4 ms·

Paper Scraps Recovered from Blackbeard's Cannon

34 points by curtis 9y ago

JoeAltmaier 9y ago
tl;dr: pretty interesting reading material found crammed into cannon recovered from Blackbeard's ship. Conclusion: pirates were sophisticated readers. Probably used wadding for the cannon? So no, not what they were reading; what they had pirated from other ships and their passengers, and had torn up and stuffed into cannon to hold the powder and ball in place while they aimed. In other words, what they regarded so little as to use as filler/trash.
- benbreen 9y ago
  I think that it would be jumping to conclusions to say that, simply because the book was repurposed, it wasn't first read by the crew. Early modern books often passed from owner to owner and became extremely worn down. It's easy to imagine a pirate reading the book (likely aloud to a group due to low literacy rates) and then after it had become too waterlogged to want to hang on to, finding a new use for it. That scenario doesn't imply that they thought of it as trash.
  - kurthr 9y ago
    I would be intrigued to know the percentage of pirate gunners of 1800 that could read at all. Best guess is less than 30% and most of those, barely literate. England was, however, one of the best educated countries of the day. https://ourworldindata.org/literacy/ https://ourworldindata.org/literacy/
- philtar 9y ago
  Where in the world did you get your conclusion? I certainly hope no one believes your conjecture when compared to the opinion whose career revolves around the above topics.
Theodores 9y ago
Here is a better article that gives away how the clues were matched to the book, the book being the same one that inspired Robinson Crusoe: https://www.livescience.com/61351-blackbeard-pirate-book-fragments.html https://www.livescience.com/61351-blackbeard-pirate-book-fra... We are somewhat naive about how people understood the world in former times. People have been trading goods across continents for thousands of years. Much like how we have no idea where are stuff from China comes from in any detail, so it was in former times when buying spices from Africa or India. You might buy pepper corns and have no idea they came from Africa. Much of what we call piracy was the unofficial British Royal Navy, trading stuff all around the world. Britain was highly invested in everything maritime and sailors were the astronauts of the day. They did difficult navigational things with sextants, compass things and much more, all requiring manuals and therefore requiring literacy. Plus reading was fun in an era before TV. So why do we portray pirates from times gone by as speaking funny with parrots on their shoulders and a peg-leg?
- sitharus 9y ago
  We picture pirates as speaking with an English West Country accent for a couple of reasons. Edward Teach, who became famous as Blackbeard, was from somewhere in the Bristol region so would presumably have spoken with this accent. Also the 1952 film "Blackbeard the Pirate" cast a Dorset-born actor in the lead role, who also spoke with a West Country accent, cementing the accent in popular culture. The peg-leg is a old popular image of experienced sailors. Sailing has always been a highly risky occupation and it's easy to lose a leg to due gangrene from splinters, scurvy, cannonball impact or getting it caught in the rigging. I can't explain the parrot though.
  - zaroth 9y ago
    But if you accept the parrot, it explains the eyepatch! The eyepatch being a direct result of the parrot.
    - codingdave 9y ago
      I thought the eyepatch was already well explained as a tool to keep one eye used to the dark, in order to make it easier to switch between being on the deck and in the hold.
lerie82 9y ago
Yea,it's pretty odd that it would be in a cannon if they were reading it lol. If they were reading it, wouldn't they have found bindings?

34 points by curtis 9y ago

tl;dr: pretty interesting reading material found crammed into cannon recovered from Blackbeard's ship. Conclusion: pirates were sophisticated readers. Probably used wadding for the cannon? So no, not what they were reading; what they had pirated from other ships and their passengers, and had torn up and stuffed into cannon to hold the powder and ball in place while they aimed. In other words, what they regarded so little as to use as filler/trash.

benbreen 9y ago
I think that it would be jumping to conclusions to say that, simply because the book was repurposed, it wasn't first read by the crew. Early modern books often passed from owner to owner and became extremely worn down. It's easy to imagine a pirate reading the book (likely aloud to a group due to low literacy rates) and then after it had become too waterlogged to want to hang on to, finding a new use for it. That scenario doesn't imply that they thought of it as trash.
- kurthr 9y ago
  I would be intrigued to know the percentage of pirate gunners of 1800 that could read at all. Best guess is less than 30% and most of those, barely literate. England was, however, one of the best educated countries of the day. https://ourworldindata.org/literacy/ https://ourworldindata.org/literacy/
philtar 9y ago
Where in the world did you get your conclusion? I certainly hope no one believes your conjecture when compared to the opinion whose career revolves around the above topics.

Theodores 9y ago

Here is a better article that gives away how the clues were matched to the book, the book being the same one that inspired Robinson Crusoe: https://www.livescience.com/61351-blackbeard-pirate-book-fragments.html https://www.livescience.com/61351-blackbeard-pirate-book-fra... We are somewhat naive about how people understood the world in former times. People have been trading goods across continents for thousands of years. Much like how we have no idea where are stuff from China comes from in any detail, so it was in former times when buying spices from Africa or India. You might buy pepper corns and have no idea they came from Africa. Much of what we call piracy was the unofficial British Royal Navy, trading stuff all around the world. Britain was highly invested in everything maritime and sailors were the astronauts of the day. They did difficult navigational things with sextants, compass things and much more, all requiring manuals and therefore requiring literacy. Plus reading was fun in an era before TV. So why do we portray pirates from times gone by as speaking funny with parrots on their shoulders and a peg-leg?

sitharus 9y ago
We picture pirates as speaking with an English West Country accent for a couple of reasons. Edward Teach, who became famous as Blackbeard, was from somewhere in the Bristol region so would presumably have spoken with this accent. Also the 1952 film "Blackbeard the Pirate" cast a Dorset-born actor in the lead role, who also spoke with a West Country accent, cementing the accent in popular culture. The peg-leg is a old popular image of experienced sailors. Sailing has always been a highly risky occupation and it's easy to lose a leg to due gangrene from splinters, scurvy, cannonball impact or getting it caught in the rigging. I can't explain the parrot though.
- zaroth 9y ago
  But if you accept the parrot, it explains the eyepatch! The eyepatch being a direct result of the parrot.
  - codingdave 9y ago
    I thought the eyepatch was already well explained as a tool to keep one eye used to the dark, in order to make it easier to switch between being on the deck and in the hold.

lerie82 9y ago

Yea,it's pretty odd that it would be in a cannon if they were reading it lol. If they were reading it, wouldn't they have found bindings?