[Sca-cooks] OT Buccaneering was A Question of Spit Roasting....

[Decker, Terry D.]

Up to the point the buccaneers took a galleon of 500 men with two long
boats, it was a pretty marginal life.  They hunted wild cattle on the
islands and smoked the meat, cut logwood and harvested the heartwood for
dye, sold the meat and dyestuff at various ports, drank themselves silly
then cast off and wandered through the islands in long boats plying their
trade.

You're probably more interested in them after they found piracy and
privateering provided better returns for about the same risk.  By then, they
had given up the barbecuer's trade, but kept the name.

Of course the whole scene is outside of the SCA' s time frame, but I've run
both an OOP Spanish Main pirate event and a period Mediterannean pirate
event.  I also keep trying to get a friend who keeps Mongolian and Chinese
personas to put on a Chinese pirate event.  If I do another, I'll probably
try for a Cornish Elizabethean pirate event.  Arghhh.

Bear

> Oh I really must forward this info to some of my friends who
> are into Pirate
> stuff!
>
> Yo ho, a barbecuers life for me!
>
> Selene Colfox
>
> Terry Decker wrote:
>
> > You might also want to check out the French for "boucan" or
> barbecue rack.
> > I believe you will find the 1661 English reference is about
> "buccaneers"
> > (from the French "boucanier" or barbecuer).  The buccaneers
> were originally
> > a marginal bunch of escaped slaves and malcontents of many
> nations who made
> > a living from smoking meat and logging.  The Spanish
> decided to make war on
> > them and they, in return, made war on the Spanish by
> becoming pirates.
> >
> > In English, the use of buccaneer for pirate dates from about 1690.
> >
> > Bear