Lenk's book 1945

This book, by Torsten Lenk, is an early, definitive expose on the origin and development of the flintlock. The second image is a random page - all are equally beautifully illustrated in detailed (if black and white) photographs. In fact, some of the designs on the old guns pictured are worth study even if you aren't into old guns. If I were into tattoos, there are at least half a dozen motifs that I would adopt for personal ink. But I'm not, and remain ink free to this day.

Esquemeling's Book

Pretty much everything we think we know about pirates of yore comes from one of two places - the fictional Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson and The Buccaneers of America by Esquemeling. Treasure Island had a lot of apocryphal tidbits that have been picked up by popular culture (e.g. parrots, peg legs, and eye patches, and the "Arrrgh" that we all love so well). On the other hand, this Esquemeling dude was a pirate contemporary that lived and sailed among them.

This edition is from 1893, and it lists the author as "John Esquemeling", even though his name was "Alexandre Olivier Esquemeling". The text is identical in all other respects to A.O. Esquemeling writings on the Internet Archive, so I'm wondering is this isn't a typographical error of an Anglicanization in order to make the book more acceptable to English speaking readers...

"That makes you...chart man."

This is a 1927 chart book for the "Inside Route" from New York to Key West. We now call most of this route the "Intercoastal Waterway". It has a whole section of beautifully rendered charts in the back (see upper photo) as well as nice descriptions of hazards, landmarks, and points of interest in the text. Having spent some time on the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays, the Atlantic Ocean off of Delaware, and New York, this book is priceless for showing all of the myriad things that have changed about these waters, as well as those things that stayed the same. I've been thinking about matting and framing some of the charts - that's how pretty they are - but the sizes are all weird (a 48" x 8" chart makes for an odd and expensive frame).

By the way, the quote in the Title Block is from Pirates of the Caribbean III - At World's End. I like those campy movies despite...everything.