This Georgian era ring dates to a time when the British Royal Navy was battling Napoleon’s French fleet. Very likely made as a love token for
an admiral’s wife to wear while he was away at sea. Being a fragile micro carving it is a rare piece. The warship is set under crystal on a hand painted ground of waves with flat cut garnets
surrounding the bezel. A similar ring can be found at The British Museum in London.
it makes me laugh that in black sails charles vane is like this martyr for the pirates to rally behind bc in real life he was such a shitty dick-faced asshole of a captain that the crew mutinied and elected jack rackham captain and no one ever heard from vane’s punk ass again
Female Pirates: Jeanne de Clisson, ‘The Lioness of Brittany’
Jeanne de Clisson’s tale is one of tragedy, revenge and the showmanship. As the wife of Olivier III de Clisson, Jeanne was a happily married mother of five, and a lady of Brittany, France. But when land wars between England and France led to her husband being charged with treason and punished with decapitation, she swore revenge on the France’s King Philip VI.
The widowed de Clisson sold all of her land to buy three warships, which she dubbed her Black Fleet. These were painted black, draped with blood red sails, and crewed with merciless privateers. From 1343-1356, the Lioness of Brittany sailed the English Channel, capturing the French King’s ships, cutting down his crew, and beheading with an axe any aristocrat who had the misfortune to be onboard. Remarkably, despite all her theft and bloodshed, de Clisson retired quietly. She even remarried, settling down with English lieutenant Sir Walter Bentley.
Believed to have died in 1359, some say she has since returned to de Clisson Castle in Brittany, where her grey ghost walks the halls.
It all started when the Greek who just would not give up started yet another rebellion, ahem *war* with their long-time governor the Ottoman Empire. Laskarina’s father had died while she was just a baby, when a previously failed coup attempt landed him in prison and then dead. She was raised by her mother. She grew up a pretty girl, and married (twice) into rich families. But then the latest in a long line of Greek rebellions got started.Read her story.
Jeanne de Clisson (1300-1359): the Lioness of Brittany
More historical details and footnotes up later today when I have more time. The short version is: we know she existed, that she led forces against France, that she became a pirate, and that she was protected by England. The extent of her feats varies greatly based on the telling – estimates of the length of her career as pirate range between five months and thirteen years! – but whatever the heck she actually did left quite an impression.
“Previously, researchers had misidentified skeletons as male simply because they were buried with their swords and shields. By studying osteological signs of gender within the bones themselves, researchers discovered that approximately half of the remains were actually female warriors, given a proper burial with their weapons.”
how many other ‘discoveries’ were prevented from happening because men applied current ‘gender norms’ to past cultures?!
The average age in Boston in the early 1770s was 14. More than half the population of Boston was under 21 in the events leading up to the American Revolution.
It really puts everything into a completely different context, doesn’t it?
idk. Seems like things turned out pretty well in the end.
A large part of the reason for the population of Massachusetts being especially young in the 1760s and 70s is that somewhere between 1/10 and 1/13 of the male population of Massachusetts died in the seven years war. There had also been a smallpox outbreak in the 1760s, and a large chunk of Boston had burned to the ground. One of the interesting things that this actually leads to is a serious decline in the taxable population, which placed a higher tax burden on those left, which made them more likely to default, futher shrinking the taxable population, etc. This actually does help explain why the backlash to Britain’s new taxes was so strong. People already couldn’t keep up with the burden of local and provincial taxes. Imperial taxes just weren’t a reasonable thing to ask.
Meg's Mumbles 