elanya

sorceror knows my weakness and asked about pirates! I thought I would have time to write a longer entry today, but work was kind of annoying, and then when I did have a bit of time, I used it to work on an overly ambitious Yuletide treat. Whoops!

So, I will give you the five coolest things about pirates.... ( But not in as much detail as I had hoped. )

This is an excerpt from the provenance information for a painting I was working on cataloguing today, with identifiable names edited:

Mr. Stephen C. M------ wrote: "At the 1939 Knoedler exhibition, Mrs. H----- came to the opening and talked to my wife. Mrs. Hassam was interested to find that Mrs. M------ was the owner of the painting. Mrs. H----- told Mrs. M------ that in her opinion she considered [This Painting] the finest picture which her husband, the late Mr. C----- H-----, had painted in his lifetime." (The preceeding paragraph is recorded in the archives of the [gallery that acquired it from Mrs. M------], as part of the history of this H----- Painting.)


...and this is how women get erased from the historical record! :/ I couldn't find any solid identifying information about the husband that would let me know it was the right guy and so track down his wife's name :( Even the provenance information we have from the gallery where it was purchased (in the 70's) by the people who donated it to us says Mrs. Stephen C M------ -_-

I had a complicated dream last night that I only remember bits and pieces of. There was archaeology stuff, including finding some really good historic glass and pottery in the lower levels of a dig in the "cornfield" of an old farmhouse. I put cornfield in quotes because it felt huge when walking through it, but there was a map later on and it was really just a few rows deep :p Because dreams. I remember an almost intact blue transferware plate, and an almost complete wide pitcher that was very thing purple glass - maybe amethyst glass, maybe alexandrite for extra fancypants.

There was also a cache of historical clothes - possibly two caches of them, one from some kind of provenanced location that had to go to a museum or belonged to some kind of collection that had gorgeous really good condition things that I desperately wanted to have and to wear. I remember a pair of knickers - I guess knickerbockers is the proper term, so as not to confuse the Brits - that were a dark brown corduroy with some bright orange accents on the cuffs (they were so so so awesome, you have no idea. I would kill for pants like that >.>). They might have come out of the farmhouse? Someone else had some similar clothes but they weren't a historian, and had no qualms about actually wearing them, and I was suuuper jealous ;_;

The for some reason I was in a recorder ensemble with some friends of mine, including Kennesaw who apparenlty played the bass recorder, winnifreddirective possibly on ...tenor? And one random faceless person. I was on alto, which I do play in real life. We were waiting to perform at Memorial Hall, the theatre from my undergrad.* We were hanging out on the stairs up to the balcony, sort of lounging, and possibly we were dressed up quasi-medieval in the costumes we had for the recorder consort I was actually in in high school. The person who got to wear the historical clothes (which actually may have been MiB?) went wandering by in them, and I was bemoaning the fact that I couldn't wear mine. And them someone, possibly naryrising told me that I should be grateful that we live in a society that cares about these things, where "these things" meant preserving our history and related material culture. And then I woke up :)

* I have performed there a lot, but really probably spent more time outside of the theatre or on the stage, not in the audience, so the link pic above is a weird perspective for me

So, Emancipation in the Bahamas (and the rest of the British colonies) happened in 1834. In the Bahamas there was a 4 year 'apprenticeship' program where slaves were expected to work for their old masters for wages while they adjusted to their freedom or some crap.

I was just looking at a list of registered ships built in Harbour Island between 1796 and 1843, and I noticed that beginning in 1836, ships start becoming larger on the whole. Before that most are one-masted, and after that, the ratio almost flips so that two-masted are more common and single-masted are the occasional outliers on the pattern.

Does this represent some different way in which labour was being organized? The increase in shipbuilding is certainly linked to the pineapple boom that was happening at this time (exports start going up in 1835) which relied on a truck system of blacks and poor whites growing pineapples and rich white merchants and shipowners making money off their backs... But I don't know if that's *enough* to explain things, and in any case it is all clearly tied together. An interesting side note for future research, perhaps, I'm afraid I don't have the data resources to explore it more thoroughly at this time...

Deposition of John Vickers; late of the Island of Providence. In Nov. last Benjamin Hornigold arrived at Providence in the sloop Mary of Jamaica, belonging to Augustine Golding, which Hornigold took upon the Spanish coast, and soon after the taking of the said sloop, he took a Spanish sloop loaded with dry goods and sugar, which cargo he disposed of at Providence, but the Spanish sloop was taken from him by Capt. Jennings of the sloop Bathsheba of Jamaica. In January Hornigold sailed from Providence in the said sloop Mary, having on board 140 men, 6 guns and 8 pattararas, and soon after returned with another Spanish sloop, which he took on the coast of Florida. After he had fitted the said sloop at Providence, he sent Golding's sloop back to Jamaica to be returned to the owners: and in March last sailed from Providence in the said Spanish sloop, having on board near 200 men, but whither bound deponent knoweth not. About 22nd April last, Capt. Jenings arrived at Providence and brought in as prize a French ship mounted with 32 guns which he had taken at the Bay of Hounds, and there shared the cargo (which was very rich consisting of European goods for the Spanish trade) amongst his men, and then went in the said ship to the wrecks where he served as Comodore and guardship. There are at Providence about 50 men who have deserted the sloops that were upon the wrecks, and committ great disorders in that Island, plundering the inhabitants, burning their houses, and ravishing their wives. One Thomas Barrow formerly mate of a Jamaica brigantine which run away some time ago with a Spanish marquiss's money and effects, is the chief of them and gives out that he only waits for a vessell to go out a pirating, that he is Governor of Providence and will make it a second Madagascar, and expects 5 or 600 men more from Jamaica sloops to join in the settling of Providence, and to make war on the French and Spaniards, but for the English, they don't intend to meddle with them, unless they are first attack'd by them; nevertheless Barrow and his crew robb'd a New England brigantine, one Butler master, in the harbour of Providence and took a Bermuda sloop, beat the master and confined him for severall days, but not finding the said sloop fitt for their purpose, discharged her. About a year ago one Daniel Stillwell formerly belonging to Jamaica, and lately settled on Isle Aethera, went in a small shallop, with John Kemp, Matthew Low, two Dutchmen, and—Darvell to the coast of Cuba and there took a Spanish lanch having on board 11,050 pieces of eight, and brought the same into Isle Aethera; and Capt. Thomas Walker of Providence having received advice thereof from the Governor of Jamaica, seized Stillwell and his vessell, but upon the coming of Hornigold to Providence, Stillwell was rescued and Capt. Walker threatned to have his house burned for offering to concern himself, Hornigold saying that all pirates were under his protection. It is common for the sailors now at Providence (who call themselves the flying gang) to extort money from the inhabitants, and one Capt. Stockdale who came passenger with deponent to Virginia was threatned to be whipp'd for not giving them what they demanded, and just upon his coming from thence he payed them 20sh. for which the aforementioned Barrow and one Peter Parr gave him a receipt on the publick account. Many of the inhabitants of that Island had deserted their habitations for fear of being murdered. Sometime about the beginning of March one Capt. Farnandez, an inhabitant of Jamaica, in the sloop Bennet mounted with 10 guns and with about 110 men took a Spanish sloop with about three millions of money as it was reported and silks and cochenile to the like value and brought the sloop into Providence and there divided the money and goods among the men and is returned to the North side of Jamaica to try whether he may go home in safety and if he found he could not he gave out that he would return to Providence and settle amongst the Rovers. Signed, John Vickers. Endorsed as preceding. 2 pp.

(CSP-CS v. 29 #240.i - included with a letter from Lt. Gov. of Virginia, Alexander Spotswood, to the Board of Trade, July 3, 1716)

ETA: Oh did this make me write fanfic? Well shit >.>

I am so excited! naryrising managed to find an article that tells me George Phenney's wife's name! (That link goes back to a 2009 lj entry wherein I first got obsessed by this mystery @_@)

The answer is Mary, and we know this because she applied for an apprentice from Christ Church and listed her husband's occupation as Governor of the Bahamas :D From "Married Women's Occupations in Eighteenth-Century London" by Amy Louise Erickson, Continuity and Change (2008), 23 : pp 267-307.

In additional Internets Weirdness, this random Pirates of the Caribbean fanfic contains references to a couple in Nassau named George and Mary Phenney. I skimmed enough of the chapter to be able to decisively say that the author knows (or okay, I will be fair) or is not using any other pieces of historically accurate information to describe Nassau in the vague period during which the PotC franchise is set.

(The Life and Times of Bootstrap Bill, by Istani).

Bedtime for me :)

"They come of a fine stock, for they are nearly all the descendants of Loyalist soldiers, who fought for the king in the War of Independence, and were rewarded by grants of land in this island. Their one idea has been to keep the stream of their white blood pure, and they have married in and in till nearly all the whites in the island are related by ties of consanguinity. They are now in such a debased condition that they have lost all trace of their origin, and men with good old English and Scotch names have no idea where the cradle of their race is to be found. Probably their apparent want of brain power is due to in-breeding."

L.D. Powles. The Land of the Pink Pearl: Recollections of Life in the Bahamas, 1888, p. 71.

... I also am amused by the follow up line, though it carries a different kind of snark: "Or was it, perhaps, that all of America possessed of intelligence was enlisted in that struggle on the side of independance, and that these who fought for the "Old Régime" had no brains to transmit?"

Back in 1701, the people of the Bahamas rebelled against their governor, Elias Haskett. They deported him, Attempting to ship him back to England, but he escaped in New York. There are some fascinating accusations and counter accusations about who was involved in what kind of illegal business (answer: all of them). There are allll kinds of ridiculous stories surrounding this rebellion, but the following is part of Haskett's responses to a number of accusations made of him by the inhabitants*:

When I arrived at Providence, there were not above 20 people lawfully married, and the wives of part of those 20 were taken from them by those that had more strength and riches than the husbands, which occasioned great animosities. For example, Elding** forcibly took away the wife of one Perryman (sic) Trott.*** Lightwood**** deserted his own wife and took the reputed wife of the late Governor Trott. One Holmes took one Harris' wife, and drove him off the Island. Samuel Thrift forcibly took away the wife of one Starr, and detains her from him, and most of the rest live after the same manner by daily changing of wives and mistresses. I ordered the Grand Jury to enquire into all such disorders, so that upon their first meeting they presented about 20 such persons, and some proceedings being set on foot to punish, several petitioned me to grant them licence to marry the women they had lived with. Their charges amounted to three or four pounds, but for any licence granted by me I never took more than five pieces of eight, which fee is taken by all the Governors throughout the whole Indies. But the Minister was so covetous, he refused to marry these poor people if they could not present him with 24s. I myself paid for several of them.

*The particular accusation he is addressing here is as follows: He demands and receives from 6l. to 9l. for each licence to marry, and denies the banns of matrimony to be published in Church according to the Canons thereof. By which means the honest intentions of several poor people, who cannot comply with his unreasonable demands, may by such methods be (in a manner) forced to live disorderly and incontinent lives.

**Read Elding, an ex-Red Sea pirate (not necessarily an ex-pirate) of mixed race who had been the locally-elected acting governor before Haskett showed up. Haskett had him arrested on various charges, which led directly to the rebellion. That's right, the eighteenth-century Bahamians rebelled because of the mistreatment of their half-black pirate governor. <3

***Trott's uncle (or father, I forget) had been governor before, and he was also hilariously corrupt.

**** Ellis Lightwood was elected governor after they deported Haskett. If you are wondering whether the inhabitants had any legal authority whatsoever to be electing their own governors, you may not be surprised to hear that the answer is no, not even a little.

A Part of Our Heritage.

(...I need a good history icon, damnit!)

Reading for Atlantic History, Morgan and Horn on Migrations...

And it occurs to me that it is very significant that the Bahamas were not settled from Europe - settlers (white and exiled free blacks) came from Bermuda, and then they came from the Carolinas ant Jamaica, and other Colonial locations. Occasionally people came over, especially government people (most of the governors) from England. And Rogers brought his German palatines -but they all died. Some slaves, who were few enough in the early period, came from Africa, certainly - check Craton and Saunders for references. I am fairly certain about this but I should double check.

I'm not sure what all this mean, but it seems that it is something worth thinking about - what are the implications, in terms of the relationships of the colony to the home government, and the tensions between locals and the colonial government in its various forms?