Welcome goonlings to the Awful Book of the Month! In this thread, we choose one work of Resources: Project Gutenberg - http://www.gutenberg.org - A database of over 17000 books available online. If you can suggest books from here, that'd be the best. SparkNotes - http://www.sparknotes.com/ - A very helpful Cliffnotes-esque site, but much better, in my opinion. If you happen to come in late and need to catch-up, you can get great character/chapter/plot summaries here. For recommendations on future material, suggestions on how to improve the club, or just a general rant, feel free to PM the moderation team. Past Books of the Month [for BOTM before 2019, refer to archives] 2019: January: Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky February: BEAR by Marian Engel March: V. by Thomas Pynchon April: The Doorbell Rang by Rex Stout May: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman June: 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann July: The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach August: Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay September: Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay October: Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado November: The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett December: Moby Dick by Herman Melville 2020: January: The Jungle by Upton Sinclair February: WE by Yevgeny Zamyatin March: The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini by Benvenuto Cellini April: The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio May: Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Dame Rebecca West June: The African Queen by C. S. Forester July: The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale August: The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, of Great Renown in Nottinghamshire, by Howard Pyle September: Strange Hotel, by Eimear McBride October:Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (怪談)("Ghost Stories"), by Lafcadio Hearn November: A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears) , by Matthew Hongoltz Hetling December: Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants by John Drury Clark 2021: January: The Mark of Zorro by Johnston McCulley February: How to Read Donald Duck by Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart March: Carrier Wave by Robert Brockway April: The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brian May: You Can't Win by Jack Black Current: Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson Book available here: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/robert-louis-stevenson/treasure-island (free!) If you can, find a copy of the edition illustrated by N.C. Wyeth (a student of Howard Pyle's!): About the book quote:Treasure Island (originally The Sea Cook: A Story for Boys)[1] is an adventure novel (1881–1882) by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, narrating a tale of "buccaneers and buried gold." Its influence is enormous on popular perceptions of pirates, making popular such elements as treasure maps marked with an "X", schooners, the Black Spot, tropical islands, and one-legged seamen bearing parrots on their shoulders.[2] quote:Stevenson conceived the idea of Treasure Island (originally titled: The Sea Cook: A Story for Boys)[1] from a map of an imaginary island drawn by Stevenson and his stepson Lloyd Osbourne on a rainy day in Braemar, Scotland. Stevenson had just returned from his first stay in North America, with memories of poverty, illness, and adventure (including his recent marriage), and a warm reconciliation between his parents had been established. Stevenson said of the idea of the story that, "it was to be a story for boys; no need of psychology or fine writing; and I had a boy at hand to be a touchstone. Women were excluded and then I had an idea for Long John Silver from which I promised myself funds of entertainment; to take an admired friend of mine, to deprive him of all his finer qualities and higher graces of temperament, and to leave him with nothing but his strength, his courage, his quickness, and his magnificent geniality, and to try to express these in terms of the culture of a raw tarpaulin".[citation needed] About the Author quote:Robert Louis Stevenson (born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson; 13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for works such as Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped and A Child's Garden of Verses. quote:Stevenson was a celebrity in his own time, being admired by many other writers, including Jorge Luis Borges, Bertolt Brecht, Marcel Proust, Arthur Conan Doyle, Henry James, Cesare Pavese, Emilio Salgari, Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, Vladimir Nabokov,[95] J. M. Barrie,[96] and G. K. Chesterton, who said that Stevenson "seemed to pick the right word up on the point of his pen, like a man playing spillikins."[97] Pacing Read as thou wilt is the whole of the law. Please post after you read! Please bookmark the thread to encourage discussion. References and Further Materials quote:Historian Luis Junco suggests that Treasure Island is in fact a marriage of the story of the murder of Captain George Glas on board the Earl of Sandwich in 1765 and the taking of the ship Walrus off the island of La Graciosa near Tenerife. The pirates of La Graciosa buried their treasure there before they were all killed during a bloody battle with the British navy. The treasure was never recovered. Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates by David Cordingly: https://www.amazon.com/Under-Black-Flag-Romance-Reality/dp/081297722X Howard Pyle's Book of Pyrates: https://www.amazon.com/Howard-Pyles-Book-Pirates-Pyle/dp/1530670993 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_General_History_of_the_Pyrates Suggestions for Future Months These threads aren't just for discussing the current BOTM; If you have a suggestion for next month's book, please feel free to post it in the thread below also. Generally what we're looking for in a BotM are works that have 1) accessibility -- either easy to read or easy to download a free copy of, ideally both 2) novelty -- something a significant fraction of the forum hasn't already read 3) discussability -- intellectual merit, controversiality, insight -- a book people will be able to talk about. Final Note: Thanks, and we hope everyone enjoys the book! Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 03:51 on Jun 6, 2021 |
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# ? Jun 6, 2021 00:28 |
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# ? May 19, 2024 16:11 |
This was, essentially, the first big pirate story. Without this, there's no Pirates of the Caribbean; walking the plank, peglegs, parrots, buried treasure -- it's all right here.
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# ? Jun 6, 2021 00:30 |
The official rum of this thread is Captain (Henry) Morganquote:In 1671 Morgan attacked Panama City, landing on the Caribbean coast and traversing the isthmus before he attacked the city, which was on the Pacific coast. The battle was a rout, although the privateers profited less than in other raids. To appease the Spanish, with whom the English had signed a peace treaty, Morgan was arrested and summoned to London in 1672, but was treated as a hero by the general populace and the leading figures of government and royalty including Charles II.
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# ? Jun 6, 2021 00:31 |
*reserved*
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# ? Jun 6, 2021 03:50 |
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"The Sea Cook: A Story for Boys"? Definitely improved the title, there. I remember reading a graphic novel version of this back in elementary school. The "black spot" scene scared me.
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# ? Jun 6, 2021 04:51 |
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Nice pick! I remember reading this as a kid, but it was translated and perhaps abridged or simplified. It'll be fun to se what I make of it now. Later, my first real foray into English media came with The Secret of Monkey Island, and later Patrick O'Brian's sea-faring books became some of my all time favourites. Looking forward to this!
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# ? Jun 6, 2021 08:35 |
Cobalt-60 posted:"The Sea Cook: A Story for Boys"? Definitely improved the title, there. Yeah, this is a very illustratable story -- there's are several reasons it's been adapted so many times in so many different ways, and one of those reasons is it's a really visual, graphic tale with a lot of images that just leap off the page. Speaking of, here are some more of Wyeth's illustrations, scenes from early in the book: A gallery of some of them here: https://www.nocloo.com/n-c-wyeth-treasure-island-1911/ If anyone has an edition that has all 17 Wyeth plate illustrations *in color*, please post and tell me -- my hardback is the Rhead illustrations, which are fine, and online searches are hopelessly muddled because there are so many different reprint editions, most of which reproduce only a small number of Wyeth's plates, not all 17. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 14:38 on Jun 6, 2021 |
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# ? Jun 6, 2021 12:06 |
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:This was, essentially, the first big pirate story. Without this, there's no Pirates of the Caribbean; walking the plank, peglegs, parrots, buried treasure -- it's all right here. ... Anyways, there's exactly one adaptation that I am obliged to recommend to one and all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKRG7PF73UA
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# ? Jun 6, 2021 18:14 |
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah, this is a very illustratable story -- there's are several reasons it's been adapted so many times in so many different ways, and one of those reasons is it's a really visual, graphic tale with a lot of images that just leap off the page. As a matter of fact, I have such an edition. The link you posted above plus the ones in the OP cover most of them, but here's the whole lot for the sake of having them all in one place. Forgive the low quality; I tried my best, but these are cell phone pics of glossy paper and three's a lot of glare and/or silhouettes in some of them. Having to hold down/back the pages wasn't helping things, nor was the contrast in several pictures. Front cover/dust jacket: inside front cover (inside back cover is the same): Frontispiece: Map of the island: "Captain Bill Bones": "Captain Bones Routs Black Dog": "Old Pew": "Jim Hawkins Leaves Home": "Long John Silver and Hawkins": "Preparing for the Mutiny": "Ben Gunn": "Captain Smollett Defies the Mutineers": "The Attack on the Block House": "The Fight in the Cabin": "Israel Hands": spoiler: He blows Mr. Hands' brains out. "The Black Spot": "The Hostage": "The Treasure Cave!": Meaty Ore fucked around with this message at 19:32 on Jun 7, 2021 |
# ? Jun 7, 2021 19:29 |
Xander77 posted:The book was published at the end of the 19th century, when most of these things were well codified. Without (the 40's movie adaptation of) Treasure Island, we wouldn't have the idea that there's a standard way for pirates to talk, so that's something. Yeah, but I feel they weren't all standardized into a unified whole. There were certainly other pirate tales floating about -- Howard Pyle was publishing pirate stories off of some of the same root material at around the same time; A General History of the Pyrates was published a hundred and fifty years previously. But my impression has always been that this was still a watershed, landmark book that set and crystallized the genre. There were superhero movies before 2008, but Iron Man crystallized the genre in a new way. Before Treasure Island, pirate stories are all over the place, and conventions are forming, and tropes, and the like, but most of what's out there is based on period accounts and/or part of other genre traditions (chapbook crime, castaway fiction, penny dreadfuls, etc.) After Treasure Island, pirate tales are their own genre. I don't think we have Captain Hook without Treasure Island.
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# ? Jun 8, 2021 18:51 |
Meaty Ore posted:As a matter of fact, I have such an edition. The link you posted above plus the ones in the OP cover most of them, but here's the whole lot for the sake of having them all in one place. Forgive the low quality; I tried my best, but these are cell phone pics of glossy paper and three's a lot of glare and/or silhouettes in some of them. Having to hold down/back the pages wasn't helping things, nor was the contrast in several pictures. Thank you for posting these! Could you post the copyright page? I want to get one! It may be my Pro-Pyle bias but I feel like you can really see Pyle's influence on Wyeth's artistic style. Some of them are just character portraits but others have that sense of illustrating a moment, not just a person.
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# ? Jun 8, 2021 18:56 |
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Thank you for posting these! Could you post the copyright page? I want to get one! Not a problem. Here you go: Looks like abebooks has a fair number of copies at the moment, and quite cheap as well for the most part. I can vouch for the quality of the volume as well. Very thick, high-quality paper. My brother and I received each received one of these Scribner volumes with N.C. Wyeth illustrations as Christmas gifts back in 1987 or 88 iirc. Treasure Island was my brother's, and I got Paul Creswick's Robin Hood--which is okay, but it's no Pyle. Fewer illustrations than Treasure Island as well, but just as good. My brother opted not to take his with him when he moved out, so I ended up with it. edit: oh poo poo looks like I'm in violation of copyright law! In the end we were the pirates all along. Meaty Ore fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Jun 8, 2021 |
# ? Jun 8, 2021 22:32 |
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Rereading this, one thing that strikes me compared to a more modern story is that several relatively minor characters, "regular people" take part in heroics (like the block house) that would be the work of someone more, well, heroic in modern media.
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# ? Jun 9, 2021 15:07 |
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Jack B Nimble posted:Rereading this, one thing that strikes me compared to a more modern story is that several relatively minor characters, "regular people" take part in heroics (like the block house) that would be the work of someone more, well, heroic in modern media.
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# ? Jun 10, 2021 06:01 |
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Oh weird I just finished Under the Black Flag this week. I enjoyed it a lot and it moves pretty quickly. Haven’t read Treasure Island before so I’ll start tonight.
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# ? Jun 11, 2021 03:47 |
I'm weirdly tempted to annotate this. a few notes starting out: Writing this in the late 1800's and setting it in the 1700's, this is roughly equivalent to, what, someone writing a novel set during the Civil War today? The Inland Revenue didn't exist until 1849, so it's a bit of an anachronism for it to show up at the beginning, but there was a predecessor, the "board of excise," that existed from the 1600's, so it isn't as big an anachronism to have them show up as it might appear. When it mentions Doctor Livesey breaking off the stem of his pipe, that's a clay pipe, they did that: https://www.smokingpipes.com/smokingpipesblog/single.cfm/post/the-history-manufacture-and-use-clay-pipes quote:How that personage haunted my dreams, I need scarcely tell you. On stormy nights, when the wind shook the four corners of the house and the surf roared along the cove and up the cliffs, I would see him in a thousand forms, and with a thousand diabolical expressions. Now the leg would be cut off at the knee, now at the hip; now he was a monstrous kind of a creature who had never had but the one leg, and that in the middle of his body. To see him leap and run and pursue me over hedge and ditch was the worst of nightmares. And altogether I paid pretty dear for my monthly fourpenny piece, in the shape of these abominable fancies. quote:Monopods (also sciapods, skiapods, skiapodes) are mythological dwarf-like creatures with a single, large foot extending from a leg centered in the middle of their bodies. The names monopod and skiapod (σκιάποδες) are both Greek, respectively meaning "one-foot" and "shadow-foot". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopod_(creature) Another interesting thing is that I hadn't thought of this as a horror novel before but there have already been a few scenes that were genuinely somewhat scary and Stevenson is already doing a great job of building tension. I used to think it was odd that this book was by the same author who wrote Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde but, no, I see it now. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 13:26 on Jun 16, 2021 |
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# ? Jun 16, 2021 12:21 |
The name of the inn, the "Admiral Benbow", is foreshadowing:quote:Benbow fought against France during the Nine Years War (1688–97), serving on and later commanding several English vessels and taking part in the battles of Beachy Head, Barfleur and La Hogue in 1690 and 1692. He went on to achieve fame during campaigns against Salé and Moor pirates; laying siege to Saint-Malo; and fighting in the West Indies against France during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714).
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# ? Jun 16, 2021 18:26 |
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Halfway through, and my thoughts so far: This is lot less heroic swashbuckling than I remember, and more of a "boy's own" story. (Which, to be honest, it started out as.) Likewise, Jim is less of a hero, and more of an idiot...well, a boy. Doing his own thing, blundering into and out of trouble, with nothing but plot armor for protection. (None of the "boy's own" stories ever had death or serious injury actually happen to their stout young heroes, that I know of) He leans on coincidence too much. Less fighting than I remember, also less people. Somehow I missed that the entire ship's company was only 2 dozen people.
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# ? Jun 18, 2021 16:53 |
Cobalt-60 posted:
I appreciated how Captain Smollet called that poo poo out, "no favorites on my ship!" and "too much of a born favorite!" I finished it the other night, it was a lot shorter than I remembered it being. The ending was oddly anti-climactic. A lot of the nautical stuff I'd glossed over in prior readings but it made much more sense now that I've read Aubrey/Maturin multiple times. I could have sworn there was a walking the plank scene in there somewhere but I was just wrong about that! There wasn't!
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# ? Jun 18, 2021 17:12 |
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:
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# ? Jun 18, 2021 23:21 |
Xander77 posted:Apparently Stevenson knew how to sail a small ship, but wrote the Espanoila as a large ship without actually changing the way it operates? I.E, a single person couldn't actually sail a ship that size etc? That makes sense, I was wondering about that at a few points, but I've never sailed anything other than small craft either.
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# ? Jun 18, 2021 23:34 |
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I appreciated how Captain Smollet called that poo poo out, "no favorites on my ship!" and "too much of a born favorite!" One reference: quote:How many it had cost in the amassing, what blood and sorrow, what good ships scuttled on the deep, what brave men walking the plank blindfold, what shot of cannon, what shame and lies and cruelty, perhaps no man alive could tell. How many walked the plank is a good question; like keel-hauling, it's something that existed, but is much exaggerated in pop culture. I wonder if the copy I read back in middle school was abridged, cause I wound up looking up a LOT more things. Or maybe that's just the convenience of having Wikipedia up in another tab. And my tendency to go down wikiholes looking for things. What did Flint likely die of? Cirrhosis, as indicated by his symptoms of altered mental state (hepatic encephalopathy) and blue skin (cyanosis due to hepatopulmonary syndrome), and, oh yeah, everyone saying he "died of the rum." Which didn't take much doing; alcohol drinking is one of the things about pirates (and everyone) that didn't get exaggerated in pop culture. Xander77 posted:Apparently Stevenson knew how to sail a small ship, but wrote the Espanoila as a large ship without actually changing the way it operates? I.E, a single person couldn't actually sail a ship that size etc? A two-mast schooner like the Hispaniola can be sailed by 5 people, according to one site I found. The crew get the ship to South America with 7 people (5 able-bodied), at some difficulty. It can be BADLY sailed (and was) by two, I'd imagine.
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# ? Jun 19, 2021 03:20 |
There's a long discussion of Treasure Island near the front of David Cordingly's Under the Black Flag:quote:There were five of them staying there: Stevenson’s parents, his American wife, Fanny, and her twelve-year-old son, Lloyd Osbourne, who was Stevenson’s stepson. To pass the time, Lloyd painted pictures with a shilling box of watercolors. One afternoon Stevenson joined him and drew a map of an island. He was soon adding names to the various hills and inlets. Lloyd later wrote, “I shall never forget the thrill of Skeleton Island, Spyglass Hill, nor the heart-stirring climax of the three red crosses! And the greater climax still when he wrote down the words ‘Treasure Island’ at the top right-hand corner! And he seemed to know so much about it too—the pirates, the buried treasure, the man who had been marooned on the island.”2 In an essay which he wrote in the last year of his life, Stevenson revealed how the future character of the book began to appear to him as he studied the map. It was to be all about buccaneers, and a mutiny, and a fine old Squire called Trelawney, and a sea cook with one leg, and a sea song with the chorus “Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum.” quote:What is so striking about Treasure Island in terms of piracy is that the characters and the maritime details are totally convincing. Unlike Captain Marryat, who must have met a few pirates but could only produce stage characters in his book, Stevenson had never come across any pirates in his life, and yet he was able to create a cast of vicious and murderous men and to conjure up an authentic atmosphere of double-dealing and casual violence. The murder of Tom Morgan by Long John Silver is carried out with a practiced ease which leaves Jim Hawkins fainting with horror. Jim’s confrontation with the evil Israel Hands is the stuff of nightmares. Equally effective are the descriptions of the Hispaniola at sea, rolling steadily before the trade winds and “dipping her bowsprit now and then with a whiff of spray.” In 1890 W. B. Yeats told Stevenson that Treasure Island was the only book in which his seafaring grandfather had ever taken any pleasure, and it is easy to see why. Not only does Stevenson use seaman’s language with conviction, but he also understands the finer points of sailing and ship handling. This can be explained by his upbringing. His father and his grandfather were both distinguished lighthouse engineers and frequently voyaged around the Scottish coasts and islands on tours of inspection. It was originally intended that Stevenson should follow in their footsteps, and he did spend three years training as an engineer, sometimes passing the summer vacations cruising in the yachts of the Lighthouse Commission. In June 1869 he accompanied his father in the yacht Pharos on a visit to the Orkney Islands, and in 1870 inspected lighthouses on the Pentland Firth and in the Hebrides. Although he abandoned plans for a career in the lighthouse service, he continued to travel extensively, frequently by sea. In the summer of 1874 he voyaged around the Inner Hebrides in the yacht Heron with two friends, and in 1876 he traveled by canoe through the rivers and canals of northern France (later to be written up in An Inland Voyage). Two years before writing Treasure Island he made a return voyage across the Atlantic, though not in vessels in any way resembling the schooner Hispaniola: the outward journey from the Clyde was in the passenger ship Devonia and the return voyage was in the Royal Mail liner City of Chester. Several years later, when he had become an established writer, he voyaged extensively among the Pacific islands. For those interested in doing further reading, I highly recommend Under the Black Flag -- I thought about making it the BOTM instead, but figured I'd start with the easier read. It's basically the definitive historical work on the fact of piracy vs the fiction; he combed through hundreds of years of period records to figure out what was true in our popular perception and what wasn't. To summarize as relevant here -- 1) Pirates keeping pet parrots, totally real and absolutely a thing. They were a relatively easy pet to keep on shipboard and had a high resale value in England so lots of mariners would keep pet parrots. quote:It was common for seamen who traveled in the tropics to bring back birds and animals as souvenirs of their travels. Parrots were particularly popular because they were colorful, they could be taught to speak, and they were easier to look after on board ship than monkeys and other wild animals. They also commanded a good price in the bird markets which were such a feature of eighteenth-century London. In September 1717 Michael Bland put an advertisement in The Post-Man which announced that “Parrotkeets with red heads from Guiney, and 2 fine talking Parrokeets from Buenos Ayres, and several young talking Parrots” were being sold at The Leopard and Tyger at Tower Dock near Tower Hill. In the next issue of The Post-Man, David Randall went one better: he announced the sale at the Porter’s Lodge, Charing Cross, of “Parrokeets which talk English, Dutch, French, and Spanish, Whistle at command, small Parrokeets with red heads, very tame and pretty.”14 2) wooden legs -- fairly common among period mariners. 3) Long John Silver being the cook -- it was typical in the Royal Navy to give sailors who had lost a limb a cook's commission as a form of "disability," since it was a job you could still do without needing to move about the ship much. quote:"Stevenson knew what he was doing when he cast Long John Silver as a cook. It was standard practice in the Royal Navy to select the cook from among disabled seamen. In his irreverent account of shipboard life in the early eighteenth century, Ned Ward described the cook as “an able fellow in the last war, and had been so in this too, but for a scurvy bullet at L’Hogue, that shot away one of his limbs, and so cut him out for a sea-cook.”13 Thomas Rowlandson, the celebrated caricaturist and painter of Georgian England, was responsible for a charming series of watercolors illustrating the various ranks and trades in the navy. His picture of the sea cook shows him balanced on a wooden leg as he stirs a steaming cauldron with a long spoon." 4) pirate dress and clothing is, oddly, fairly accurate in popular fiction and art, partly because there are lots of period accounts of pirates dressing kinda extravagantly. quote:"Above all they were distinguished by their clothes. In the early years of the eighteenth century most landsmen wore long coats and long waistcoats over knee breeches and stockings. Seamen on the other hand wore short blue jackets, over a checked shirt, and either long canvas trousers or baggy “petticoat breeches,” which somewhat resembled culottes. In addition, they frequently wore red waistcoats, and tied a scarf or handkerchief loosely around the neck.20
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# ? Jun 19, 2021 11:29 |
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:3) Long John Silver being the cook -- it was typical in the Royal Navy to give sailors who had lost a limb a cook's commission as a form of "disability," since it was a job you could still do without needing to move about the ship much.
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# ? Jun 19, 2021 14:45 |
As I read further in Under the Black Flag, there are more interesting accuracies in Treasure Island and in other pirate fiction than I was expecting. The Black Spot? The idea of a "Pirate's Code" ? A bit dramatized, but the basic idea was fairly accurate historically: quote:The most significant difference between pirate and other ships was the manner in which the pirate company was organized, and the code by which the pirates operated. Unlike the Royal Navy, the merchant navy, or indeed any other institutions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the pirate communities were, as already noted, democracies. A hundred years before the French Revolution, the pirate companies were run on lines in which liberty, equality, and brotherhood were the rule rather than the exception. In a pirate ship, the captain was elected by the votes of the majority of the crew and he could be deposed if the crew were not happy with his performance. The crew, and not the captain, decided the destination of each voyage and whether to attack a particular ship or to raid a coastal village. At the start of a voyage, or on the election of a new captain, a set of written articles was drawn up which every member of the ship’s company was expected to sign. These articles regulated the distribution of plunder, the scale of compensation for injuries received in battle, and set out the basic rules for shipboard life and the punishments for those who broke the rules. The articles differed from ship to ship, but they all followed similar lines. quote:One of the earliest descriptions of the pirates’ code of conduct appears in Exquemelin’s Buccaneers of America, which was first published in 1678. Exquemelin tells how the pirates called a council on board ship before embarking on a voyage of plunder. At this preliminary gathering it was decided where to get hold of provisions for the voyage. When this was agreed, the pirates went out and raided some Spanish settlement and returned to the ship with a supply of pigs augmented by turtles and other supplies. A daily food allowance was then worked out for the voyage; Exquemelin notes that the allowance for the captain was no more than that for the humblest mariner. quote:The application of this code of conduct can be observed in the journal of Basil Ringrose. In July 1681 they captured the Spanish ship San Pedro off the coast of Chile. She was laden with wine, gunpowder, and 37,000 pieces of eight in chests and bags. “We shared our plunder among ourselves,” Ringrose noted in his journal. “Our dividend amounted to the sum of 234 pieces-of-eight to each man.”33 Xander77 posted:Ah. Sure, but Silver was a quartermaster during his actual pirate days, wasn't he? And that's interesting too! quote:The captain’s authority was further limited by the powers which were given to the quartermaster. He too was elected by the crew, and is described as being “a sort of civil magistrate on board a pirate ship.”35 He was the crew’s representative and “trustee for the whole.” His job was to settle minor disputes, and he had the authority to punish with whipping or drubbing. He was expected to lead the attack when boarding a ship, and he usually took command of captured prizes. So Silver's position as quartermaster rather than first mate is perfectly explained. He's the one dude who wasn't afraid of Flint.
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# ? Jun 20, 2021 15:17 |
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I’ve always heard of the difference being the Captain is like the CEO and the quartermaster is the COO. Listening to this via the Librivox recording and the guy’s pretty decent. Just got to the part where the voyage starts and this guy who blabbed everything sure seems like a real dumbass. I’m sure everything will work out okay.
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# ? Jun 21, 2021 07:59 |
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Final thoughts Good read, but nothing particularly good. Maybe it seems bland because it originated modern pirate stories. No scenes stand out, and as for characters...nothing particular interesting except the "title" character, Long John Silver. Who I consider one of the better literary villains. Smart, charismatic, always with a plan; the only reason he failed is because his "crew" were idiots and because Jim Hawkins was the protagonist. I want to read more of his adventures. And his wife's; I like to think she was as clever as him. How they came together, and how they made their way through 18th century England, a cripple and a negro, outwitting anyone who underestimated them. Also, I didn't know that "Dead Man's Chest" was invented by Stevenson; all the lyrics and tune got added later, as well as fabricated lore, attempts to tie it to various actual pirates or places, and explanations of how you'd fit 15 men on a sea chest...or coffin. Edit: Also, I'm looking for a way to work "holus-bolus" into a conversation. Cobalt-60 fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Jun 22, 2021 |
# ? Jun 22, 2021 02:15 |
Need suggestions for next month!
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# ? Jun 23, 2021 01:44 |
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Need suggestions for next month! how bout The Log from the Sea of Cortez by John Steinbeck? quote:The Log from the Sea of Cortez is an English-language book written by American author John Steinbeck and published in 1951. It details a six-week (March 11 – April 20) marine specimen-collecting boat expedition he made in 1940 at various sites in the Gulf of California (also known as the Sea of Cortez), with his friend, the marine biologist Ed Ricketts. It is regarded as one of Steinbeck's most important works of non-fiction chiefly because of the involvement of Ricketts, who shaped Steinbeck's thinking and provided the prototype for many of the pivotal characters in his fiction, and the insights it gives into the philosophies of the two men. It's one of my favorites that I haven't read in a decade or more. The marine ecology is really great, Ricketts is a philosopher and this is set during WW2 so there is a fair bit of philosophy and politics. It's nonfiction and essentially a journal so it's very readable in small chunks. I don't see it available free anywhere, but it's $1.50 for an e-book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Log-Sea-Cortez-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140187448
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# ? Jun 23, 2021 06:30 |
https://twitter.com/alloy_dr/status/1409155797486030850?s=20
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# ? Jun 27, 2021 15:26 |
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I just got finished with the book myself. It reads quick, though I tended to get bogged down after Jim sneaks out of the stockade--I had other more pressing things to do, plus Jim isn't that interesting on his own. Silver is definitely the stand out character in the story, and I think it's interesting that while he seems to epitomize the stereotypical adventure story pirate, he also defies the stereotypes to a degree. He has an education, he's patient, shrewd, thrifty, and has a distaste for drunkenness. The only real question I had regarding him was whether or not he was behind the others pursuing Bill Bones and the map, or if he was doing well enough on his own to let it go and only took advantage of its reappearance, thinking to make an easy fortune. He certainly had plans for public legitimacy after the voyage, and in his conversation with the other mutineers seemed just as glad to have his days of piracy more or less behind him. Anyways, I voted for Under the Volcano for next month; while Steinbeck's book intrigued me, I'm not sure I'd want two books in a row about sea voyages.
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# ? Jun 28, 2021 01:01 |
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Silver was the "one legged man" Billy Bones paid Jim to look for, although I don't know if that was general wariness or specific fear related to the treasure. Pew and the gang who came to the inn knew of the map, so I assume Silver did. Not certain what his motivation was, hiding away, although alcoholic paranoia played a role. For that matter, why did Flint bury the treasure...
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# ? Jun 28, 2021 10:13 |
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# ? May 19, 2024 16:11 |
https://twitter.com/alloy_dr/status/1411399485167648770?s=20
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# ? Jul 3, 2021 20:00 |