On location, llp chapter 9

It’s fun to be in the location I am writing about, so I made a short video to share with my readers.

I’m now halfway through writing my newest novel, the prequel to Pirates of the Bahamas, and have finished writing a scene where Anne Bonny and Chris Condent escape along a trail to the beach:

….there was an overgrown footpath which led them through the forest of thatch palms and sea grape until they could see the ocean ahead. “Shh,” Chris put his finger to his lips.  “Stay here,” he whispered, then crouched down and made his way into the tall grass which formed a border separating the trees from the beach.  He made a whistling sound….

This is the trail, so you can see what it is really like.  I also show a close-up of the leaf of the sea grape plant, which were used as plates by the indigenous Lucayan Indians of this island.

Pirate Rum Drinks in the 18th Century

My research into pirates and people in colonial times in general has shown, not surprisingly, that as a whole they consumed a lot of alcohol, considering it to be a healthy alternative to water.  While we associate pirates with drinking rum straight, they actually enjoyed it in a variety of mixed drinks.  Here are a few of the more interesting ones I’ve come across:

RATTLE-SKULL

Why bother with separate mugs for beer and rum when you can just mix it up together?  Rattle-Skull did just that.  Half a cup of rum was blended with a pint of porter and the juice of half a lime, then served with shaved nutmeg on top.  My research described it as “a dangerously smooth and stultifying concoction.”

FLIP

Flip was a blend of ale, rum, molasses and eggs.  The eggs and molasses were beaten together in a ceramic jug, then rum was blended in, then the jug was topped off with ale and all the ingredients mixed together.  Before serving, a hot poker was inserted into the jug and after it frothed up it was poured into mugs and served.

BUMBO

Bumbo was a mixture of rum, water, sugar and nutmeg which was enjoyed by sailors in the West Indies in the early 1700s, and it eventually became a very popular drink throughout the English Colonies too.

coconut005 I suspect that coconut water was likely used in the Caribbean, and I can personally vouch for this one as an excellent drink when made that way.

Bumbo even played a role in the course of American history.  Political campaigning in colonial times included providing generous amount of drink, presumably in exchange for votes.  George Washington’s papers state that he used “160 gallons of rum to treat 391 voters to bumbo” during his campaign for the Virginia House in 1758.  He won.

 

 

Also working on the Sequel to Pirates of the Bahamas

It is 1754, almost two years have passed since Pirates of the Bahamas ended.  The resumption of peace between the European nations has meant England now allows Spanish and French ships to use the North West Providence passage, a deep channel through the Bahama Islands, as a short cut from Cuba and the Eastern Caribbean islands to pick up the gulf stream in the Florida straits.  The free use of this passage is key to Rum and Wrecks, the next Historical Novel in the series that I am in the process of writing (in addition to the prequel, mentioned in an earlier post).

Peace brought an end to privateering as a livelihood, but opened up a new source of revenue to the former pirates who had remained in The Bahamas: licensed wrecking, or the salvaging of shipwrecks.  Rum and Wrecks begins with the wreck of a Spanish ship, and I’ve given a short excerpt from it, below the video:

Jack was easy to spot, standing high on the beach looking out to sea.  Mary walked up behind him, wrapped her arms around his waist and snuggled the left side of her face against the soft silk shirt covering his back.  “It’s getting windy out here,” she murmured.

“Indeed it is,” Jack responded without turning around.  “It looks like there’s quite a storm blowing in.”  He focused his spyglass back and forth.

“What do you see?” Mary whispered into his right ear as she peered over his shoulder.  The setting sun was brightly illuminating something on the southern horizon.  Sails?

“It looks like a brig,” Jack answered.  “But if she’s a merchant then she’s way north out of the shipping channel.”  He handed Mary the spyglass.   “Here, take a look.”

“They can’t be more than a couple of miles away from the reef,” Mary gasped. “I’m sure they can see it from there.”  She handed the glass back.  “Why aren’t they turning back?”

“They can’t; if they come about and run with the wind they’ll be facing shallows and reefs.  The only way out of this for them is south, but with this wind that isn’t an option for a square rigger.  Only a sloop can sail that close.  Now that he realizes where he is, that captain’s going to be desperate for a way to get close to shore so he can anchor in shelter and wait the storm out.  They’re pointing as hard west as they can while hoping to come across a cut through the fringe reef before they’re driven onto it.”

“But there are no cuts in that part of the reef.”  Mary’s head vibrated from side to side.

“That’s right.”  Jack folded the spyglass onto itself as the rain began. “And that means we’re looking at a doomed ship; they’ll be a wreck on Dead Man’s Reef before morning.”

When Characters Take Over The Story

I’m up to chapter 6 of my next novel, about 16,000 words written so far, and writing is picking up momentum nicely.  Now that the characters have taken over the story I’m just typing it in, downloading from the brain rather than have to think about what happens next.  Sometimes they add an unexpected twist.  This is the fun part of writing for me; the main story line has been developed and a main character, in this case Anne Bonny, just runs with it.  It’s a historical piece so the significant events of course have stay true to what actually happened, but it’s great to see how the characters handle it once their personality has been well developed.  Here’s an excerpt from Chapter 5:

…Still hugging Anne, James Bonny eased down onto the davenport and slid her sideways on his lap.   “I just had a meeting with the governor,” he said proudly.  “A soldier sought me out while we were loading the boat for tomorrow’s run and told me that Governor Rogers wanted an immediate audience with me.”  He brushed a lock of hair behind Anne’s right ear while smiling obliviously into her expressionless face.  “Imagine that.  The governor, himself, wanted a meeting with me!”

“What did he want?”  Anne’s voice was gruff and she stiffened her body.

“He told me that England has issued a bulletin to all the governors to be alert to growing Jacobite sympathies throughout the colonies and to arrest anyone who might be complicit and send them to London.  He also told me that he’s concerned about rumors of unrest with the former pirates here in New Providence, so he’s hired me as an informant to keep him appraised of the goings on.  As long and I can fill him in on the who’s and the what’s, there’s going to be a lot of money coming our way.”  He looked quizzically at his wife.  “Money, Anne.  For us.” He enunciated slowly, confused by her lack of excitement at his spectacular news.  “Lots of money for all of the things we want.”

Anne placed her hands on James’ shoulders and pushed him away as she rose to her feet.  “You mean to tell me that you’ve agreed to be a spy for the very man who’s responsible for shattering our dreams?”  She was incredulous.  “And that you now want to rat out your friends?”

“It’s my civic responsibility, Anne.”  James stood up.  “Yours too, you could feed me a lot of intelligence from the pub.”

He reached out for her, but Anne swung her right elbow towards him.  “Don’t you ‘civic responsibility’ me,” she snarled.  “We came here to be free of all that.  Damn it, James, we came here to be pirates.  What about that life you promised me, eh?” She dug her trembling fingers into her fiery hair.

“The world has changed, Anne, and those days are no more.”  His voice remained infuriatingly calm. “It’s time for us to be a part of the new way of things and start to enjoy a civilized life.”

“Are you listening to yourself?”  Anne’s Irish ire was up and she released her inner banshee.  “You’re a traitor to everything we ever wanted.”

“You talk like there’s actually a choice to be had.”  James held the palms of his hands out towards his wife and slowly shook his head.  “Nobody’s going to be able to have that life anymore.”

“There’s always going to be adventurers out there, you coward.  Real men who aren’t going to cow to anybody’s rules.” Anne blurted out, then immediately wished she hadn’t.

“That’s right,” James nodded.  “And the governor is going to pay me handsomely for their names.”

“Well you’re not getting any names from me.  Look,” Anne rapier flung her right index finger at him. “You go back and tell your new boss that you don’t want to be his mole.”

“I can’t do that.  What would I say?”

“I don’t care what you tell him. Tell him you had a surge of conscience.  Tell him that your wife threatened to divorce you if you did.”  Anne suddenly bit her lower lip; those were unplanned words, but they felt true.  She looked down, gulped, and fell silent… 

 

That last piece of dialogue certainly wasn’t something I’d planned for, and it has provided a nice additional twist as the story proceeds.

WOMEN PIRATES OF THE BAHAMAS, AN UPDATE

When I read in various historical references about the turbulent period between the 1720s and the American Revolution, I was fascinated to find out that the colonists were relying on smugglers to avoid taxation.  It turns out that many of these smugglers were ‘former’ pirates, some still were and others were hired as privateers, who also had a beef with English authority following the death of Queen Anne and the ascension of the German King George 1st.  As things heated up rum became the currency of America and blockade runners to get both the rum and molasses from islands whom England was at war with…they were trading with the enemy…was a very dangerous thing to be caught doing.  It became clear that these ‘pirates’ had been instrumental to America gaining its independence.

I decided to write a series of historical novels about this.  It made sense that at least some of these pirates would be based in the Bahamas; we know for a fact that government authorized wreckers were there, helping themselves to the cargo of ships who foundered coming through the Bahamas channel for a large take of the prize.

Looking at pirate history, two very colorful characters active in the Bahamas at the end of what is called the golden age of piracy were Anne Bonny and Mary Read.  While most pirates died violent deaths, history tells us that these women both had children, presumably by Jack Rackham.  The numerous stories about Anne Bonny and Mary Read told over the past 300 years for the most part agree with each other, and so for the purpose of my story having the next generation of pirates be from be fierce, swashbuckling pirate mothers, they fit very nicely.

The first of my book series, then, Pirates of the Bahamas, was published just over a year ago.  It begins the history of the pirate influences leading up to the America revolution as experienced by these two children.  In the first book of the series we are introduced to them when they are in their 20’s, and this book is also considered a historical romance as well as historical adventure.

After Pirates of the Bahamas was published I tossed around the idea of a prequel, to tell the story of how these two women became pirates in the first place.  From the earliest part of my research I learned that just about everything we hear about them was based on A General History of the Pyrates, a book printed in 1724, and the re-telling and elaborations of those stories has given us what is generally accepted as fact today.

I, however, decided to read the original document.  It’s an excellent source material for all of the other pirates, but the parts about Anne Bonny and Mary Read seem to have been just stuck in at the end of the chapter about Jack Rackham.  Unlike the rest of the book, the Bonny and Read parts don’t seem to follow any chronology and are really just a series of anecdotal tales that the author picked up from the witnesses at their trial, some of which even he considered suspect.  The more I read and compared to what is generally accepted, the more I realized that much (in the case of Mary) or most (in the case of Anne) of what we ‘know’ about these women is incorrect.  This new information definitely made the reason for a prequel even more important to me.  I collected stories and as many original documents as I could find and cross referenced them.  Even the most outlandish tale generally has a basis in fact somewhere, so I also dug into those.

What I can tell you right away is that of the two of them, Mary Read was the actual pirate and much of what has been since attributed to Anne Bonny were things Mary actually did.  Anne Bonny was an 18 year of girl who had been drawn to a romanticized ideal, spent no more than 3 months as a pirate, and probably only experienced the horrific aspects of pirate life on the day she was captured.  It does seem to be quite factual, however, that they both enjoyed the company of pirate captain Calico Jack Rackham.

I’ve collected much material on this subject and have been sorting it out against known chronology over the past year.  A wonderful story has emerged, which I am now in the process of writing as a historical adventure novel.  Since this will be giving a historically accurate account of these women pirates, it may also end up being an important work.

 

Triangular Trade made Piracy Golden

When European demand for the products from the Spanish Main and the Caribbean Islands soared in the 17th and 18th centuries, a very profitable system was set up to transport these goods back to England, Spain, France and The Netherlands.  The so called Triangular Trade took manufactured products such as cloth, iron and beer to Africa to be exchanged for slaves, which were then takes across the Atlantic and sold at tremendous profit.  The ships then loaded up with sugar, molasses and rum and headed back to Europe in a triangular circuit that took about a year to complete.

By the beginning of the 18th century all of this wealth, the slave ships coming in from Africa and the goods laden ships leaving for Europe, had become irresistible targets for looters and pirates.  The golden age of piracy was born, not due to grand efforts on the part of the pirates themselves, but because of the abundance of spoils and the ease of taking them.

Here’s some more reading material: http://piratesoflore.com/triangular-trade.html

Pirates didn’t worry about Hurricanes

In the years from 1645 to 1715, which coincided with the golden age of piracy in the Caribbean, there was a lull in tropical storm activity.  Recent studies of examining the tree rings in the wood from 500 year old shipwrecks shows there were 75% fewer storms during that time period.

One wonders if the increasing number of hurricanes, which clearly made their trade more perilous, further encouraged the pirates of Nassau to accept the amnesty pardon offered by Woodes Rogers, the new governor of The Bahamas, when he arrived in 1718.

Here’s a link to the article:

https://cosmosmagazine.com/earth-sciences/what-shipwrecks-tell-us-about-500-year-old-hurricanes?utm_source=Today+in+Cosmos+Magazine&utm_campaign=2677157da0-RSS_EMAIL&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5f4ec2b124-2677157da0-179843297

 

The real Robinson Crusoe was a pirate

I just read a great article from the Smithsonian about Alexander Selkirk, the inspiration for Daniel Defoe to write Robinson Crusoe; click here to read it for yourself.  Not only does it tell the story of Selkirk, but it also provides a glimpse into what life aboard a real pirate ship might have been; here’s an exerpt from the article:

“Because pirates have been so romanticized by actors from Errol Flynn to Johnny Depp, it’s easy to overlook that the typical pirate ship stank of animals and excrement, that scurvy and yellow fever often killed so many that corpses were routinely dumped at sea, and that pirates often delighted in macabre torture.

Pirate prisoners would most likely have chosen to walk the plank—a practice more common in TV cartoons than in pirate history—rather than be subjected to sadists like Edward Low, who, in the 1720s, cut off a prisoner’s lips and broiled them in front of the hapless fellow, or those who practiced “woolding,” in which slender cords were twisted tightly around men’s heads in the hope of seeing their eyes burst from their sockets.

Consequently, when commercial shipowners or governments captured pirates, they were rarely shown mercy. Pirate expert David Cordingly, former curator of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England, writes in Under the Black Flag that it was common practice in the British colonies to place the body of a captured pirate in a steel cage shaped like a man’s body and suspend it near the entrance to a port as a grisly warning to seamen.”

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-real-robinson-crusoe-74877644/#uojl6hh0zwYidZiL.99
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An 18th Century Pirate’s Perspective

In researching the book I’m currently writing about the pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read, I came across a great passage from “History of the Pyrates” printed in 1724 relating to whether capital punishment, specifically hanging, was a deterrent to becoming a pirate.  I cut and pasted it here because it is fun to read in the original format.

At Mary Read’s trial she was asked why she became a pirate where she would be “fure of dying an ignominious Death, if flie fhould be taken alive ?”

This is her recorded reply:

“-She anfwer’d, that as to hanging, fhe thought it no great Hardfhip, for, were it not for that, every cowardly Fellow would turn Pyrate, and To infeft the Seas, that Men of Courage muft ftarve : That if it was put to the Choice of the Pyrates, they would not have the punifliment lefs than Death, the Fear of which, kept fome daftardly Rogues honeft ^ that many of thofe who are now cheating the Widows and Orphans, and oppreifing their poor Neighbours, who have no Money to obtain Juftice, would then rob at Sea, and the Ocean would be crowded with Rogues, like the Land, and no Merchant would venture out ; fb that the Trade, in a little Time, would not be worth following.”

Mary Read was certainly a tough lady, and I believe her response was probably indicative of the attitudes of her compatriots at the time:  that the “trade” of being a pirate was only for the courageous.  Mary was well educated, raised as a boy, fought as a soldier in Queen Anne’s War, and had been quite law abiding, but readily accepted the pirate life when it became an option for her after she met Jack Rackham.

My writing studio

studio view studio desk

I find it necessary to be alone in a quiet environment in order to be productive as a writer. Here are a couple of pictures from my writing studio, which is just a couple of miles from our townhouse.   A bit too far to walk daily, but a pleasant bicycle ride.

I had wondered if the view might be a distraction from writing, but instead I find it helps with inspiration.  I can sit out on the balcony from time to time with a cup of coffee and allow my thoughts to develop into coherent sentences, then enter them into my computer.

Occasionally when out on the balcony, though, I do look down at the docks and realize how it could also be a short boat ride between the two places.   The optimal word there being ‘could’ however, because if I do buy a boat here it will be a sailboat, and the call of the open blue ocean would probably result in my not getting in to work at all.

Conclusion:  I have a perfect set up to generate 2-3 books per year, provided I ride my bike to the studio.