PAGES

Front Page - Message from the Editor
Page 2 - Global Event Gossip
Page 3 - Cannons and Corrinades
Page 4 - Articles of Avonmora: Treasure Hunting & Meet The Crew
Page 5 - Historical Lookback
Page 6 - Special Bulletin: Fantasy Draft VIII

They were a confederation of various groups who were active as pirates and marauders in the Ramessid Period, the Nineteenth Dynasty (1307-1196 B. C. E.) and the Twentieth Dynasty (1196-1070 B. C. E.). RAMESSES II (r. 1290-1224 B. C. E.) sought a pact with the HITTITE ruler HATTUSILIS III, in defense against these wide-ranging attackers, and MERENPTAH (r. 1224-1214 B. C. E.) faced one contingent of them during his reign. The actual listing of the Sea Peoples, however, dates to RAMESSES III (r. 1194-1163 B. C. E.), who destroyed them.
The Sea Peoples recorded on the walls of MEDINET HABU at THEBES include the Ekwesh, believed to be Greek Achaeans; Teresh, Anatolian sailors, possibly the Tyrrhenians; Lukka, an Anatolian coastal people; Sherdana, probably a group of Sardinians; Shekelesh, identified as members of the Sicilian Siculi; Peleset, from Crete and the ancestors of the Philistines. Others not identified with certainty were the Kizzuwatna, Arzawa, Zakala, Alasiya, Tjeker, and Denyen. The MESHWESH, Libyans who were always active in Egypt’s Delta, were also listed.
Originally some of the groups had fortified cities and worked copper mines. Displaced, the Sea Peoples conquered CYPRUS and blockaded Syrian ports. They began their first campaigns near their homelands. The Mycenean Greeks repulsed them, but other nations, including the Hittites, endured their aggression.
In Ramesses III’s eighth regnal year, the Sea Peoples had attacked Cilicia, CARCHEMISH, Palestine, Arzawa, CYPRUS, Amurru, and the HITTITES and had arrived in the Delta region with the Libyans. These marauders came in carts, bringing their entire families to the invasion. They wore kilts and headdresses of feathers or pleated stiffened cloths and they carried spears, short swords, and round shields. The Great HARRIS PAPYRUS adds other details.
Ramesses III met the Sea Peoples who were entering Egypt as migrants, not as marauders. Crop failures in the eastern Mediterranean region caused these nomads to destroy entire cities in their movement. They sought the safety of the Nile, and Ramesses III had to repel land and sea assaults. He moved defensive units to the eastern border and fortified the Nile branches in the Delta. By allowing the Sea Peoples to enter certain Nile branches and then moving floating islands and debris behind them, Ramesses III trapped entire contingents and annihilated them. Others he took as prisoners and forced them into his armed forces or made them slaves.
Egypt withstood their assaults, but the Sea Peoples changed the political matrix of the Mediterranean. One group that managed to escape Ramesses III’s assaults were called the Peleset. These are believed to have been the Philistines documented in Palestine. Some records indicate that the Peleset, or Philistines, were sent into Palestine to control the area there for Egypt.






On the high seas, ships had their own system of “law and order.”

In 2019, the U.S. Navy stopped allowing officers to punish sailors by limiting their meals to bread and water. The Navy adopted this punishment in its early days from the British Royal Navy and continued using it long after the Royal Navy stopped using it in 1891. Recently, one U.S. skipper imposed the punishment so often for minor offenses that his ship earned the nickname “U.S.S. Bread and Water.”

A modern version of this punishment might mean three days in the brig with nothing to eat with bread and water. A couple centuries ago, it might have meant 30 days shackled in the brig with only those two provisions. Though it seems cruel and unusual today, naval ships once viewed bread-and-water punishment as more humane compared to the other traditional penalties sailors faced at sea.

For minor infractions, a sailor might have to climb the mast and stay there for a set period of time in the cold wind. This could be quite uncomfortable and isolating, but was also known as the best time for a sailor to get a little reading done.

Caning
Worse than mast-heading was caning, a punishment in which you hit a sailor across his backside with a solid cane. Yet like bread-and-water punishments, caning was once a less serious consequence for misbehavior on the high seas.
In fact, caning was mostly a punishment for minors in the 19th and early 20th centuries, a time when boys as young as 12 could join the British Royal Navy. Offenders received six to 12 strokes with a thick three-and-a-half-foot cane; sometimes in private, sometimes in front of the other boys on the ship.

Birching
A boy might be caned for minor offenses, like skipping out on roll call. But if committed a more serious offense, his punishment could be a public birching. This usually meant 12 to 24 strokes with a bundle of birch sticks.
“These instruments of correction were usually hung up in the steam of the ship’s galley to make them supple enough to have knots tied in them, though there are also reports of birches being soaked in vinegar or saltwater before being used,” writes Christopher McKee in Sober Men and True: Sailor Lives in the Royal Navy, 1900-1945.

Flogging
Still, neither caning nor birching compared to flogging, a common adult punishment that could kill a man. Until the mid-1800s, sailors who committed major or minor offenses were often tied to the mast and whipped with a cat-n'-nine-tails in front of the crew. (The U.S. Congress outlawed this in 1862.)
The knots in the cat ‘o nine tails ripped flesh from sailors’ backs, causing wounds that could become infected.
To prevent this, officers often rubbed salt into the cuts after the flogging was over—a practice that caused further pain.

Keelhauling
Between the mid-1600s and the mid-1800s, one of the worst punishment a sailor could receive was keelhauling. “Keelhaul” comes from the the Dutch kielhalen, which means "to haul under the keel of a ship,” according to Merriam Webster.. As the name suggests, it involved throwing someone over one side of the ship and dragging him either underneath the ship the length of the keel or from one side over the keel to the other.
This punishment was much, much rarer than flogging. But like flogging, it could endanger a man’s life.

Hanging
For very serious infractions, the most common severe punishment was death by hanging. Sailors bound the condemned man by his hands and feet and put a noose around his neck. The noose’s rope went up over the horizontal yard-arm that stretched across the mast, and the condemned man’s fellow sailors slowly pulled his body into the air until he died from strangulation.

Walking the Plank
Perhaps the most well-known pirate punishment on the high seas is blindfolding a sailor and making him “walk the plank.” Although the practice has been dramatized in books and movies, there is no evidence that anyone ever actually did it.