• thespcicifcocean@lemmy.world
      7·
      7 hours ago

      Also, if I remember correctly, the crew votes on the captain prior to setting sail and there are mechanisms in place to replace the captain if they aren’t performing well enough.

    • cannedtuna@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      3 hours ago

      The concertina has historically been a favorite instrument among people who travel often (due to its small and compact size), leading it to be a common instrument among soldiers, sailors, and cowboys. One was even brought aboard Robert Peary’s 1891 expedition of the Greenland Arctic. Despite the pop-culture association of the concertina with the Golden Age of Piracy, the concertina was invented approximately 100 years after the heyday of piracy in the North Atlantic.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concertina

      Huh neat.

  • shoo@lemmy.world
    14·
    12 hours ago

    A [*squints*] ~20 gun frigate with a crew of only 30-50? That’s sounds like a startup nightmare. You’d probably want double that to be comfortable.

    “Get in on the ground floor of our fast paced, dynamic environment! Must be self starter willing to work watch-on-watch for the team. No sick days.”

    • iocase@lemmy.zip
      3·
      10 hours ago

      “You know how you normally work dog watches, 4 hours on, 4 hours off? Yeah… Well half the crew quit.”

      “As a result we’re redistributing their watches to the remaining crew from now on. As a result, you can rest when we’re in port”

  • WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world
    28·
    19 hours ago

    I used to be a farmer and I made a living fine
    I had a little stretch of land along the CP line
    But times were tough and though I tried, the money wasn’t there
    'Til bankers came and took my land and told me “Fair is fair.”

    I looked for every kind of job, the answer always “no.”
    “Hire you now?” they’d laugh and say, “We just let forty go.”
    The government, it promised me a measly little sum
    But I’ve got too much pride to end up just another bum.

    But I thought, who gives a damn if all the jobs are gone.
    I’m gonna be a pirate on the river Saskatchewan!

  • Clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    41·
    21 hours ago

    I answered an ad like this posted by Elvis Barrett back in Nova Scotia. Now I’m a broken man on a Halifax pier, the last of Barrett’s privateers.

    I don’t know that I’d recommend the career.

  • Lushed_Lungfish@lemmy.caEnglish
    7·
    15 hours ago

    While I love the joking in the comments section, I can’t help but feel a bit sad.

    I’d give almost anything for another sea going posting.

    • St.Elsewhere@threads.net@sh.itjust.works
      26·
      22 hours ago

      Having watched the linked video and its other part ages ago and again more recently, my chief question is always the same. Who begins the process? Given that the captain is just a crew member hired like the rest, who is the one that begins the recruiting process? Without covering that, it almost feels like piracy is caused by random, persuasive ships floating into port. Have I just missed that info every single time?

      • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
        48·
        21 hours ago

        Sometimes pirate crews started as mutineers. A merchant or navy ship has a captain that severely mistreats his crew. Eventually they get sick of him and maroon him somewhere or throw him overboard. At that point, everyone on that ship has probably already committed a capital offense (especially if it’s a navy ship), so they literally have nothing to lose by becoming pirates at that point. If they’re ever caught, they’re already dead. Initially on the boat are just the folks who happened to be there at the time of the mutiny. But some filtering happens over time. Those who don’t actually want to be pirates eventually slink off at one port stop or another. And new recruits are found via quiet conversations in port taverns. A lot of recruiting probably happens through personal contacts, “oh, we’re going to port X? Why I have a cousin there that might be interested!”

        Also, often pirate ships started off as privateers. A privateer is just like a pirate, except legal. Let’s say Britain and France are at war. Britain issues letters of marque to any ship with captain and crew willing to raid French shipping. This is a way for the British crown to target French shipping at a fraction of the cost of having the Royal Navy do it themselves. (It’s the Age of Sale equivalent of German U-boats raiding British shipping during WW2.) If such a privateer is caught by the French, they’ll still be treated like pirates. But as far as the British are concerned, what they’re doing is completely legal. They can go steal a French and ship then sail into any British port and unload their plunder. It’s all completely legal and a culturally accepted part of warfare. As long as the captain had their official letter of marque, the harbormaster in any British port would let them participate freely and openly. As far as how these privateers got going? Simple capitalism. Some people with cash to invest would invest in a boat and crew, and attempt to make a profit from the conflict.

        And that’s all well and good, except what happens when the war ends? Those letters of marque were only good during wartime. And privateers don’t get military retirement benefits. There’s no pension or these folks. (Not even whatever pitiful equivalent existed for Navy sailors at the time.) Men who were risking their lives sailing the seas, plundering commerce in Britain’s name? Well they’re now all out of a job. And even if what they did was legal, it still carried a stigma. Job prospects may be quite poor for a former privateer, and it certainly won’t be as lucrative. So, quite predictably, after the wars ended, often times the privateers just kept doing what they were good at. So many pirates were simply privateers that had been cut loose by their respective governments.