Buccaneers & Black Dye: The Intriguing Tale of Logwood | The Pirates Port скачать в хорошем качестве

Buccaneers & Black Dye: The Intriguing Tale of Logwood | The Pirates Port

Today we take the color of our clothing for granted. We can get our clothing in any color imaginable and the price remains the same, but in the past that was very different. Colors with names like imperial purple or royal blue say it all: this color was for royalty. But why was that the case? Purples and blues that would not quickly fade were very hard to make and only a few processes existed. One of the methods involved crushing thousands of sea-snails while blue was created from indigo or crushed gems which had to be imported from far away lands. For these reasons only royalty (or at least VERY wealthy people) could use these colors. Eventually people discovered a tree called logwood, that could produce blues and purples, as well as a stable black dye when mixed with iron. Logwood grows throughout the Caribbean as well as Mexico and Central America, in clumps by the sea. British, French, and Dutch sailors called Buccaneers set up logging camps and were shipping logwood back to Europe but Spain had other plans. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries Spain had claimed ALL of Central and South America. They didn’t like outsiders in “their lands”, lands they had stolen from the native people, and so they began to send privateers to harass the logwood cutters. Unfortunately, for the Spanish, policing the shores of Central and South America wasn’t an easy thing to do and the buccaneers were able to hide in the jungles when they saw a Spanish raiding party coming. The buccaneers were also on better terms with the natives as the native people despised the Spanish who were enslaving them, forcing them from their lands, and converting their religion. The buccaneers had no interest in any of this and would also trade with the natives supplying them with weapons, mirrors, cooking pots, and knives. Life for the buccaneers must have felt like paradise to them, they worked, ate, and drank when they wanted and were all equal. Escaped slaves, sailors who deserted, social outcasts, and just plain adventurous types all lived the same. To an outsider these men were viewed in a negative light, as men who didn’t know their place in the world. Captain Nathaniel Uring, who had wrecked on a reef in Belize wrote of the logwood cutters saying: "The Wood-Cutters are generally a rude drunken Crew, some of which have been Pirates, and most of them Sailors; their chief Delight is in drinking; and when they broach a Quarter Cask or a Hogshead of Wine, they seldom stir from it while there is a drop left ... I had but little Comfort living among these Crew of ungovernable Wretches, where there was little else to be heard but Blasphemy, Cursing and Swearing.” Eventually, when enough logwood had been cut, the crews would load it on to boats and take it to sell in Jamaica. The would re-provision and then return to cut more. In time the Spanish increased the amount of raids and forced many of the logwood cutters out of work. These men joined up with pirate crews to get some revenge as well as for survival. In 1715 many of the ejected logwood cutters travelled to Nassau and joined the growing number of pirates based there. In the 1720’s pirates were now attacking and capturing logwood boats, and there are accounts that Sam Bellamy and Blackbeard both went on to convert the log cutter’s sloops into pirate ships. As I mentioned earlier one of the dyes produced from logwood was a stable black, which until now had not been cheap enough to produce and usually faded rapidly. The rich wanted black formal evening wear and once it was discovered that logwood could be used to make this dye the demand increased. A wealthy man named Henry Barham began to plant logwood trees on Jamaica and brought African slaves to do the work. African families were based in town near the masters and the women and children would work as servants in the houses while the men worked in camps cutting the logwood. The fact that their wives and children were kept back in town prevented these men from running away and, sadly, this practice continued until 1853. Donate via Paypal: paypal.me/ThePiratesPort Help out on Patreon: patreon.com/ThePiratesPort Follow us on Facebook: facebook.com/ThePiratesPort #thepiratesport #logwood #pirates #piracy #piratehistory #goldenageofpiracy