Arrrgh!

It's the old cast iron pirate doorstop. It's also a fairly effective anti-toe weapon if you are unfortunate enough to drop it from a height onto your unprotected tarsals. At which point, you will be heard to exclaim: "Arrrgh!"

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...

Dominoes!

These are some old dominoes called Will's Pirate Shag. They are housed in a tin box. I think domino is missing - a standard domino set has 28 bones - this one only has 27. This game and its variants are big in the Caribbean, especially Jamaica.

Old coins 6

This one is English, with barely discernible busts of William and Mary - 1691 - 1693.

Old coins 5

This piece is brass "gun money", allegedly made from melted cannons. It's an Irish 12 pence coin minted during the reign of James II (1689 - 1691). This coin is surprisingly hefty, and feels really good to hold in your hand (real numismatists cringe here).

Happy New Year!

Old coins 4

This one is a copper turner from Scotland, during the reign of Charles II (c. 1639 - 77). It has a crowned "CR" (Charles Rex) on the obverse and a barely discernible thistle on the reverse (I may have these backwards).

Old coins 3

This one is a copper liard from the Spanish Netherlands, 1710.

Old coins 2

This old coin is a Spanish 4 maravedis with a lion on the obverse and a castle on the reverse. It was probably minted out of brass or bronze between 1621 and 1625. Not as sexy as silver reales or gold dubloons, but still cool, right?

Old coins 1

Now, I am no numismatist, however, I have managed to acquire a few old coins that could have plausibly been carried by pirates. By this I mean they were minted in used during the "golden age" of piracy - say 1650 - 1750 (this range is a bit arbitrary).

This piece is a double tournois from France, and was probably made in the 1640's. It is copper, and probably a Provencal issue, which would be very common for this period. The condition is not the best, but I don't collect based on condition like true numismatists, so I can often find bargains!

Put this in your pipe and smoke it...

These two items (above the penny) are the remnants of old clay smoking pipes of the kind used during colonial times. The bowls are small by today's standards, because tobacco was more expensive back then. Even earlier pipes had yet smaller bowls. These probably date to the mid to late 1700's, and were allegedly dug from a dirt-floored cellar in a house near Leipsic, Delaware. Just what any decent pirate would have smoked with!

Memento mori

This is another of my skulls. He's sterling silver, and weighs about 2 ounces. It is stamped on the back "PM" and "STERLING". I wear him almost constantly, on a string of net mending twine and some beads. The white beads are allegedly ostrich eggshell. I got him an an antique convention at the Baltimore Convention Center in August of 2001 when I was speaking at another conference in the same venue. The missus came along and we made a weekend of it. Someday, I might tell the story of how the wind around the World Trade Center in the Inner Harbor made her do a Marilyn Monroe skirt flip in front of every tourist in Harbor Place, forcing her to purchase shorts at a store in the nearby mall. Ooops. I guess I already did!

Noodles for all!

This is my homemade noodle bowl and chopsticks on bamboo stand, as featured on the famous Skull-a-day blog by Noah Scalin. It has been one of my favorite blogs since early in his project.

This piece has an unusual story regarding it's origin. Whilst on summer vacation at a rented beach house a few years ago, my (then) fiancee and I, and my parents, were big fans of that show Survivor. At the time, it was the first season, so we were kinda caught up in the hype. Anyway, we had these coconuts for whatever reason, and fueled by tropical adult beverages, we vowed to each make a drinking vessel from a coconut half to unveil at the final Survivor episode some weeks later. We made it a contest (albeit friendly), and each cup/vessel was to be judged after the final episode. The only rules were that the cup had to incorporate the coconut half, and it had to be functional.

I stayed with the tropical/voodoo theme seen above, with the added feature of skull-topped chopsticks in two of the three bamboo supports. Thus, when not used for drinking, one could use it for noodles.

The missus (IIRC) went with a fish theme, with tropical fish applique's on her coconut. Dad stuck his nut on top of a silver candelabra with cars and boats and such glued all over it (evidently, each addition represented a Survivor character). And I totally forget what Mom did...

Yo ho ho and a bottle of....

..rum.



OK, OK. I know this isn't a weapon, unless you want to kill someone slowly through their liver. Regardless, this is a rum bottle from the 1750's. I found this, in its present state, in a bottom trawl off of Reedy Island Delaware, in the Delaware River. My crew at the time was ready to chuck it back overboard thinking it just an ordinary liquor bottle. I recognized the shape as "old" right away and rescued it from nautical re-internment.

I base the date on bottle shape, a nice exposition of which is presented in the plates between pages 108 and 109 in Robert F. Marx's Shipwrecks in the Americas (I've excerpted a page here without permission from the publisher - I claim "fair use" for the purposes of academic study, but I will gladly take down the image if anyone takes exception) and other sources.


It's not clear if this came from a shipwreck or from some other source, but if it is from a wreck, the above reference offers the Pusey, Captain Good, arriving from Jamaica to Philadelphia and sunk in 1757 off of Reedy Island as a distinct possibility, although there may be dozens of others recorded or non-recorded.

Now here's the really cool bit: the original cork is still down inside the bottle! Maybe pressure pushed it in, or maybe some precolonial boozehound didn't have a corkscrew. Regardless, this is one real piece of history that the Delaware has given up.

I'm now obligated..

..to follow yesterday's junk with the crown jewel of my collection.


This piece is (or at least could have been) a pirate's pistol. Demonstrably.

It's an old flintlock that was definitely designed for sea service. How do I know this? Two reasons...

First, the brass barrel and fittings tell me so. You see, brass is much more resistant to the ravages of corrosion that the salty ocean inflicts on iron and steel. If you want a gun to last at sea, you use as little iron as possible.

Second, another pistol almost identical to this one, was excavated from a real 1717 pirate shipwreck. No shit.

To read up on the find, I highly recommend reading Barry Clifford's excellent book "Expedition Whydah". I've excerpted a page here without permission from the publisher (I claim "fair use" for the purposes of academic study, but I will gladly take down the image if anyone takes exception).

The similarities are such that these pieces are not only from the same period, they may have been made by the same maker. If that doesn't send a shiver down your spine, you just don't get it.

Clifford's find is a bit more elaborate, and appears to have had an iron barrel. Otherwise, the pieces are virtually identical - the escutcheons with the heart motif, the trigger guard, and the brass furniture opposite the lock. But notice the face from the buttcap of Clifford's piece next to a photo of the buttcap from mine:

The faces differ to be sure, but look at the eyes, the forehead, and especially the scalloped border around the face. It's as if the benign face of the Sun King on Clifford's find has become totally enraged on mine. These works or art could have easily been made by the same hand. (insert more spine chills here).

If you do not yet feel the power of history, you are totally lost here. I got a tear in my eye just seeing these images together...

Repel Borders!

Repel Barnes & Noble, too!


OK, that was bad.

Now THIS piece could have been a pirate pistol. For real (although it probably wasn't). It's original flintlock (not reconverted from percussion). As far as I can see, it's completely unmarked. It's probably a European martial contract pistol, perhaps French or Belgian. The ring on the buttcap suggests that this may have been made for sea service - a sailor would have tied it to his person with rope or a sash. The caliber is about .75, so it's a biggie.

Stylistically, this piece is probably from the early to mid 1800's, and would have been made around the transition period from flintlock to percussion - a major technological leap that was made around 1830 or so. I have this pistol's sister in percussion - I'll post it soon so that they may be compared and contrasted...

Given it's date, it was made and used after the golden age of Caribbean piracy, but it may have nevertheless been used as shipboard defense in places where piracy was still (and is still) common - Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Indian Ocean.

I'm grappling with a problem...

This is another one that's not necessarily a weapon, although I challenge you to get hit in the chops with this without complaining a bit afterward...

This old grappling hook was given to me by by friend...well, let's call him "Mac" since that's the name he uses. Anyway, the uses for a grappling hook should be obvious to all but the most sheltered of landlubbers. This one is a hand forged one, as evidenced by the tool marks. I'm not sure how old it is or where it came from, although I've seen a number of similar hooks in antique stores on Maryland's Eastern Shore (of the Chesapeake Bay). There may be some region-specific use that I'm not aware of...

Anyway, whether antique or just provincial, no self-respecting pirate should be without a grapnel in order to board a prize!

Boom boom boom boom...

This old thing is a bronze lantanka.

It's only about 12 inches long (don't you wish you could say that), and was probably used more as currency than as any serious weapon, although it may have fired charges (no ball or shot) for salutes, signaling, or ceremony aboard a ship.


Regardless, this is a piece reportedly recovered from a shipwreck in Southeast Asia. It has calcification around the dolphins, touch hole, and cascabel, so it may have been. It has a "certificate of provenance", but pretty much everybody has a laser printer these days, so who knows its real origin.

I have nothing left to say on this one.

My, what a BIG pistol you have...

OK. Now that I've warmed up with two WWII items, lets go back in time a bit...

This old flintlock measures in at nearly 20 inches. There are no maker's marks visible, although there is some embossed ornamentation on the barrel itself. The tip of the ramrod is bone or ivory, the butt cap and ramrod furniture appear to be silver, and the trigger guard is brass. The caliber is about 0.75 (these big calibers crop up on old muzzleloading weapons for reasons that are probably obvious - more on which in a later post).

My love for old flintlocks probably stems from my interest in pirates - I was obsessed with them back before ol' Johnny Depp was running around on Jump Street, so I cast something of a disapproving eye at all these young pirate posers we see running around these days.

In any case, this piece is not a pirate pistol, and likely never would have been. It's much too long, see?

On sailing ships or in shady seaside ports, long-barreled pistols would have been something of an encumbrance, even if accuracy is improved by the longer sight radius। More than likely, this is what was known as a horse pistol, where the constraints of concealment and discretion are not so important. Plus, the longer barrel would tend to steady the shot on a bouncing horse, as the expense of rapid movement (you trap and skeet folks know about this barrel length effect).

Anyhow, this gem is most likely from the Caucuses region - there is some Arabesque influence on the butt cap, but I think the wood carving on the stock show definite European influences.

If anyone has any thoughts on the origins of this one, I'd love to hear from you.


Oh, and in a couple of posts, we'll get to some pirate stuff. Honest.