"Someday I will kill the man who wrote keep the home fires burning—they play it in the hottest weather, too."
—
Siegfried Sassoon in a letter to musicologist Edward Dent, 1915
Remember when I blogged this? So I just found out who wrote “Keep the Homes Fires Burning.”
Ivor Novello.
With whom Sassoon had an affair in 1924. (via larazontally)
I’d say Sassoon clearly can’t hold a grudge, but the first time he met Ivor Novello he DID flat-out ignore him in petty spite because he hated that song so much. Clearly he got over it though. (via outoflullabies)
One of my favourite anecdotes about the first Golden Age of Piracy is that, at one point, Captain Henry Morgan left England in one ship, and arrived in the Caribbean commanding a completely different ship, and nobody knows why. What happened to the first ship and how he acquired the second one are entirely unrecorded.
At some point in his short career (1715 until 1718), the English pirate Ben Hornigold attacked a sloop near Honduras just to steal all the hats of the crew, because his own crew had gotten drunk the night before and they had tossed every single one of their own hats overboard.
Bartholomew Roberts, arguably the most successful pirate in history by ships captured (a whopping 470 in 3 years), didn’t actually want to be a pirate. His ship was captured and he was forced to join the pirate crew.
My personal fave is Sam Bellamy. His life story reads like a tragic epic novel - poor sailor boy, becomes one of the youngest/wealthiest/most generous (“Robin Hood of the Sea”) pirate captains, hangs out being a pirate with his other dudebro pirate captains, left a mysterious love back from his days of poor sailor boyitude, tragically and abruptly dies at 28 in a storm alongside his closest dudebro pirate captain (possibly whilst on his way to revisit his mysterious love).
These are all great but I think there are two things in particular we really need to talk about:
1. Attacking a ship simply to steal the crews hats has never happened in a movie at that is a travesty.
2. What I’m getting from this is that Bartholomew Roberts is quite literally the Dread Pirate Roberts.
“To show your true color” = You reveal who you really are, your true character when you show your true colors.
Early warships often carried flags from many nations on board in order to elude or deceive the enemy.
Sailing into battle under false colors went against the Articles of War, but unscrupulous captains and officers who cared more for payback and beating the enemy than stuffy rules and regulations, would often go into action with false colors in order to gain the element of surprise. [x]
Fun fact: There was a female Native American chief known as Pine Leaf who promised not to marry a man until she personally killed 100 men with her bare hands. When a man convinced her to give up on this pledge and settle down before taking her virginity and running away, Pine Leaf responded by gathering a harem of women, swearing off men forever and becoming an even more badass warrior.
Im going through the reigns of Roman Emperors and jfc it’s either “rule: ~20 years in relative peace” or “rule: 3 months and 2 days. Stabbed to death by praetorian guard”, there’s practically no middle ground.
