremely rare material to find on shipwrecks, especially one 300 years old, because it usually disintegrates quickly under water... As the work progressed another discovery was made -- that there was still legible printed text on some of the fragments, although only a few words were visible. The challenge then became not just to conserve the paper fragments but also to identify where they were from.
After months of research, the fragments were determined to be from a 1712 first edition of a book by Capt. Edward Cooke, "A Voyage to the South Sea, and Round the World, Perform'd in the Years 1708, 1709, 1710 and 1711."
Cooke's book was a "voyage narrative" describing his adventures on an expedition made by two ships, Duke and Dutchess, which sailed from Bristol, England, in 1708. The expedition leader was Capt. Woodes Rogers, who also published an account of the expedition and who was sent in 1718 as royal governor to rid the Bahamas of pirates.
(Excerpt) Read more at salisburypost.com ...
A fragment of paper discovered on Queen Anne's Revenge, compared with the book it was determined to be from. [N.C. Department of Natural & Cultural Resources]
So, it really was a Cook-Book?......................
A further scientific evaluation says the previously unidentified words remaining are: Eat more Cheerios
Cool!
I liked Blackbeard. To think the Englishman died a few miles off North Carolina..
Ultimately, it announces the first Talk Like a Pirate Day. Arrrrrggggghhhh!
I don’t know how I remember this, but on an episode of “Bewitched” that I saw on TV many years ago, Darrin was having an argument with Samantha and yelled at her, “I bet you knew Blackbeard!”
She probably did, because on the series it was mentioned more than once that Samantha was around for many centuries.
That Twilightzone episode was on last night.
One of my favs!..........................
What a treasure trove!
To serve man!
I suspect some of them were. A lot of them probably were not. Sort of like society in general.
They may have been literate, but they certainly didn't know anything about proper storage of valuable first editions. Rule One is and always has been, "never cram your valuable first edition down the barrel of a cannon"...
The Queen Anne’s Revenge. The Golden Hind. Bonhomme Richard. Those guys had a flair for boat-naming.
Nowadays they’re named after fags (Harvey Milk).
Virginia Governor Alexander Spotswood had sent Lt. Maynard and the HMS Pearl to capture and kill him. They finally managed to do so via a ruse. After a firefight at Blackbeards favored haunt and hideout, Teach's Hole, Maynard feinted by allowing the HMS Pearl to be boarded. When Blackbeard came aboard, they sprang from the ship's hold swinging swords and firing pistols.
Teach managed to break Maynards sword with his cutlass before a navy seaman slit his throat from behind. He was then decapitated with his severed head being hung from the bow of the HMS Pearl, then placed on a pike at the mouth of the Hampton River in Virginia, as a warning to pirates.
Teaches' Hole, Ocracoke Village, NC:
The wreck of the Queen Anne's Revenge was found buried in sand and silt in surprisingly shallow water south of there a number of years ago in Beaufort Inlet at Beaufort, NC.
Man, that’s a beaut of a picture. If you’re gonna go, might as well have a nice scenery.
Ocracoke is a beautiful but odd little place, like many island towns. I love it. Must be what Key West was like before the tourists and gays took over. Coming into the inland side of town from the Hatteras ferry somehow reminds me a lot of how some California beach towns used to look.
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