This is a bit later of a period than I usually cover, but there are a couple of stories with this one that are so worth telling and I can't pass them up! I just ran across this story about a new documentary about the wreck of a Confederate privateer from 1861. In the early days of the American Civil War(1861-1865), the Confederacy was desperate to try and build a navy capable of harassing Union shipping and breaking blockades that the superior Union navy had imposed. One of the methods the Confederacy used was to commission privateers to harass Union shipping, one such vessel was the Jefferson Davis. She was originally a merchant brig built in Boston around 1845 and named Putnam. She was commissioned in June of 1861, and started a very successful month long raiding campaign that included capturing or burning 9 Union flagged merchant ships, making her the most successful privateer of the Civil War. One of those ships, the schooner S. J. Waring, was captured in the Atlantic on July 6'th, 1861.The captain of the Jefferson Davis left a prize crew of 5 aboard, along with a passenger, the steward, and two crew from the Waring. 10 days later on July 16'th, one of the crew of the waring managed to kill 3 of the prize crew; retake the captured vessel, and force the remaining prize crew to sail her back to New York. The whole story was printed in the August 3'rd, 1861 edition of Harper's Weekly

A lot of you probably already know this, but I thought I would post it for those who didn't. Over at the Daily Mail Online, they have a feature article up about the current overhaul and re-rigging going on for the HMS Victory. The Daily Mail has had quite a few fascinating articles lately, if they keep that up I may just have to start checking them on a daily basis! Anyway, here is an excerpt from the article.

The rigging has started coming off HMS Victory. Piece by piece, yard arm by yard arm, mast by mast, Nelson's mighty flagship is being stripped of her finery and the 26 miles of rope which keep her standing as tall as Nelson's Column itself and peering majestically over Portsmouth Harbour. Within weeks, the 104-gun monster — without which much  of the world might now be speaking French — will hardly feature on the skyline. Can you imagine St Paul's without the Dome? Or Paris sans Eiffel Tower? It's as unthinkable as,  well, Trafalgar Square without Nelson himself. But before an outraged nation starts firing off broadsides at the Ministry of Defence or launching a fighting fund, I should point out that it is all very much for the best. More than 200 years after Victory's finest hour, she has been undergoing rigorous inspection. This was no mere 'Trousers down, cough please' medical from the ship's doctor. This was a full biopsy performed by top scientists and marine archaeologists. And the diagnosis has been a stark one. Without a serious overhaul, Victory will fall apart. Like a beached whale, she is in danger of collapsing under her own weight. In recent days, that remedial operation has begun, starting with the rigging. And it is a work of art in itself, a mighty 18th-century equivalent of the ship's engine which once drove this 3,500-ton snub-nosed war machine and her 800 men across the ocean.

You can read the full article and see some cool picture over at the Daily Mail HERE!

There have been a couple of big name pirate shipwrecks in the news for the past few years, namely Black Sam Bellamy's flag ship the Whydah and Blackbeard's Queen Anne's Revenge, that give a great insight in to exactly what real pirate life was like on board ship. Besides the several archaeological expeditions to Port Royale over the years, there really hasn't been much but speculation as to what life in a real pirate settlement was like or consisted of. Thanks to ongoing archaeological expeditions over the past 20 years to the coast of Belize, that is starting to change.

The site, located 15 miles up the Belize river, was called "Barcadares" after a Spanish word meaning "landing place" A recent analysis comparing the artifacts found at the Barcadares site with that of two British colonial sites on the island of Nevis was recently published in a chapter in a new book. The analysis was done by an archaeologist and doctoral student at Texas A&M University.

I just ran across this book that was published back in March. It’s called Plunder and Pillage: Atlantic Canada’s Brutal and Bloodthirsty Pirates and Privateers. This book is a collection of previously published stories by Canadian author Harold Horwood, and it tells the story of piracy off the Canadian Atlantic coast starting in the 1600′s. I figured this would be a good way to welcome Stallion back to the forums, plus give him something to read while he braces for his next encounter with socialized medicine!

But it was not a time of romanticized pirate tales. While Horwood’s 15 stories included some tales of privateers and pirates who had mostly bloodless careers before ending up pardoned by their country, or another nation, and becoming part of its navy or merchant fleet, there was still plenty of blood shed and lives lost.

John Phillips had a successful but short-lived career as a pirate. He was immigrating to Newfoundland in 1720 when the ship he was on was captured by the pirate Anstis and he was forced into the crew as the ship’s carpenter. Horwood calls Anstis “one of the most blackhearted villains in the history of the sea” and “a sadistic cuthroat” who committed all the crimes normally associated with pirates.

“Anstis fought without quarter, tortured any prisoners who fell into his hands, then flung them to the sharks. Captured women were gang-raped and murdered,” Horwood writes. “The Anstis gang seemed really to be at war with the human race.”

You can read the full preview over at The Chronicle-Herald website HERE