by Jamaica Rose
Figure 6. Bend hand guard as shown and insert over end of pipe.
Step 7: Place another chunk of open-cell foam (about 4 x 4 inches) so it wraps around the handle end up to the 1-1/2-inch mark you made in Step 1 and wrap it with duct tape like you did the tip (see Figure 7).
Figure 7. Tape the handle end.
Wrap the area between the two ends of the hand guard with duct tape. This will make it easier to grip than plain PVC, which is slippery.
Or wrap the handle with soft rope, leather lacing, or bicycle handlebar tape to form a comfortable handle. This will give you a better grip and make it look better.
The Steps for a Basic Sword Drill
Now that you’ve made your foam cutlasses, it’s time to learn how to use them properly. Have you ever watched a sword fight on TV or the movies and wondered, “How do they do that?” They are actually swinging real swords at each other, but nobody is getting hurt (except the bad guy, of course).
What they are doing is called “stage combat.” It’s the art of making a sword fight look real, and doing it safely at the same time.
We are going to teach you the basics (some of the same techniques used by professional stunt men), so you can work out a sword fight routine of your very own. With a little practice, it will make you the envy of all your friends.
Now lets move on to your initial starting position...
Note: These positions are describing the movement from a right-hander’s point of view. For you lefties out there, you will need to reverse everything.
En Garde
You should always start from the en garde position (on guard). Start with your body sideways to your opponent. Your right shoulder should point toward your opponent. Leave your left foot where it is and turn your right foot so it is pointing towards your opponent. Keeping your feet in that position, twist your body a little to the right so you are facing forward a bit, toward your opponent. The forearm and hand are parallel to the floor. Your right arm should form an “L” from your shoulder to your wrist, with the bottom of the “L” pointing forward. The point of your sword should be up and toward the opponent’s eyes.
Defending Yourself
The seven basic defensive (protective) parries are each designed to protect a different part of your body.
1st Parry: From en garde, move your forearm across the chest, with your wrist and hand turned down with the point of the blade down. This covers the inside of your body and left side (or right side if you are a lefty).
2nd Parry: Your sword arm is brought back to the side of your body. Your sword hand is turned down with sword point down. This covers the right side of your body from the waist down (or left side for lefties).
3rd Parry: Your sword arm keeps in the same pose as the 2nd parry, but your wrist and hand turn up. Your sword point comes up. This covers the upper right side of your body.
4th Parry: Move your hand to the opposite side of your body, covering the inside upper section and blocking an attack to your chest.
5th Parry: Your upper arm is parallel to the ground from your shoulder. Your forearm is raised straight up. Hold your sword even with the top of your head and pointing across. This protects you from blows to the head.
6th Parry: From 5th position, sweep your hand down from high to low across hip. Your hand should move to just below your hips.
7th Parry: This is a flashy move. Your hand moves straight up and even with the top of your head. Your blade tip points toward your right (or left if a lefty). Your forearm should be pointing straight up. Your arm and blade take a window-like position. Your blade covers an attack to your head.
Rules of the Sword: The Basic Safety Rules of Stage Combat
1. Keep proper distance: The fighters should never be close enough to actually hit each other’s body with the weapon. First, check the distance by having the attacker slowly point the sword toward the defender as an attack. The point should be more than 8 inches away from the defender.
2. Eye contact: Eye contact should ALWAYS be made before the fight begins. Partners should ask each other “Are you ready?” and wait until he answers “ready” before beginning.
3. Parrying: All parries (blocking your opponent’s sword with your own) should start from close to your body and move outward. For example, if someone is attacking your left elbow, then your sword actually starts on the right side of your body and moves leftward to meet the attacking weapon. Think of it as pushing the other weapon away.
4. Aim for the blad: Don’t hit your opponent on purpose! The idea is to hit the other person’s BLADE. Remember to keep your proper distance as you go through your routine, so if you make a mistake, you won’t accidentally hit them.
5. Be aware: You should always look all around you before you begin to make sure the area is clear. Then keep an eye out after you begin in case anyone wanders into the area. You should always have adult supervision.
Every Tool is a Weapon: Daggers, Dirks, and Stilettos
Sailor’s Knife
Every sailor had a sailor’s knife. This was the sailor’s all-purpose tool. The knife had a single-edged blade with a flat tip (merchant ship and Royal Navy captains would order the points snapped off of all the sailors knives so they couldn’t use them for fighting). There was usually a hole in the end of the handle for tying on a rope lanyard. This was so you wouldn’t lose it when working high up in the rigging.
Dagger
This fighting knife with a long double-edged blade has a cross guard above the handle to help protect the hand. Although daggers are primarily a stabbing weapon, they could be used for either thrusting or cutting.
Dirk
The Scottish word for a short dagger, the dirk is a fighting knife with a single-edged blade (usually) and no cross guard. It’s primarily a cutting weapon.
Naval Dirk
This had a longer blade than the standard dirk. It could be either single- or double-edged and had a cross guard. This was the dirk favored by midshipmen.
Stiletto
Stilettos were stabbing weapons. They were similar to daggers but had long, slim, unsharpened blades with sharply pointed tips. The blades were usually triangular in cross section but were sometimes round, square, or even diamond-shaped. This design was perfect for penetrating chain mail or other armor. It is a nasty weapon. If it didn’t kill you immediately, it caused a wound that would not close properly. The victim usually either bled to death or died from the resulting infection.
Belt Axe
The smallest axe carried by sailors was the belt axe. This small axe fit readily in the belt and had a flat hammer–like face, called the poll, on the side opposite the blade.
Boarding Axe
This was a larger axe, useful for repelling boarders and cutting away damaged rigging. Every navy had its own unique style of boarding axe. In combat, it was a lethal weapon, capable of killing a man with one blow.
Grenade or Grenado
A small hollow iron ball filled with a mixture of black powder and other nasty shrapnel such as broken glass, rocks, or lead shot, it worked like a modern grenade but was a lot more treacherous.
Boarding Pike
A nautical spear with a flat leaf-shaped blade, it was used both for forcing your way aboard enemy vessels and for repelling boarders.
Those Who Live by the Sword Get Shot by Those Who Don’t
Next to his cutlass, a pirate’s favorite weapon would have been his flintlock. The pistol may have only fired a single shot, but that shot could be devastating. These weapons were not like the small handguns used today. They fired a big bullet, usually two to three times the size of one used in a modern pistol.
Matchlock
The first black powder hand weapon was called a matchlock. This firearm used a lever with a burning cord attached to it. When you move the lever, it touched the cord to a pan full of explosive black powder. They may have been primitive, but they were reliable in dry weather. There were pistol and musket versions of these, though the p
istols were rare.
Wheelock
A wheelock was easier to use than a matchlock and could be fired in bad weather. However, the mechanism was fragile and expensive to make, so they weren’t very practical for warfare, especially onboard a ship.
Snaplock, Snaphaunce, and Flintlock
From the late 1500s to the 1800s, the black powder weapon of choice was the snaplock. This is a weapon that uses a flint hitting a steel striking surface to produce sparks. The earlier version was called a snaphaunce, but it was improved by making the striking surface a part of the pan cover. This improved version was the flintlock.
A French gunsmith invented the flintlock around 1610. It was the first handheld black powder weapon that was practical for use at sea. A flintlock uses a flint and a piece of steel called a frizzen to fire the weapon. When you pull the trigger, the flint flies forward and hits the frizzen. This makes a bunch of sparks. The frizzen flies open and the sparks go down into a little pan full of powder. The powder catches fire. The fire goes through a little hole in the side of the pan and into the gun barrel. There is more powder inside the gun barrel. When the fire hits the powder, it explodes and pushes the bullet out the end of the barrel and at your target.
This all happens very fast. You get a flash, a loud BOOM, lots of smoke, and the thing you were aiming at now hopefully has a BIG hole in it.
There are many different kinds of flintlocks, but most people had one of three different types:
External view of the flintlock
Pistol
A pistol was usually the best weapon for a pirate to carry. A pirate could shoot it with one hand, and it was small enough that he could carry several. The bad thing about them was there was only one shot, and they were not very accurate. A lot of them had a brass cap on the butt end, so after a pistol was fired, it could be turned around to make a good impression on people (used as a club).
Musket and Long Gun
A musket had a long barrel like a modern rifle, but the inside of the barrel was smooth (unlike the spiral inside a modern rifle barrel). Pistols were only accurate to ten yards. Muskets were accurate up to one hundred yards! The long barrel meant it took two hands to fire, and it was a lot harder to carry than a pistol, but it was great for shooting someone who was far away.
Blunderbuss
The blunderbuss was the shotgun of the period. The name comes from the Dutch donderbuss, which means “thunder gun.” The end of the barrel flares out like a funnel or trumpet. Pirates could pour lead pellets, rocks, broken glass, or just about anything small into the barrel, and then fire it at someone. It was a nasty weapon. It was only accurate up to twenty yards, but within that range, it was deadly. Nobody wanted to be on the front end of a blunderbuss.
Cap’n Michael says:
Remember—a flintlock is NOT a device to keep your flint from being stolen.
Land of the Freebooters
In the late 1600s, pirates in the New World were looking for new havens to sell their plunder, to relax, and to repair their ships. The pirate ports of Tortuga and Jamaica were getting “civilized,” and pirates were no longer welcomed.
At the same time, American colonists were paying very high prices for trade goods from England. The laws required they only buy from and sell to British merchants. They weren’t allowed to trade with merchants from other countries to get better prices. On top of the high prices set by the merchants, lots of taxes and tariffs were added. It was “highway robbery” for the colonists!
To get around the high prices, the American colonists often welcomed trade with smugglers and pirates. In fact, they preferred to deal with pirates. The pirates sold their ill-gotten goods cheaper than the smugglers. And while in port, the pirates were big spenders. The shopkeepers and tavern owners got richer whenever the pirates were around.
The governors of some American colonies invited the pirates to use their ports and harbors. Some governors accepted bribes to give the pirates free run of their seaports. In places like Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and the Carolinas, pirates had safe places where they could fix their ships, find new crewmen, and sell their goods when they returned to port.
Pirates in rich gaudy silks walked the streets of New York City. They were welcomed in the city. True, piracy was still officially illegal, but gold and silver given to officials caused them to look the other way when pirate ships sailed into New York harbor and crates of stolen goods were unloaded onto the docks. The local merchants lined up to buy the plunder. Prices were MUCH better than buying the lawful goods brought from England.
In his official reports to England, Governor Benjamin Fletcher wrote of how he was getting rid of the pirates in New York. At the same time, he accepted bribes from pirates and was good friends with at least one of them—Thomas Tew.
In time, the welcome mat for pirates was removed as England replaced corrupt pirate-loving governors with more law-abiding ones. In 1698, Fletcher was called back to England in disgrace. At the same time, the British navy stepped up the patrols that were looking for ships smuggling goods.
Many of the pirates moved on to new retreats.
Cap’n Michael says:
Arrr...I always knew that politicians were pirates at heart.
Pirates, Patriots, or Mobsters
After the end of the “Golden Age of Piracy” (1650s–1720s), most pirates decided it was better to earn an honest living as privateers. With plenty of wars going on during this time, there were lots of opportunities to get some loot through privateering. Plus, the British Navy was patrolling more heavily, making it much riskier for pirates. Piracy had almost died out in the Caribbean and American waters after the 1720s.
Then, in the early 1800s, there was another little flurry of piracy. The American Revolution was over and a new nation had been formed, one that did not have much of a navy to patrol her waters. Soon, Spanish colonies in Central and South America were following the example of the United States by declaring independence from Spain. All of this turmoil and change created opportunities for those who weren’t too fussy about how they made a living. Around the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, there were many smugglers, privateers, and pirates. It was often hard to tell the good guy from the bad.
The Brothers Lafitte
Into this mix came the Lafitte brothers, Pierre and Jean. To the citizens of New Orleans, the Lafittes were “Robin Hoods” of the swamps. They used the swamps to smuggle things in through the “back door” of New Orleans rather than through the “front door” of the Mississippi River. Their swampy kingdom was called Barataria.
In many ways, the Lafittes were the original American mobsters. If you wanted something and weren’t too choosy about where it came from, they were the ones to see. They smuggled goods difficult to get through legal sources, often at much better prices. When it was made illegal to import slaves to the United States from other countries, plantation owners had a hard time getting enough slaves. Jean and Pierre were happy to help. They smuggled in slaves from the Caribbean Islands.
Pierre, being the older brother, probably made most of the business decisions. He lived in New Orleans and met with the business people there. Jean was younger, more handsome, and took more risks than Pierre (though many of the stories about Jean were really things Pierre did). Jean traveled between New Orleans and their headquarters on the islands of Grand Isle and Grand Terre, where he could oversee their business. These neighboring islands were on the coast just west of the mouth of the Mississippi River. This is where they kept most of the smuggled goods and slaves, guarded by their trusty men, the Baratarians. They also had warehouses in New Orleans itself.
Jean was often seen in the streets and parlors of New Orleans, and many times was a guest of the wealthy citizens. He was said to be quite a dashing gentleman, very handsome and very admired by the ladies. Yet, to the new American government, he was nothing but a bandit and a pirate.
Because of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, New Orleans became part of the United States. The m
any French and Spanish residents of New Orleans had to accept a new and, to them, foreign government. In fact, most people in New Orleans did not even speak English. They resented these upstart Americans who were imposing new laws on them.
Name: Jean Lafitte
Dates: Born ca. 1778 and died ca. 1823 (or possibly later)
Country: France and Louisiana, United States
Ship: The Lafittes had many ships, often a small fleet, but the best known were the privateer La Diligente, the brig Dorada, Amiable Maria, The Pride, and the Presidente (Petit Milan).
Flag: Before 1810, the flag of a French privateer; after 1810, the flag of Cartagena (Colombia), claiming he had a commissions as a privateer. Lafitte was also said to have flown a solid blood-red flag, and the yellow, blue, and red tri-color of Venezuela when he moved to Galveston.
Best known for: His life as a privateer and for helping win the Battle of New Orleans, thus saving the city from British invasion.
Turnabout’s Fair Play
