by Jamaica Rose
“A hott, hellish & terrible liquor” is what sailors first called rum. The English called it “rumbullion,” which was soon shortened to rum. It was also called “kill-devil.” In 1707, Dr. Hans Sloane (Henry Morgan’s doctor) wrote that “rum is well-called Kill-Devil, for perhaps no year passes without it having killed more than a thousand.” Henry Morgan’s death in 1688 was probably caused in good part by his overdrinking.
Rum became available in the Caribbean during the 1640s. It was distilled from molasses (a by-product of the new sugar cane industry). Molasses and the skimmings from the boiling sugar kettles fermented naturally. It was then distilled to result in a clear liquor. It darkened as it aged in wooden casks. Rum was as common and as cheap as beer is today.
The buccaneers mixed rum with wine, tea, limejuice, sugar, and spices. They called this “punch.” The number and variety of ingredients varied greatly. As it took some effort to make, punch was usually made at parties. They served it in a big bowl, either hot or cold, and the revelers often drank it straight from the dipper. In 1689, the day after Christmas, Captain William Kidd met with another captain in a tavern. They had a punch with the following recipe: “Rum, Water, Lime-Juice, Egg yolk, Sugar with a little nutmeg scrap’d on top.” (Pirates weren’t alone in enjoying punch; it was the most popular beverage in colonial America.)
The term “grog” was not used until 1740, when Admiral Edward Vernon ordered the sailors’ rum ration be mixed with tea (or water) and limejuice. The tea diluted the rum, and the limejuice prevented scurvy. At sea, Vernon wore a cloak made of grogram wool, and thus earned his nickname “Old Grogram.” The watered-down rum was thus named “grog” in his honor.
Aye, pirates loved to drink and were very creative in the types of drinks they produced. But most never learned moderation, which was the downfall of many a pirate at the end.
It’ll Blow You Away
Captain Jack Sparrow wasn’t the only pirate who worried about the rum being gone. Blackbeard’s crew got very cranky when their rum was gone. Captain Blackbeard wrote in his ship’s logbook:
“Such a day; rum all out. Our company somewhat sober; a [darned] confusion amongst us! Rogues a plotting. Talk of separation. So I looked sharp for a prize [and] took one with a great deal of liquor aboard. So kept the company hot, [darned] hot, then all things went well again.”
Blackbeard had a special recipe for rum punch. The secret ingredient was gunpowder! He would add the gunpowder as the last step in making the punch. When it was set on fire, the punch sizzled, flamed up, and popped. Quite an exciting drink!
And now you can serve Blackbeard’s famous punch to your pirate crew:
Recipes from Gaston’s Galley
Limeade Grog
(nonalcoholic)
You will need:
2 (12-ounce) cans frozen limeade concentrate
2 (12-ounce) cans frozen lemonade concentrate
2 (2-liter) bottles lemon-lime soda
1 (2-liter) bottle ginger ale
2 quarts lime sherbet, in chunks
Combine liquids in a large punch bowl. Mix in the lime sherbet just before serving, letting the chunks of sherbet float on top.
Recipes from Gaston’s Galley
Blackbeard’s “Gunpowder and Rum” Punch
(nonalcoholic)
1/4 pound green tea leaves (it will be a lot cheaper and easier if you buy the loose leaves in bulk, not tea bags)
2 quarts cold water
3 cups orange juice (instead of brandy)
2 cups lime (or lemon) juice
1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
3 quarts ginger ale or ginger beer (nonalcoholic; instead of rum)
1 cup drained maraschino cherries
1 (20-ounce) can crushed pineapple, including the juice
Pop Rocks* (instead of gunpowder)
Pour the tea and water into a sun tea jar and let it sit outside most of the day. Strain out the tea leaves. Add the juices and sugar. Cover and store in the fridge for a couple of days, the longer the better.
The day before your party, make an ice ring. Use 1 quart of the ginger ale for the ice ring. Pour enough ginger ale into a ring mold (or Bundt cake pan) to a depth of 3/4 inch. Freeze solid. Then arrange maraschino cherries onto the frozen layer. Carefully pour in another 1/4 inch of ginger ale and freeze again to hold the cherries in place. After the cherry mixture is frozen, carefully pour the remaining ginger ale on top. Freeze until ready to use.
Just before you serve the punch to your unsuspecting crewmates, pour the tea/juice mixture into a large punch bowl.
To unmold the ice ring, dip it into a bowl of warm water. When it is loosened, place the ice ring carefully in the chilled punch (you don’t want to slosh it).
Add the remaining ginger ale and the pineapple. Invite your fellow pirates over, and then sprinkle your Pop Rocks “gunpowder” on top and let them enjoy the “fireworks.”
*Pop Rocks can be ordered through www.poprockscandy.com. If you can’t use Pop Rocks, substitute 1 teaspoon black pepper as your gunpowder (but you won’t get the “fireworks”).
[Special thanks to Cap’n Lane for the Pop Rocks idea.]
Shiver Me Timbres!
Some Pirates like to Fiddle Around
“Come give us a jig!” the pirates would often call to the fiddler or piper. They loved singing and dancing to a hornpipe or jig. Lucky was the pirate ship with a musician or two aboard. Especially fortunate were those with an entire band or orchestra, for music helped while away the tedious hours.
Musicians were popular with pirate crews. Musicians, along with doctors, were the only landsmen welcomed aboard ship. Captured musicians were often forced to join pirate crews, thus they were often believed at trials when they claimed to be innocent of piracy.
Though excused from most taxing shipboard duties, musicians were on call any time of the day or night with one exception: “The musicians to have rest on the Sabbath Day [Sunday], but the other six Days & Nights none without special Favour. “(As seen in Bartholomew Roberts’ articles.)
Playing the fiddle or flute made a man very popular. The other pirates liked to have him around. Impromptu serenades kept the crew happy. They would sing themselves hoarse while banging out the beat on or with anything handy—barrels, tankards, pots, etc.
Besides merrymaking, musicians had another important role. During battle, they played nautical tunes and drummed out war beats to fire up the crew. The resulting noise and ruckus was called “vaporing.” It put dread into the hearts of the crew they were about to attack.
Come, Me Young Sailors, and I’ll Sing Ye a Song
Pirates of old loved music. Their music may not have been cultured music, but ’twas usually something they could sing or dance to. Pirates, and sailors in general, loved to sing.
Sailors sung two main types of songs aboard ship: work songs and songs for entertainment. The work songs were called shanties. The songs of leisure were called forebitters or fo’c’sle songs.
Shanties
A shanty (also spelled “chanty” or “chantey”) was always linked with work. They were used to help the sailors work together and all pull at the same time. They also made the work a little less unpleasant.
The earliest proper shanty we know of was written down in 1549. But even in ancient times, sailors sang at their work, when rowing in a galley, or heavin’ and haulin’. It’s just natural. Many of these “songs” would be more correctly termed a “sing-out.” A sing-out is a wild yell given when hauling a rope hand-over-hand, a sort of seed of a shanty. “Heave ho” is a good example.
Most shanties we know about first appeared between 1830 and 1860, mostly aboard the merchant ships. Merchant ships carried the smallest crew possible to save money. It was important to get the men to work together on a small crew. Shanties were great for this.
Shanties usually follow a pattern: a short solo verse sung by the shantyman (the song leader) followed by a lusty chorus that everyone sang.
<
br /> There were two main types of shanties: the capstan shanty and the halyard shanty.
Capstans were used for raising large heavy objects such as anchors and huge mainyards (the spar hanging from the mainmast). For this, the crew had to walk around and around and around the capstan, pushing at the bars (sort of like pushing a playground merry-go-round). This was heavy work, but the shantyman made it a lot easier by helping everybody walk in step together. Besides, the work was more enjoyable if there was music to go with it.
Halyard comes from “haul yard.” Halyard shanties were used as the sailors pulled on a line to raise a heavy yard, or pole. In singing a halyard shanty, the accent was placed on certain words or notes, letting the men know when they should all pull on the line.
Shanties have many variations, often depending on where they came from or honoring certain events. They usually started with a certain set of verses, but a good shantyman could improvise enough verses to continue the song until the work was completed. Shantymen loved to improvise. They often personalized the songs for their own ship, with verses about their captain, officers, and fellow crewman. So you might hear versions of the shanty different than the one you know. Don’t worry about it. It’s just the result of some shantyman being creative. You might try your own hand at writing a new version of a shanty!
These songs would often be quite dirty with lots of bad words. Sailors LOVED singing dirty songs, especially when the captain wasn’t listening. When you see them written in books, they have been cleaned up, replacing the bad words with nicer words and leaving out whole verses if needed.
Fo’c’s’le Songs
When men were not on duty, they hung around in the crew’s quarters (the forecastle, or fo’c’sle). If the weather was nice, they would be out on deck at the fo’c’sle-head. They sang songs for entertainment, called fo’c’sle songs. The fiddles and fifes would emerge especially during the second dogwatch (6–8 p.m.). The sailors would gather around one of the hatches, or on the forecastle head, dancing jigs and hornpipes, and singing. Often they sang songs of farewell, famous (and not-so-famous) vessels, battles at sea, piracy, adventures ashore, their wives and sweethearts, complaints about conditions on board, and sentimental songs of home and family.
Shore Songs and Ballads
So-called “sailor songs” were written and sung by landsmen. They were the “recruiting posters” of the day. They told of the glories and delights of life at sea. Real sailors knew this was a bunch of garbage. Sailors did not sing these songs. “Sailing, Sailing, over the Bounding Main,” now sung by children, was one such song.
In the 1600s and 1700s, professional ballad writers were the news reporters of the day. Exciting news, such as a major sea battle or pirate attack, would be written up as a ballad. They printed the ballads on a single sheet of paper. Small kids sold them on the street as “one-sheets” or “penny ballads” (sold for a penny). Many songs about pirates were written as ballads. The facts were often changed to tell a better story or point out a moral. The famous “Captain Kidd” ballad is a good example.
Remember, pirates were sailors, and they sang the songs of the sea. Singing as one helped them feel like a brotherhood and helped cement them together as a crew. The shanties promoted comradeship and teamwork. It made them feel like they were part of something bigger than themselves. Get a bunch of your mates together, and try singing some of the songs. You’ll see what we mean.
How Do Ya Put Fifteen Men on a Dead Man’s Chest? From the files of Cap’n Michael
Fifteen men on the Dead Man’s Chest—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
The drunken old sailor Billy Bones sings this refrain in the opening pages of one of the most famous pirate novels of all time, Treasure Island. What did author Robert Louis Stevenson mean by “Fifteen men on the Dead Man’s Chest”? Was there a dog pile of people lying’ on some poor dead shipmate’s torso? If so, no wonder he died. Having fifteen people on top of you would tend to crush ya a bit (sounds like a game of football gone bad). Or maybe it’s fifteen men fighting over their dead mate’s sea chest? Does it have anything to do with the chest Captain Jack Sparrow tries to get away from Davy Jones? So, ya might be wondering, “Just what is this chest?”
It turns out, it ain’t none of the above. It is actually the name of a place.
There is an island by the name of Dead Man’s Chest in the Virgin Islands. Charles Kingsley, an old friend of Robert Louis Stevenson, had taken a trip to the Caribbean and mentioned the island in his book At Last: A Christmas in the West Indies. This gave Stevenson the idea to write the bit of song for Treasure Island.
Ya can still find that island today. Now it’s called Dead Chest Island, near Peter Island in the British Virgin Islands (some may dissent with me, but I say it be true!). It’s a barren rocky island with no fresh water. About the only thing alive on it are pelicans and snakes. Local stories tell how the famous Blackbeard stranded fifteen of his crew on Dead Chest Island to punish them. He left only one bottle o’ rum with them and nothin’ else. They had little chance o’ survival. Two of them tried swimming to nearby Peter Island, but they didn’t make it. Their bodies washed up on the shore of a fine-looking bay on the island. The local natives call it Deadman’s Bay (sounds picturesque, don’t ya think?).
Some people will tell ya nearby Norman Island was the model for Treasure Island. And wouldn’t you know, this island is named for Captain Norman, a pirate himself.
Now, Stevenson didn’t write the whole song. He only wrote the four lines of refrain given in the music above, and that was back in 1881.
Ten years later, a journalist named Young Ewing Allison wrote a song to go with those four lines. It was for a musical version of Treasure Island. He called his song “The Derelict,” but now most people call it by the first line of the refrain, “Fifteen Men on the Dead Man’s Chest.” It’s also called “Bottle of Rum,” “Fifteen Men,” or “Dead Man’s Chest.”
There are many versions of the song, because Allison kept tinkering with it and changing it. Other people often sing it their own way, either because they can’t remember it all or just don’t understand all the words. The version below is the one WE learned and have probably heard most often.
“The Derelict” tells the story of a treasure-filled Spanish galleon captured by pirates. Fighting over how to divvy up the riches, the pirates started killin’ each other. Pretty soon they were all dead. With no one at the helm, the ship ran aground at Dead Man’s Chest.
The wrecked ship (derelict) waited with her gruesome cargo, until one day another crew discovered it. The song below describes what this new crew saw as they hauled themselves over the railing of the derelict.
Fifteen men on the Dead Man’s Chest—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
“Heave-ho” or “Yo-heave-ho” is a chant sailor’s use when pulling heavy things up with ropes, such as raising up a heavy sail. Stevenson changed it a little for his refrain to “Yo-ho-ho.” He really started something with those six little letters. The bottle of rum reminds us how the pirates were often drunk. In this case, their drinking led to their fighting and their deaths.
The mate was fixed by the bo’sun’s pike
And the bo’sun brained with a marlin-spike,
The cookie’s throat was marked belike
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
It had been clutched by fingers ten.
And there they lay, all good dead men,
Like break o’ day in a boozin’ ken
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
A pike (or boarding pike) was a long spear used on ships. The bos’un (short for boatswain, a middle-rank officer) must have stabbed the mate (another officer) with it and pinned him to the wooden deck.
A marlinspike is
a wood or metal tool with a pointy end. Lookin’ rather like a giant-sized sewing needle. They are usually 6 to 12 inches long, but can be up to 24 inches long. Sailors use ’em for repairing the ship’s rigging, but they would be quite handy fer bashing someone’s head.
Cookie is a nickname for the ship’s cook. His throat shows bruises from being strangled (considerin’ the horrible slop most cooks served, he probably deserved it).
A boozing ken is a bar or tavern, a place where you get booze (liquor). After a night full of drinking, the drunks who are still at the bar will be lying around like dead bodies.
Fifteen men of the whole ship’s list,
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Dead and bedamned and their souls gone whist
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
There are fifteen men on the ship’s roster. Because of their ill deeds, they are now cursed, and their souls have not gone to Heaven.
The skipper lay with his nob in gore
Where the scullion’s axe his cheek had shore,
And the scullion he was stabbed times four
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
And there he lay, and the soggy skies
Dripped all day long in up-staring eyes
At murk sunset and at foul sunrise—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
The captain’s head (nob) lays in a pool of blood (gore) from where the cook’s assistant (the scullion) attacked him. Someone else stabbed the scullion four times. From sunset to sunrise, the scullion’s body lay on the deck, starring up into the heavens as the foul murky weather dripped rain into his sightless eyes.