Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Pirates on the Santa Maria - 2009

We had our pirate event on the Santa Maria. Turnout was good - we had around 30 pirates. Visitor attendance was also good. This was the best weekend to date (unfortunately it has been a bad year).

The attack on the ship wasn't as well planned as I would have liked but it worked. We had scratch crews manning guns on the Santa Maria. A new unit brought a small mortar so some experienced gunners fired that while the new people fired a howitzer from the shore. I quickly trained someone on using my swivel gun and she did a great job with some assist from someone who had helped me last year.

I was on my boat attacking the ship with a small swivel gun and hand-arms. We also had a couple of people on the jetty and defenders firing from the quarter deck.

After the ship closed on Saturday there was a lot of posing for pictures. Most pirates reenactors don't get to take over a ship long enough to do extended photo ops.

Around 15 people spent the night on the ship. There were some complaints about how hard the deck is to sleep on and how cold it was (the low was in the upper 40s). One thing I like about pirate events is that people sleep late. Usually I'm one of the last up at reenactments but I am usually one of the first at pirate events.

Sunday's battle was slightly scaled down. Several people could only be there for Saturday and we were out of powder for my swivel gun. We still managed a credible battle.

People started packing in earnest after the battle and were pretty much gone by 4:00. This was a shame since the ship still had visitors but it is a fact of life for reenactments where people come from out of town.


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