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malsperanzaI really should visit my own bookshelves more often. When did I buy B. R. Burg's Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition: English Sea Rovers in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean? Who knows, but it makes excellent subway reading. Very serious "As sugar replaced tobacco as the primary cash crop of the English Caribbean colonies, the demographic character of the islands changed in response to the new agricultural imperatives dictated by blah blah blah..."
mixed in with really good things like "Woodes Rogers, who administered the Bahamas for a time after 1717, reported as had others before him that the residents preferred pirates to Royal officials, but he explained that such was to be expected from a population of dubious moral character where even those who had never been pirates were poor and lazy. Not only were the Bahamians prodigious drinkers, perhaps equal even to the Bermudans, but one English official reported they copulated with little restraint, utilizing each other's wives with abandon and their own sisters and daughters when convenient."
And then there is "The use of boys as sexual partners was not universally accepted among pirates. Some captains rejected the practice entirely, not because they were particularly repelled by notions of pederasty, but because they evidently believed the boys were a cause of conflict aboard ship. The men who served under Bartholomew Roberts were especially emphatic in this regard. They subscribed to a set of articles that provided 'No Boy or Women [was] to be allowed amongst them. If any Man were found seducing any of the latter Sex, and carry'd her to Sea, disguis'd, he was to suffer Death.' Significantly, there was no penalty for seducing a lad or smuggling him aboard. Pederasty was simply a violation of the rules, not a capital crime."
Or, as Cap'n Barbossa says, perhaps they are "more guidelines than actual rules."
Pointless factoid of the day: The words "buccaneer" and "bacon" have the same root: boucan, meaning smoked meat.
Hm.
mixed in with really good things like "Woodes Rogers, who administered the Bahamas for a time after 1717, reported as had others before him that the residents preferred pirates to Royal officials, but he explained that such was to be expected from a population of dubious moral character where even those who had never been pirates were poor and lazy. Not only were the Bahamians prodigious drinkers, perhaps equal even to the Bermudans, but one English official reported they copulated with little restraint, utilizing each other's wives with abandon and their own sisters and daughters when convenient."
And then there is "The use of boys as sexual partners was not universally accepted among pirates. Some captains rejected the practice entirely, not because they were particularly repelled by notions of pederasty, but because they evidently believed the boys were a cause of conflict aboard ship. The men who served under Bartholomew Roberts were especially emphatic in this regard. They subscribed to a set of articles that provided 'No Boy or Women [was] to be allowed amongst them. If any Man were found seducing any of the latter Sex, and carry'd her to Sea, disguis'd, he was to suffer Death.' Significantly, there was no penalty for seducing a lad or smuggling him aboard. Pederasty was simply a violation of the rules, not a capital crime."
Or, as Cap'n Barbossa says, perhaps they are "more guidelines than actual rules."
Pointless factoid of the day: The words "buccaneer" and "bacon" have the same root: boucan, meaning smoked meat.
Hm.
