BROUGHT TO YOU BY MIAB, PGPR AND PG ADMIN
Ahoy all you wenches and scallies -
Welcome to the quick Christmas edition of MIAB for 2022. We will publish a full edition in mid January.
For now, we bring you a Christmas Special and wish you all Happy and Safe Holidays!! Thank you so much for supporting us throughout 2022 and we look forward to more in 2023!
We were having a great discussion about the importance of taverns and pubs back in the golden age of piracy.
Port Taverns were the pirates' place of business, their office space if you like ..
As well as the place where they liked to unwind and drop huge amounts of money on the bar.
Innkeepers loved them and encouraged their presence at their bars enticing them with playful women, good food, a bed if required, somewhere to conduct their wheeling and dealing and lets not forget the endless flow of rum.
I did some research and as I have some time constraints at the moment, I found some interesting notes so thanks to the folks over at NatGeo History Mag ..
and its a pretty good read below if you're looking for one while your overindulgence during Christmas settles!
**NB _ The importance of taverns has absolutely nothing at all to do with Christmas or season holidays ... nothing at all whatsoever.. Its just a nod to the importance of Taverns!
We all have one in mind! Enjoy!
A little then and now -
!!! POST PICS/STORIES OF YOUR FAVE PIRATE TAVERN !!! TELL US ABOUT IT - (Christmas credits involved - payout NYE)..
Back then, pirates had a choice of two types of drinking establishments: public houses (or pubs) and taverns. A public house was, quite literally, a private house that was made public. At a time when brewing ale and beer was poorly regulated and untaxed, many people saved money by brewing their own.
Anyone with an excess of ale might open their house to passersby, including pirates—those wanting to keep a low profile would be especially interested.
Taverns, on the other hand, were spaces built for the sole purpose of selling drinks, serving meals, and providing entertainment.
A good tavern would have a sitting area, a bar, a dance floor, and even a stable to look after a customer’s horse. Sale notices, reward posters for enslaved individuals who had escaped, and news of trials and hangings covered the walls.
Local prostitutes worked the crowd. Taverns were open regular hours and sold other drinks besides ale, notably wine, rum, and whiskey.
They often had upstairs rooms for visitors to overnight.
Oh by Jingos - MIAB apologises for accidentally photographing and publishing WilliamOneEye at one of his fave taverns.. Ye Hair O'Ye Ole Frog' in Tzogos .
Quote a wink and a laugh from WiliamOneEye who guffawed heartily - " Aye aye - I just be there just for the wheelin' and dealin' .. oh and the rum of course .. ... ... '"
Again.. not too sure if he winked or blinked!!
Despite their rowdy reputations, taverns often served as centers for community activities.
For one, they functioned as informal places for sharing information and intelligence. Here, news about the latest political scandal or treaty negotiation could circulate widely. In Barbados during the 17th century, for example, the assembly regularly met at a tavern instead of a dedicated meetinghouse. Secondly, taverns often operated as a casual place of commercial negotiation.
Pirates also used these public spaces to their advantage. In between swills, they interacted with a variety of individuals, recruiting sailors, promoting mutiny on merchant vessels, and learning about the trade routes of various merchant ships,
Pirates also made business deals with society’s rich upper-class merchants and political figures, who didn’t dare be seen with them in traditional commercial sites.
One visitor to Jamaica, John Taylor, remarked in 1683 that the island’s inhabitants possessed a great amount of wealth and myriad modes of entertainment because of the pirates and privateers—pirates operating with official permission from the British crown to protect their interests from the Spanish-- who frequented the taverns and brothels there.
Stan Rogers was recently snapped at fireplace in the tavern in Gasp. In the foreground we see Sidney Obvious and Leo the Thunder Conqueror testing recently arrived merchandise apparently traded by Wally as an exchange deal his trade fleets be left in peace... MIAB has not been able to confirm this at the time of printing..
During that time, Europe, led by England, developed policies, created trade routes, enslaved Africans, and protected markets connected to their colonies in America. This triangular trade network, which provided Europe with raw materials like cotton, tobacco, and indigo from the colonies to turn into finished goods and relied on the work of enslaved individuals, fueled a consumer revolution—a huge demand among commoners and gentry alike to possess material goods that suddenly were more affordable. Societies used to scarcity suddenly were bombarded by frenzied consumption.
The taverns became hubs of economic activity in this new type of economy. Merchants, tavern keepers, inhabitants, and pirates were all involved in the business of trading fashionable and luxury items, including tea, furniture, clothing, and spices.
Seems nearly everyone from Avonmora enjoys a round or two at the tavern
Pirates also traded in expensive ill-gotten loot. It’s no secret that in the course of their jobs, they plundered valuable items from their victims. But what use did they have with Chinese porcelain, English and Dutch blue-on-white tin-glazed earthenware, and fancy German Westerwald ware?
Tavern owners readily took these costly items off their hands (no doubt at a fraction of the original price), thereby supplementing their own collections. The pirates, in turn, may have their profits in the same establishment.
Pirates also hawked their goods to unscrupulous dealers, who would later sell them through legitimate channels. In this way, average people collected a wide variety of cultural material that they might not otherwise have had access to or been able to afford. Of course, this did little to help the rightful owners who had no hope of regaining their treasures.
Here we caught that well known scallywag, dmanwuzhere doing deals with an unknown .. However, someone at the MIAB office suggested the other gentleman is none other than Captain da Vinci .. or at least it looks like him .. Hard to tell.. He doesn't stay in any one place long enough to be recognized easily and he is a master of changing his looks as much and as often as he changes his flags!
But someone else said it was DezNutz.. Or xPro .. (he looks more like Popeye to MIAB), or maybe Nelson bc - everyone is Nelson.
Then someone else suggested he be Feniks, maybe Lowdse or even Shadowood in disguise - or perhaps even Tom Lowe, Talon or Pulpop .. maybe its Hightop, Cutpurse, Asteria, Haron or Charles Vane, Captain Shorts, Admiral Madiha or Taylor MacSnow-Assur but we may never know unless the scally actually owns up to it but its clear dman, (left) is up to something!
Women played an important role in tavern life. They were quite often licensed drink sellers throughout the Caribbean. And many women were cited for operating unlicensed or disorderly houses on the islands, such as Martha Harris who, in 1655, was accused of selling liquor illegally from her home. Harris was so invested in illicit alcohol sales that she declared if the authorities seized what she had, she would just get more and sell it.
Additionally, in many of the port towns that pirates frequented, women were quite often tavern patrons and as history tells us greatly enjoyed as workers!!!
By virtue of their business practices, pirates dealt in large amounts of cash. In 1683, a visitor to Port Royal, Jamaica, named Francis Hanson was astonished to find that, unlike in other locations, where accounts were kept in commodities such as sugar or tobacco, there was so much cash available in Jamaica that it rivaled the city of London.
According to 18th-century buccaneer Alexandre Exquemelin, taverns and brothels easily “got the greatest part” when it came to pirates’ booty. One piratical venture, for example, might allow a man to squander in a month 1,000 pieces of eight, a form of Spanish currency that became the world’s first global currency. Pirates were even known to drop two to three thousand pieces of eight in a single night, which was more than some local laborers would earn in a year.
As for the tavern keepers, income was income no matter what form it took, prompting them to freely supply pirates with their drinks of choice. No wonder Port Royal—one of the largest pirate havens at the time—boasted over 100 taverns by 1680.
Sometimes, this economic model led to trouble for the tavern keepers. In 1721, Port Royal locals accused a tavern keeper named John Dunks of supplying a pirate with men and provisions and allowing another pirate to escape persecution by springing him from jail. John Perrie, a tavern owner in Antigua, was accused of trading with pirates in his tavern at St. John’s and harboring pirates from the law.
A happy inkeeper is a dream for any pirate - Here we see who we believe is Mels mate Bart and his beaming smile saying it all.
So raise your tankards high, and lets celebrate our own PG Tavern and all the folk that visit within. Aye, that be right. all of them. And you.
I mean, its that time of year!
