#Also even though it's a land expedition they actually spend most of it sailing on rafts down a river. ok.

[charlesemersonwinchesteriii]

The final song on the Fitzjames playlist is from the soundtrack of the film Aguirre, the Wrath of God, a movie about a group of colonialist soldiers (Spanish conquistadors) invading an environment hostile to them (the Amazon rainforest) in search of a source of wealth for their empire that does not actually exist (the city of El Dorado) who experience a mutiny, murder an innocent indigenous family, and finally go insane and starve to death.

[seabreeze2022]

Grytviken, South Georgia Island. Dec. 24-26, 2024. Part 4.

Anytime we were within sight of land. Penguins and fur seals frolicked around the ship. Here is an action shot of a penguin shooting out of the water and about to reenter.

After leaving Port Stanley, we spend two days at sea traveling to South Georgia Island. The Captain opened up the bridge for guests to see. We attend multiple lectures each day to kill the time.

We do another bio-security check of our outer clothes during sea days. Here Expedition guide Giuliano, from Peru, double checks our gear. We will have a make or break inspection by the South Georgia Official when we get to Grytviken. If they find a few to many deviations we will not be allowed to land. The future of this ship coming back this season is also in jeopardy. While we are responsible for our clothes, the expedition guides are deep cleaning all 150 pairs of our boots in the mud room.

Nancy enjoying the hot tub after her sauna.

One afternoon there was a special on the aft deck of hot Asian soup. The poor server has to wear a Antarctic jacket to stay warm out here.

If you spend enough time on deck you will see Humpback whales exhaling steam (see center of photo). We could see up to 4 whales at a time a half mile away.

More hors d’oeuvres just to help get us to dinner. These are quickly followed by champagne.

Christmas eve at sea.

Fur seal welcoming us to the old Norwegian whaling station Grytviken.

As we pull in to Grytviken the Albatross Expedition ship pulls out. These ships are tightly controlled on when and where they can bring passengers.

This is Grytviken. 1.6 million whales were killed in the Southern Ocean between 1904 and 1986, this being one of the primary whaling stations. Over 100,000 Humpbacks were killed. The Humpback whale population just about collapsed in 1960’s. The population was down to 5,000 when whaling stopped. Now it is back to 135,000.

Our landing site will be to the right of the derelict ships between the blue barrels. There are three large fur seals at the site. The expedition guides had to keep them at bay. We are not allowed to get within 15 feet of the animals if possible. Sometimes they walk up to and between us. If they charge you, you throw up your arms or clap. They usually stop, then slowly back down….usually!

Here are two of the derelict whaling vessels. These carried huge harpoon cannons on the bow. They would tie up to 8 whales to the sides and tow them back for processing.

This is the museum with whale bones, harpoon guns and anchors on display in the front yard. Laying among the displays are fur seals.

Here is a large fur seal scratching an itch.

Two pups and an adult fur seal hanging out. The babies are usually crying out to be heard by their mom. It is very noisy where fur seals congregate.

Nancy walking to the Norwegian Church built in 1913. It had been prebuilt in Norway. Disassembled, then transported to Grytviken in pieces. Originally known as “The Whalers Church.” It was a Norwegian Lutheran Church.

The inside was decorated for Christmas. The front door was propped open with a heavy harpoon head.

In the back left was a library complete with book check out cards. Would love to see what the actual books were. I assume many are Ships logs.

A private sailboat was tied up to the dock. A lone German sailor onboard, preparing to sail to South Africa. Temperature today is a high of 40 F, so the parkas are needed.

Juvenile King penguins still molting their feathers. They can not go swimming until all the feathers are dropped. There is a lot of squawking going on here. The white things on the ground are their feathers.

Nancy in the Grytviken cemetery. Even though there is a fence around it, the baby fur seals get under the fence and hang out. As with most early Christen cemeteries, the graves face easterly to receive the second coming of Christ. There is one grave in the back with a large headstone and it faces 90 degrees to all the others. That is the final resting place of Sir Earnest Shackleton, of Antarctic expedition fame.

There are 64 graves, mostly whalers. The earliest graves are from the sealers in the very late 1890’s. In 1982 a POW Argentine submariner, Felix Artuso, was buried here. He was shot during the Falkland invasion on a submarine in the harbor. Basically due to language differences.

Sir Earnest Shackleton’s grave. He died in South Georgia on his third expedition to the Antarctic in January, 1922. His head is towards the South Pole where his heart lies.

Nov. 2011 the ashes of Commander Frank Wild were buried to the right of Shackleton’s grave. The inscription is, “Frank Wild 1873-1939, Shackleton’s right hand man.” Wild died two weeks before WW2 broke out. His ashes were lost until recovered in a crypt in Johannesburg, by an author writing a book about him.

Talking to some of our ship’s officers they talk about visiting these two graves as often as they can, to pay their respects to such legendary seafarers.

Fur Seal pups are everywhere.

As are King Penguin juveniles. You can see the white feathers on the grass where they have molted.

These are the tips of the Harpoons. The modern Harpoon gun was invented in 1864 by the Norwegian Svend Foyn. These tips would have a grenade between it and the shaft. On impact a glass vile of sulfuric acid would shatter and set off the grenade.

This is where the blubber would be boiled down. The whalers could completely carve up a 40 foot whale on the slipway in 20 minutes.

We wade in the water to loosen any bio matter from our boots. Then the Expedition guides scrub the bottom of our boots before we board the zodiac. Unfortunately we did observe several dead elephant and fur seals. Which emphasizes the importance of the bio security measures.

Back to the ship. This was one of the top two places we stepped ashore. Mostly because of the associated history. It was also our first time walking around the penguins and seals.

[clydegnightsknightnightschool]

Sad Balance/Graduation crossover where...

In the early years of their expeditions across time and planes, the team lands in this relatively safe looking world. Standard monsters, heroes abound, a love of accounting- everything seems pretty normal. They decide to scout for the light after watching it fall deep, deep into the wilderness, far from society and any living soul.

They split up into teams with Magnus and Merle heading straight for where they’ve triangulated it to be. And what they find at the end is exactly what they’re looking for, the light- but also something else that is now using the objective of their entire mission as a comfortable bed to sleep on.

The creature’s hair looks wildly grown out- due to the light’s magnificent power of growth, mushrooms can be seen sprouting from little spots on his head, breaking through the mess of mane. They rustle in their sleep, but does not awaken. Even after Magnus picks both of them up, and Merle begs to keep their sleepy little friend.

Flash forward to the Starblaster. With the light in their possession, the crew is free to spend the year as they please. It also allows them to figure out what to do with the little Firbolg friend Merle has decided to take care of (“What, I’m a nature guy! He’s all forest-y, I’m all save the trees kinda deal- look he’s even got mushrooms in his hair!”).

The team decides to look for the little firbolg’s family or clan, as Barry mentioned they would probably have one. During the scouting and search, each member of the team gets a little bit closer with their new guest. Magnus watches as they pick up boulders like nothing and excitedly begins training exercises with them. A firbolg’s gotta get big and strong right?

Davenport catches them curiously trying to steer the ship. Thankfully it is fully anchored and parked, but he finds it secretly endearing that this creature was drawn to his passion. He gives the firbolg a captains hat and makes sound effects while the little one pretends to sail. Lup walks in on this and Davenport swears her to secrecy.

Speaking of Lup, the twins are having a bit of an argument over which type of ingredient to put in the crew’s dinner that night. As they passive aggressively insist on their own ingredients, their little guest simply (and accidentally) adds their own spin on it. A couple of spices, some thrown in garlic chunks. Taako nearly punts the child off the ship, but not before tasting the stew. It’s absolutely fucking delicious and the firbolg becomes honorary chef. Taako secretly loves when he can give the little one experimental snacks he’s developing. They love it as well.

Barry and the firbolg dont spend too much time together, with him locked away in those early years trying to study the light. Though there is an instance where Barry finds that he slept in the lab (again) after a long night of research and there appears to be something...fuzzy in his arms. Merle has apparently lost track of the little one who had subsequently wandered into the lab and into a sleeping Barry’s arms. They have a quiet understanding with one another.

Lucretia too is rather kept to herself, locked away in her room. Though because of their new friend needing to be documented, she watches them toddle around the ship, following where they go, studying and observing. That is until the firbolg trips and nearly falls down the stairs. Lucretia catches them, dropping her pen and notebook and holding the little one in her arms. For a moment she looks around, rather then nose to page, and she laughs.

But the most important member of IPRE has to be Merle. Merle who feeds the firbolg every day (it’s actually a bit of a group effort), who finds him clothes to wear and begins teaching him the alphabet. Merle who talks about Pan and his religion and there’s no pressure but you seem like a sort of nature guy y’know? Merle who talks about how everyone should just share and be kind and forget about possessions. Merle who just gives off love and care and joy.

Merle decides to call the firbolg, Baby.

And when the storm clouds gather, and the wind picks up, and the eyes are upon them- the crew knows it’s time to go. They pack up, say they’re goodbyes, and head off into the sky with Baby sleeping away in the little nest of leaves and moss that Merle made for them.

Now, in the early years...the IPRE crew weren’t aware of the rules like we are now. Griffin specifically said they have tried to take others with them, but in the end- they vanish. And when the crew enters the next cycle, they don’t find Baby on the moss. They don’t find their little firbolg running around, filling the ship with a exciting and warm presence. There is no one. And they mourn the loss of their Baby.

And far away, a firbolg without a name any longer sleeps, waking up in the morning to find no one. Gone. And with no explanation.

Years later, in a new life and on the first day of school- we find a large mass talking to two of their roommates. They can’t remember a name, they don’t prefer it actually. What are names really? But what they do know and share is something the firbolg doesn’t like to think about. Like a stone in their throat traveling down to settle at the bottom of their stomach. They tread lightly around the thoughts as they begin to explain to their new roommates-

“I...I have no clan. I have no clan.”

-

This went on for so much longer then I originally intended but if you made it to here thanks for reading!

[trickstercaptain]

DMTNT ALTERATIONS circa 2020 edition

okay okay okay so i’ve managed to consolidate this into four separate parts that deal primarily with Jack in DMTNT ( and, frankly, that’s enough to deal with without me going into my issues with every other character and plot decision lmao ). I’m still not overly fond of the direction they took his character in this movie ( because there were 293243 other more interesting routes to take ) but this is me making it workable because if you fix Jack in this movie you immediately solve a number of the problems with it imo. a lot of this hasn’t really changed from the original posts i made on the old blog back when the film first came out, i’ve just consolidated it in order to move it over and hopefully make it easier to read.

also, particularly when it comes to the continuity section, this is just my personal take on it. I don’t expect any of my partners to adhere to the timeline etc, this is just how I’m choosing to make sense of it:

CONTINUITY WITH OST & THE TRILOGY

Jack and Henry KNOW each other. Jack was a sporadic presence in the young boy’s early life and became a surrogate father to him in Will’s absence ( but never did he seek to replace Will. Jack was always the one telling Henry stories about his father ). Therefore, when Henry receives the message from Salazar to find Jack, and he encounters Jack in that jail cell, the two of them already have a strong relationship and rapport. This also means that Jack is in favour of using the trident not only to defeat Salazar, but to free Will from the Dutchman’s curse.

Post-AWE: Jack briefly meets Margaret Smyth during this post-AWE period, because Carina is the same age as Henry in the novelisation ( they’re both nineteen ). this is also around about the time that she’s conceived and later left in an orphanage by Hector. this is also why I lean towards the headcanon that Jack and Barbossa spent more time together leading this joint crew than is implied right at the end of AWE, and therefore Jack does not immediately lose the Pearl following the third movie.

Pre-OST: during the time between AWE and OST, Jack would have been pirating, regularly ( ish ) visiting Elizabeth and Henry on Shipwreck Cove but, most importantly, looking for the Fountain of Youth. he does eventually find it – or at least locates the caves past Whitecap Bay, hence why he is in a position to lead an expedition there during the fourth movie – but he does not know of the ritual at this point, nor does he actually see the fountain himself.

The events of OST take place seven years after AWE.

The events of DMTNT take place twelve years after OST, meaning that is the length of time in which the Black Pearl has been locked away in bottle-form.

To explain away Jack being in his late fifties at this point yet looking and acting like a man no older than his late forties, even though he doesn’t drink from the Fountain himself in OST, some of the youthful properties of the water rub off on him and slow his ageing process after this point. Jack wonders at whether he has somehow unlocked the secret of effective immortality.

CHARACTERISATION

First things first, Jack is not the useless drunk jester that he is for the vast majority of this movie. He does not make lewd comments about Elizabeth or act as if he does not care about the Turners, nor does he lack the intelligence and wit he possesses in the other four movies.

He is depressed at the very beginning of the film, which results from a curse placed on him by Shansa at Barbossa's request to 'curse his enemies.' This curse is placed on him around a year or two before the events of DMTNT, and immediately hampers his cultivated legend by causing repeated bad luck and disaster at every turn.

Every attempt he makes at getting the Black Pearl out of the bottle or tracking Barbossa down with the intention of using his sword to do so ( in the years since OST I refuse to believe that thought does not cross Jack's mind ) ends in failure. He attempts to barter and scheme for another ship and instead ends up with the Dying Gull, which is so unseaworthy that it strands Jack and his crew on the island of Saint Martin.

Jack has spent roughly six months on Saint Martin prior to the events of DMTNT, and his grand plan to secure passage off of it is to steal from the bank ( with the aid of the mayor's wife, Francis, with whom he is having an affair and intends to accompany him ) and use the funds to refit the Dying Gull and make her seaworthy again.

I am also stating right here that Jack does not demand tribute of his crew following this failed bank robbery and, when it comes to his execution scene, Gibbs does not have to be paid to come and rescue him. That's nonsense I want nothing to do with, thank you.

When that ends in failure, Jack, in a moment of desperation and amplified by the effects of Shansa's curse, gives away his compass for another drink. For a fleeting moment, he gives it away with no intention of getting it back, and that is all the compass needs to lash out and free Salazar.

The compass' reaction is the first moment of realisation for Jack of how far he has sunk in the last couple of years. When Henry reaches him with Salazar's warning, he actually sits up and takes notice and, for the rest of the film, is the same Jack we know and love and actually cares about seeing Henry reunited with his father. 

With the trident of Poseidon destroyed, Shansa's curse is lifted and Jack is once again free to do as he pleases.

Jack goes with Henry and Carina on land where they are united with Will at the end of the movie.

THE COMPASS

To explain away that Jack has given away his compass MULTIPLE times throughout the trilogy without any serious repercussions such as... whatever the Devil's Triangle is, I'll firstly note that  each time he has bartered it away to somebody, the intention on his part has never been permanent. He has always intended to get it back somehow or use the bartering away to further his own ends, and through whatever laws of magic or physics has always obtained it again.

The difference in DMTNT is that Jack gives it away with no such intention, and that is what constitutes as betraying it. Jack and the compass are inextricably linked and have been ever since he was given it by Tia Dalma as a child: the compass is a powerful enough magical artefact in my opinion to have a consciousness or soul of some kind, in the same way that the Black Pearl is implied to have. In betraying it, the compass is spurred to react.

I don't like the idea that the compass caused Salazar to be trapped inside of the Devil's Triangle ( since Salazar and his crew went down as they entered -- that had nothing to do with the compass ), but instead I interpret that freeing Salazar is the compass' reaction to being betrayed. It lashes out and causes the earthquake in order to punish Jack and, on some level, spur him on to restore his reputation and break his own curse that's plaguing him.

THE FLASHBACK

tl;dr; i actually don’t mind this scene in most of its execution, but this is me fitting it into the wider canon of TPOF and my own headcanons that predate this movie. this is also me fitting it into POTC’s own canon.

The ship Jack is on is NOT the Wicked Wench. Nor is he made captain of it through his actions against Captain Salazar. Instead, he is a sometimes crewman on an unspecified ship sailing from Shipwreck Cove and comes up against the Silent Mary in battle. Jack's actions and quick thinking save the lives of those on his ship and others trying to escape the carnage.

Jack does not gain his 'sparrow' moniker from Captain Salazar. Firstly, there is no plausible way for Jack to overhear or know that Salazar refers to him as a sparrow given that they do not say a single word to each other ( other than Jack shouting in the crow's nest ) and Salazar spends the next several decades trapped inside of the Devil's Triangle, and secondly my own interpretation is that Jack obtains his last name from his mother.

Jack did not receive his compass from the captain of the ship he's on in the flashback, but from Tia Dalma as per trilogy canon. He also does not receive pieces of his iconic costume from the crew as tribute.

Jack did not realise that Salazar would end up trapped inside the Triangle. He saw the ship get destroyed by the rocks and go down once it entered the cavern and so Jack assumed, for the next forty years, that he’d killed both Salazar and the rest of his crew. 

Over the next forty years, the Devil’s Triangle became a place of legend ( enough for Henry to be able to recognise it ). It was rumoured that any ship who strayed too close would disappear without trace ( much like the Bermuda Triangle myth ). Jack eventually hears about the rumours but thinks nothing of them, and certainly doesn’t put two and two together that his compass could potentially lead to Salazar’s escape.

[the-quiet-winds]

Integrity, Faith, and Crocodile Tears (part three)

well... i don’t have much to say other than i love this part the most ( @ichlugebulletsandcornnuts and i went off on it)

[part one] - [part two]

[Part 3: Look Me in the Eyes, Tell Me What You See]

it’s the middle of the night when katherine is awoken roughly by the door to her cabin being thrown open.

“wake up, katherine,” the duke says, sounding incredibly cheerful. “we’ve arrived at your new home.”

it feels like all the oxygen has been sucked out of katherine’s body at those words. she’s had the whole journey to get used to it, but the reality of actually landing in spain makes the weight of the situation hit her hard. it feels like eight different emotions rush into her at once, and none of them are good. she manages about two seconds before she blacks out, and she just about sees the duke’s face of alarm before everything goes dark.

the duke grabs her arms before she collapses on the floor. 

“katherine?” he says, but his tone is not genuine. if his son’s betrothed was prone to fainting spells during times of excitement, then that could provide an issue when heirs were to be considered. 

“katherine!” he demands again, shaking her roughly. he pulls one hand back and slaps her again. “katherine!”

katherine’s eyelids flutter for a second, then close again. the duke delivers a second slap but the girl is completely unresponsive and he curses.

he thinks it’s possible katherine had become ill on the voyage, which was worrying. he couldn’t have her bringing back some illness and giving it to his son and only heir. he’d have to get her checked out by a doctor before they went back to the duke’s estate. it would delay their journey by a day, unfortunately, but the duke isn’t worried. jane would never be able to get past the Spanish port, not with every English ship being stopped and screened for her.

the duke takes katherine to the most trusted doctor in madrid, a man by the name of javier. 

“who is this child?” javier asks as he looks over katherine, who was mostly still unconscious. 

the duke lies through his teeth. “a visitor for my son, her name is katherine. from england.”

“an english girl,” javier muses. “what kind of business could an english girl so young have with your son?”

the duke thinks for a brief moment, before finally settling on “she will be his companion. playmates.” it wasn’t untrue, he rationalises. while the two would, technically, be married, until they are of age they would not be treated as such. they will sleep in different wings of the house, have different tutors (his son was learning as much as he could, and while katherine needed to learn Spanish, the rest of her studies would be in the things she needed to know to run a household when she grew up) and treat each other as nothing more than friends. the early marriage was merely a precaution to make sure jane could not take katherine back if she somehow made it past the dock.

“well, she does not seem to have any contagious diseases,” javier says once he finishes the check. “she is dehydrated though. if she develops a fever then it could be bad news.”

ferdinand is relieved to hear this - the marriage could still happen. jane wouldn’t be able to take katherine back to england. there’s no way she’d make it through the port, let alone get to katherine. 

“gracias, javier,” he says with a very shark-like grin.

at the port, rigid checks were in place for every english ship that arrived. the german ship that had just arrived, however, was passed over and the passengers allowed to disembark. jane’s conspicuous blonde hair was tucked under a headpiece and she did her best to blend in with the crowd as she made her way out of the port and into the town. it was easy to find out information about the wedding; a local town crier was already spreading the news and was happy to tell jane everything she needed to know.

it worried her, the news that the wedding was supposed to be tomorrow, the chapel only opening one hour before the ceremony was to commence. 

that night, her heart hurts as she thinks of katherine, alone and scared without even knowing jane was set to arrive, to save her again. she tries to find comfort in the thought that at this time tomorrow night, she and katherine will be back on anna’s ship, on a breakaway back to england, but instead she sees all the ways it goes wrong. 

---

after all the wedding preparations were concluded for the day, katherine lays on her bed, staring at the ceiling, trying not to cry again. 

“sir,” she hears a guard address the duke outside her room, “we have just searched the last english ship in the registry, and there is no sign of jane seymour.”

the duke’s reply sounds surprised, but pleased. “good. i expected her to at least try, but I suppose she must have cared less than she said.”

the words go to katherine’s heart like a knife and she can’t stop the tears from welling up in her eyes. jane had abandoned her. the one person katherine had thought ever loved her, and she’d left katherine here, alone and afraid.

the duke enters her room a moment later and, upon seeing her tears, can’t help but twist the knife a bit more, while also trying to make himself seem sympathetic. a brilliant plan, really. 

he sits down on the edge of her bed, looking at her. “i guess you’ve heard,” he says gently. the duke inches closer, trying to keep himself seeming as kind as possible, even though seeing katherine break right before his eyes made him feel like this whole thing may not have been a complete waste. “i can promise you, katherine, you won’t be alone again.” in a faux-soothing gesture, he reaches out and pats one of her shoulders. “you won’t be betrayed again.”

katherine wants to shrink away from the touch, to scream and yell and to let out all the pain and anguish she’s feeling, but she’s so distraught she can’t even move. her tears come out in choked, wheezing sobs and the duke pretends to look sympathetically down at her.

“don’t worry, katherine. tomorrow you’ll have a new family, and you’ll always have a home with us.”

those words, ‘family’ and ‘home’ they used to mean jane. jane was her family. jane was her home. 

but jane didn’t want her anymore. or she would have come. 

katherine can’t bring herself to speak, to do anything more than simply lay and cry. she feels her heart shattering in her chest as he softly croons promises of a family, home, love, all pretty words she can’t see the malice behind.

in the morning, the chapel is all prepared for the relatively simple wedding; considering the short notice there wasn’t much that could be done. some attendants do their best to help katherine get ready as she continues to be mostly unresponsive, only moving when told to and spending most of her time staring blankly ahead. the emotion of a night spent crying had drained her almost completely.

she enters the chapel in her little white gown, eyes glazing over nameless faces, most of which are gushing in spanish, probably about how ‘cute’ she looked. 

the pastor begins to drone in english about the god-given responsibility eduardo and katherine are to have to spain, about their blossoming love, everything. 

“if anyone objects to this union under duke ferdinand of madrid, speak now or forever hold your peace.”

the room is quiet for an agonizing moment, katherine’s unresponsive mind pleads for someone, anyone, to save her. 

there’s a quiet murmur of gasps as someone obviously stands. 

“i do.”

something suddenly clicks in katherine’s mind. she knows that voice, could recognise it anywhere. she drops the small bouquet of flowers she’d been given to hold and turns, just in time to see a veiled figure stepping out into the aisle. she rips the veil off to reveal jane, and katherine can’t contain herself any more.

she runs as fast as she can towards jane who, when she reaches her, lifts her off her feet in a tight hug. katherine clings to jane, gripping on tightly with her arms and legs as jane holds her close, burying her face in jane’s shoulder.

“you did come after me,” is all she manages before the tears overwhelm her.

the audience sees it as a touching yet somewhat confusing moment, but all the duke can see is red. 

“guards!” he yells, voice strong and ringing and face purple. “seize them!”

jane has barely set katherine down before taking her hand and sprinting out of the chapel.

two german sailors had agreed to wait outside on hired horses, and jane quickly passes katherine up to one who takes off immediately. the other helps jane onto the back of his horse before they follow as quickly as they can. the duke’s horses were still stabled and the guards could not catch up on foot, and jane feels a wave of relief as the shouting from the chapel gets quieter and quieter. they would not be safe though, not until they were out at sea; jane knows the duke and his men would be following as soon as they could.

the horse reaches the dock as the other sailor is already dismounting and lifting katherine down from the horse. when jane’s feet touch the ground she grabs katherine’s hand and leads her onto the waiting boat, followed by the two sailors.

the sailors hastily untie the ship and let out the sails, and jane can hear the thundering of horses’ hooves pull to a stop on the main dock of the harbor, as the duke’s guards, led by the duke himself, watch jane and katherine sail away.

jane watches quite forlornly as they immediately make their way to the nearest royal ship and prepare for their own expedition. 

in the meantime, however, jane looks down at the small girl on the deck, dressed in white and hair pulled up in an elaborate series of plaits, face red and still teary-eyed. 

jane kneels down before her. “hi, love,” she says softly, deciding to let katherine make whatever move she wanted to.

“he said you didn’t come after us,” katherine mumbles very quietly, voice thick with tears. “but you did.”

“i did,” jane repeats softly. “i’d never have left you with him, love, i promise. you’re my daughter.” she doesn’t quite reach out, not wanting to push katherine, but she does open her arms slightly just in case. “you’re my little seymour, and i’d never leave you behind.”

katherine gives a sniffle and, without much other thought, throws herself forward into jane’s arms. 

“your little seymour,” she repeats with a heavy voice into jane’s shoulder. 

“that’s right, my love. seymours are strong, they love a lot, and,” jane pulls back to look her little girl in her teary, red eyes, “they never abandon each other. ever.”

it takes katherine not quite three seconds of looking into jane’s eyes to throw herself back into her arms.

“i was so scared,” she chokes out desperately, clinging to jane with all her might. jane pulls katherine into her lap and lets the little girl sob against her, one hand gently untangling katherine’s hair from her intricate plaits and running soothing fingers through the soft waves.

“everything’s okay, now,” jane murmurs softly. “mama’s here, kat.”

“mama,” she pleads. her voice is a rough and coarse whisper, and it nearly makes jane wince. 

“i’m here, love, i’m here.”

katherine’s small hands clutch at her back as tries to hold jane tighter. “he said you weren’t coming...you didn’t care.”

“he was so wrong, love. i’m here now.”

katherine pulls back slightly and looks at jane. “is he coming after us?” she asks, very timid and dry afraid.

jane can’t lie to katherine, as much as she’d hate to make katherine worry any more.

“he might be,” she confesses, and katherine makes a terrified whimper. “but the king is on our side, love. he won’t even let the ship land, and i’m going to keep you safe. this time he won’t get you, love. i promise you.”

katherine lets out a scared, quiet little noise. jane pulls her back into her lap and runs soothing fingers through her hair, placing repetitive small kisses along her forehead and her temple. “he won’t touch you, ever again,” jane whispers fiercely. “mama will protect you.”

there’s a few moments of quiet, then katherine speaks again, voice tiny and fragile.

“i want to go home, mama.”

“we’re going home now, love,” jane says softly. “soon we’ll both be home and safe. i’ll keep you safe,” she repeats, kissing katherine’s forehead one more time.

by the time night comes, katherine still holds onto jane like they could be ripped apart at any second. 

“do you want to stay with me tonight, love?” jane offers, and katherine looks at her with those big and hopeful eyes. 

“please,” is all she can manage. 

after the emotionally taxing day they had, katherine can’t even make her legs work, and jane manages to carry her to her cabin, much bigger than the one katherine had been forced to stay in on the trip to spain.

once they’re both ready for bed katherine immediately curls up against jane, seeking the security and comfort of being safely tucked under her mum’s arm.

when katherine has settled down, jane starts to sing. she sings a soft, gentle lullaby, hoping to soothe her little girl enough for her to sleep soundly until the morning.

katherine smiles slightly in recognition of the tune, unconsciously curling further into her mother’s arms. 

“love you mama,” she whispers.

“and i love you too, my little seymour,” she says, giving katherine a kiss on her head. “always and forever, i’ll keep you safe. and i’ll love you.”

it doesn’t take long for katherine to drift off to sleep, finally feeling safe after almost two weeks of terror and fear. jane says awake for just a little bit longer to make sure katherine doesn’t wake up again.

when she’s pretty sure katherine is deep in sleep, she presses one more kiss to the top of katherine’s head.

“sweet dreams, my little seymour.”

———————————————————————————————————–

tag list: @percabeth15 @kats-seymour @qualquercoisa945 @jane-fucking-seymour @a-slightly-cracked-egg @justqueentingz @annabanana2401 @wolfies-chew-toy @broad-way-13 @tvandmusicals @lailaliquorice @aimieallenatkinson @sweet-child-why03 @gaylinda-of-the-upper-uplands @funky-lesbians @thinkaboutitmaybe @hansholbeingoesaroundzeworld @anaamess @beeskneeshuh @prick-up-ur-ears @theartoflazy @justqueentwo @brother-orion @paleshadowofadragon @lafemmestars @beautifulashes17 @jarneiarichardnxel @idkimbadwithusernamesandstuff @sixcago @mixer1323 @boleynssixthfinger @aimieallen @elphiesdance @boleynthebunny @krystalhuntress @lupin-loves-chocolate @bellacardoza16

[lily-of-the-eyrie]

🔍💭 Study: Lawrence Washington

Here I present my 4000-word eulogy essay on what an accomplished, dedicated member of the Order my man Lawrence had been, because he deserves to have his life’s work known for more than what Birch dissed it for, dammit.

Meet the man whose work laid the foundation on which our one and only 🎉Colonial Rite🎉 was built!

◈ Contents ◈

Timeline

Joining the Order 　How did he start his Templar career?

Building a Base 　What did he manage to do in the colonies?

The Virginian Rite 　A portrait of the proto-Colonial Rite in 1750

Challenges to the Search 　12 years, and still no Grand Temple―what’s the holdup?

Retrieving the Relics 　Why look for the Precursor box and manuscript in the West Indies?

The Other Washington 　“A bright spot in a troubled land”

Lawrence the Templar 　A summary of Lawrence’s character

✠ Lawrence Washington (1718-1752) ✠

☙ Timeline ☙

1718 - Born to a planter family in Virginia 1729 - Went to study in England 1730s - Inducted into the Templar Order, and quickly rose to the rank of Master Templar 1738 - Completed his education, and went back to Virginia 1739 - War of Jenkins' Ear broke out between Britain and Spain; Lawrence joined the Virginia militia and joined in the fighting in the West Indies 1742 - Returned home, and obtained a commission for the post of militia commander, with the rank of Major 1743 - Married Anne Fairfax, daughter of William Fairfax, an influential leading figure in the local society 1744 - Elected to the local parliament 1746 - Sent a letter to Gist talking about creating a front company to double as a Templar communications network, and also about starting a correspondence with William Johnson in New York. Achilles established the Colonial Brotherhood in this year as well 1750 - Received a letter from Birch notifying him of Monro's transfer Sep 28, 1751 - Sailed from Virginia to Barbados; arrived on Nov 3 Nov 21, 1751 - Port-au-Prince earthquake; after interrogating a member of the Haitian Brotherhood, he stole the Precursor box and manuscript from the local Assassin Mentor's camp July 26, 1752 - Passed away at his home in Mount Vernon

☙ Joining the Order ☙ How did he start his Templar career?

　According to what we can glean from his database entry, Lawrence had quite an impressive start to his life as a Templar. Scouted out during his school years in England by none other than the Grand Master himself, he proved to be so competent that, within a few short years, he was promoted to Master Templar at 20. This route of advancement is comparable to that of Madeleine de L'Isle of the Louisiana Rite, who was inducted into the Order at 15 years old, and was a Master Templar at 19; the promotion was, in the words of Birch's good friend John Harrison, well-deserved because she had "proven herself ruthless and capable" in serving the Order's interests in her area (✉️“Savannah”, 1751). Lawrence may have followed a similar course, and must have done his work equally well, because at the end of it, Birch had enough faith in the young Templar to entrust him with his one great dream: finding the Grand Temple spoken about in Edward Kenway's journal.

　While the exact motives behind Birch's recruitment weren't directly stated, it can be inferred; Liam mentioned that Lawrence "had great ambitions that the Templars helped fulfill" [Rogue Seq.1-3, “Tinker Sailor Soldier Spy”], while Birch, judging by the contents of his parting letter to the Master Templar returning home, wanted someone to serve as his "eyes and ears in the New World" and find the Temple for him (✉️“Lawrence of America”, 1738). The Washingtons' status as a relatively well-established family in Virginia is probably a nice bonus to add to the requirements; it would, at the very least, give him something to work with compared to his fellow brethren in the British Rite, whose centers of power may have been more tied to the isles and are therefore more useful at home than abroad.

　And so, armed with a grand mission and some resources to get started on it, Lawrence returned home to Virginia in 1738.

☙ Building a Base ☙ What did he manage to do in the colonies?

　Now we all know how this story ended―Lawrence would never find the Grand Temple, which the Order only managed to find in 1754, 2 years after his death. But he didn't spend his entire lifetime just sitting on his thumbs, and since Rogue didn't explicitly cover much of what he did aside from the very last bit, we're going to go over his other accomplishments here.

　Starting from the beginning, the first notable thing in Lawrence's New World ventures surprisingly didn't involve the actual colonies he was presumably supposed to comb over. In 1739, not one year after his return home, the War of Jenkins' Ear broke out between Britain and Spain, so away he went again in 1740, only this time it's to join the army as part of the Virginian militia and fight in the West Indies.

　Why he would suddenly drop his Precursor search in Virginia to go to the Caribbean, an area that is technically still part of the New World but probably not in his intended searching range, is a mystery. On top of the usual risks of battle and the rampant fatal diseases colonists tend to catch in the area, he would have needed to also consider the Assassin threat there―after the death of Laureano de Torres, the Grand Master of the West Indies Rite, in 1722, the region was known to be heavily under Assassin control. Another Templar, Rafael Joaquin de Ferrer of the Louisiana Rite, was so concerned by the local Brotherhood's influence that he feared the Templars will never gain any footing there again until their enemies are eradicated (✉️“Cuban Salvage”, 1750). His visit was then a risky leap right into enemy territory on multiple levels. The database entry said nothing about the involvement of Templar business in it, but it sure has the potential to tell an interesting story if it indeed had some.

　After spending 2 years in the war, he returned to Virginia in 1742, and in the following year, got married to Anne Fairfax. The Fairfax family was one of the most prominent families in Virginia―being able to call Anne's father, William Fairfax, his father-in-law increased the amount of power Lawrence held in the colony. This new connection gave him a solid backing to help with his rise in society and also with his business ventures: he was elected a member of the local parliament a year later.

　Having secured a stable foundation of influence, he began to work on strengthening the Templar presence in the colonies. He became acquainted with Gist (and presumably Weeks) at around this time, and sent him a letter discussing the need to establish front companies to form a secure communications network for the Order in 1746 (✉️“Front Company”, 1746). In that same letter, he also urged Gist to go and introduce himself to William Johnson, who was in New York at the time, and whose government connections and close relationship with the natives could be useful in aiding the Templars in the colonies. In the meantime, Lawrence would go and influence his in-laws, the aforementioned Fairfaxes, to create the Ohio Company, one of the Templar front businesses closer to his base in Virginia. This company, which was chaired by Lawrence and his trusted associates (Including James Wardrop and Samuel Smith—more on them below), was to become an important vehicle for the Order's activities in the colonies―it allowed him to disguise the search for the Grand Temple as land surveying expeditions, such as the one to chart the Ohio area, which was led by none other than Gist himself.

☙ The Virginian Rite ☙ A portrait of the proto-Colonial Rite in 1750

　With a goal like locating a particular Precursor structure in an unfamiliar land 40 times the size of Britain, there's a lot for Lawrence to do, so it was logical of him to make gathering helpful friends a top priority. Here are the core members of his team:

Christopher Gist (1706~) 　A frontiersman and surveyor born in Baltimore, Maryland, up north from where Lawrence lived. He appears to be the Master Templar's closest, if not also oldest, associate, judging by how Lawrence's existing letters were addressed to him specifically. Given his profession, Gist would have been familiar with the lands in the area, and more than qualified to explore the ones they've yet to chart. A jolly good fellow with a penchant for outrageous storytelling and an unrivaled love of drink, he's nevertheless not very sympathetic (or even outright casually hostile) to anyone he considers an enemy. 　For all the ease in his usual disposition, though, he does have a stake in the Templars' success―displeased with the chaos and constant fighting in the unstable colonies, he believed that the accomplishment of their goals will grant peace and order to the land [Rogue Seq.3-3, “Circumstances”; Seq.5-1, “Men o' War”].

Jack Weeks (1723~) 　The Albany-born son of a couple who had escaped slavery in Virginia, Weeks was a clever, resourceful man, with a dash of cheekiness to boot. Hardy even as a young boy, he led a rough life, and was already a pickpocket active in the Albany markets at the tender age of 10. It was sometime during this part of his career that he tried picking Gist's pocket, but the explorer, catching him in the act, decided he liked his audacity enough and hired him as an errand boy. However, rather than consigning Weeks to the fate of a mere servant, he taught him various things as they traveled together, chiefly the workings of trade and how to mimic people of all kinds of standing and birth. 　A calm, level-headed man with a strategic edge, he accompanied Gist on his travels, which meant that Lawrence may have picked them up as a pair. He and Gist worked as detached associates to the Order until they were inducted by Monro in 1751.

James Wardrop (1705~) 　Born to a Templar family in the colonies, Wardrop was arguably the most sinister member of the party. Tasked with securing land and wealth for the Order, he was involved in putting together a trade network that ran from the colonies to the West Indies, work on which began in 1744; to add to that, he worked together with Gist to purchase land in and around the colonies in 1750. He was merciless with his methods when it comes to making things run the way the Templars want it to―the Assassins charged him with evicting many local tribes from their land, and for orchestrating countless massacres, which earned him the reputation of being "one of the most devious and ruthless men in the colonies" [Rogue Seq.2-2, “We the People”]. 　To add to this, he was also a shrewd, opportunistic man, who wasn't above using his position to help increase his own wealth when he got the chance to, and strove to maintain the colonies' loyalty to Britain. Despite having quite the dangerous edge, however, he was an absolute lightweight when it comes to drink, and for some reason or the other, simply could not get along with Weeks (although he seemed to fare better with Gist). 　Wardrop and his family was likely already serving the Order's interests when Lawrence called, showing how he worked on linking existing Templar groups together into a network in the colonies.

Samuel Smith (???~) 　There's very little that can be found about Smith, who probably had the shortest database entry among the whole cast. We know that he was probably born in Virginia, with some experience as a sailor. As far as Templar work is concerned, he served as treasurer in one of Lawrence's Templar front businesses, which was likely related to how he wound up as one of the Order's members. 　Unlike the rest of the team, Smith was very timid, and carried himself in a very fidgety manner (which really shows when he's standing next to the casually elegant Wardrop). He was also flighty and/or not very good at fighting―Shay, who went after him, reported that he "could barely hold his sword straight" [Rogue Seq.2-2, “We the People”]. Whatever strengths Lawrence might have seen in him, it was probably more to the desk job side, although the number of techniques he employed when trying to throw off the Assassins pursuing him by ship showed that the can hold on his own for a while on water as well, which is also worth a mention.

William Johnson (1715~) 　As New York's representative to the Iroquois, and as someone who had gained the indigenous peoples' respect by familiarizing himself with their language and customs, Johnson offered a very advantageous set of skills and connections for Lawrence and his quest to find the Grand Temple. Since he's more knowledgeable about the northern colonies, places a little too far from Lawrence's home base to work in effectively, he would've made a very handy ally―after his induction to the Order, they cooperated behind the scenes, dedicating themselves to building a Templar infrastructure in the colonies. (Johnson's appearance in Rogue is a cameo at best, since his main role is in ACIII, but this does make me wonder if the list of Templars that Birch gave Haytham on his departure from London in 1754 is the result of Lawrence & co.'s work...)

[PS. Monro was also supposed to be part of this group, but he wasn't someone Lawrence picked on his own, so let’s leave him out of this for now.]

☙ Challenges to the Search ☙ 12 years, and still no Grand Temple―what's the holdup?

　So Lawrence had been keeping himself busy with Templar work since he went back to the colonies, but to Birch, all that work was conspicuously missing the one thing he wanted most: the discovery of the Grand Temple. This one setback was apparently enough for Birch to dismiss everything else he did as insignificant, regardless of their relevance to the Temple hunt.

　To Birch's credit, it was the main mission that he tasked Lawrence with, so he had every right to be rather miffed about the unfruitful search (although I'd take this opportunity to mention that Precursor sites aren't easy to find; the Caribbean Observatory took 2 decades for the relatively established West Indies Rite to locate, for example [ACIV Seq.2-3, “Mister Walpole, I Presume?”]), but I'd also like to highlight the particular challenges that Lawrence had in particular due to the rather unique conditions under which he had to conduct that search. Aside from his obvious health issues, which must have slowed him down, the primary problems I can identify can be divided into these 2 categories: (1) the lack of an existing network, and (2) the unfortunate fact that he focused his search in the wrong area.

　Unlike Britain, where the British Rite had been around for several centuries, the colonies at the time didn't have a Rite of their own. There were a number of individual Templars who had either gone to or lived in the New World (like Lawrence's very own subordinate, James Wardrop, who was born into a Templar family there and joined the Order himself in 1720), but the first proper Colonial Rite wasn't established until Haytham's arrival in 1754.

　Judging by how Birch took the trouble of appointing Lawrence in particular to lead the Grand Temple search instead of any Templar already in the colonies in 1738, it seems that the Order's presence in the New World was still rather sparse (and it was sparse for the Assassins—enough for Achilles to be surprised when he encountered John de la Tour there in 1740 [✉️“The First Colonial Assassin”, 1740]). In addition to this, there's also the fact that Lawrence saw some necessity in building up basic Templar infrastructure through the 1740s, which he wouldn't have done if such a system was already in place. With this scarcity of usable resources at the time of his return, he couldn't have gone looking for the Grand Temple from the second he set foot in Virginia―not when he still lacked the proper tools to facilitate the search, which he'd have to put together first, even if it takes time to do so.

　The other problem was, of course, the lack of pointers about the location of the Grand Temple. Edward Kenway's journal may have specified which continent the Precursor site was on, but that's hardly helpful when much of North America was still uncharted territory for the British at the time. In addition to this, while Haytham had the Grand Temple key to at least provide a hint as to where the lock that fits it might be, the Templars still had no such hint back then. Lawrence would have had trouble just trying to determine where exactly he needed to start looking (no doubt this is related to why his oldest known friend, Gist, was a widely-traveled surveyor familiar with the lands he was to search in).

　He most likely started his hunt in Virginia itself, seeing as it's where he'd lived and where most of his connections were based. As of the time he began this search, all of the original 13 colonies had already been established, so at least he could use the British Rite's connections to help expand his operation along the continent's Atlantic seaboard. He had his eye as far up as New York, whose news he kept up with enough to hear about Johnson, who was stationed there at that point. Still, he was not limited by just British territorial limits, as seen in the establishment of the Ohio Company in 1748. This company, which he sought to use to help the Order, was made to support ventures into the Ohio region, which at the time claimed by the French as their territory. If this was where he'd focused his efforts, anyone familiar with the actual location of the Grand Temple (Turin, at the northern tip of New York state) would've noticed a big problem with the strategy: he was going in the wrong direction. With that kind of problem, it didn't matter how thoroughly he searched the land that he managed to cover―he was never going to find the Grand Temple there.

☙ Retrieving the Relics ☙ Why look for the Precursor box and manuscript in the West Indies?

　From then on, we know how the story went―Birch decided he's just about done waiting, thought that Lawrence was a disappointment, and staged an intervention by sending him some assistance in the form of the Colonel. And yet, the next time we hear from Lawrence, he's gone to Haiti and raided the local Brotherhood, which was how he got his hands on the Precursor box and manuscript.

　The question is―why?

　Of course, the obvious answer is that any Precursor relic is of interest to the Order, but his health by 1751, when he went to Barbados, had already worsened to the point that it really concerned his family and friends. He was most definitely not in a state that made it a simple matter to go down all the way to the Caribbean, a heavily Assassin-controlled area, and pull off the footwork necessary to steal First Civilization items from the Haitian Brotherhood. He could've sent someone else, if it was really pressing, and Birch's letter about Monro's transfer hadn't explicitly told him to stop looking for the Grand Temple. Why did he switch his target to the box and manuscript, in an obviously premeditated hunt, despite there being no evidence that they're directly relevant to the Temple?

　The only hint to Lawrence's motivations is tucked away in his letter to Gist about what he did in Haiti, in which he hoped that, having obtained the relics, "perhaps his leadership in the colonies will finally be recognized" (✉️“Family Vacation”, 1751). For a short line, there's a lot of weight in it―Lawrence evidently felt strongly about his authority as the leader of the Templars in the colonies, so much that he would stake his life on winning it back after Birch's scathing review of his lack of progress and subsequent interference, which I doubt Lawrence appreciated much. As such, aside from the practical reasons he might have had to retrieve the Precursor box and the manuscript, there's another personal layer to it as well.

[EDIT: After mulling it over a bit more, it occurred to me that, as of the time Lawrence went hunting for the Precursor box and manuscript, he still didn’t know if these artifacts would contribute to locating the Grand Temple. Hell, he didn’t even know what Precursor artifacts he might have gotten—the only thing he might have possibly known about the West Indies Assassins is that François Mackandal, Mentor of the Haitian Brotherhood, made a hobby out of collecting First Civilization relics (✉️”Arranged Marriage”, 1748), and that an old Precursor box may have ended up in that area following the trail Harrison picked up on in 1742 (✉️”The Manila Galleons”, 1742). He might have decided to take that leap of faith out of desperation, knowing that he’d look much better if he could find an artifact, any artifact, at this point.

Meanwhile, de Ferrer of the Louisiana Rite was also looking for the Precursor box in the Cuba area just a year before Lawrence went, but reported finding nothing and left in 1751 (✉️”Cuban Salvage”, 1750; “Chichen Itza”, 1751). Could these two events be related?]

☙ The Other Washington ☙ "A bright spot in a troubled land"

　Speaking of personal matters, despite fully committing himself to serving the Order's goals, there are certain things he'd never give up for the Templar cause. Specifically and obviously, of course, I'm referring his little brother, George Washington, who he repeatedly insisted should never, under any circumstance, get pulled into the Order’s business.

　The actual Washington brothers were also very close, so this attachment didn't just come out of nowhere―they were often together whenever it was possible for them to be, and for his part, Lawrence didn't spare any expense or effort when it comes to grabbing opportunities for his brother, whether in the form of sharing acquaintances (such as the time when he introduced the younger Washington to the influential Fairfaxes), or helping him launch a career (once in the Navy, an attempt which was thwarted by George's mother, and later as a surveyor, which was a more successful case and helped George amass a sizable wealth of his own).

　On his end, George was never too far away from Lawrence's regular non-Templar work, ready to tackle requests from his older brother. He'd often wind up using his surveying skills to either map out their holdings' borders or plots of land used for his businesses. He also helped take care of Lawrence when his health began to fail, and even after the elder Washington's death, George continued to see him as an influential and inspiring presence―he has a portrait of Lawrence hanging in his personal study at Mount Vernon, the only family portrait to get that privilege.

　Going back to Lawrence, his sentiments about his brother revealed two things―the immediately observable one being that he had a very high opinion of George, along with a good helping of protectiveness for the younger boy, and the other one being that he shows a self-deprecating awareness of the darker, less noble side of the Order's work, the "ugly truths of [their] most serious business" (✉️“Family Vacation”, 1751).

☙ Lawrence the Templar ☙ A summary of Lawrence's character

　Having been introduced when he was already on his last legs, Lawrence had a very brief on-screen presence that was largely dominated by his illness. Still, despite the shortness of both his screentime and lifespan in general, he managed to achieve a lot in terms of Templar work. While he regrettably couldn’t locate the Grand Temple himself, the effort he put into trying to find it most definitely contributed to the overall search by giving the Order more hints about its location, and it was his work that led to the creation of a solid foundation for the future Colonial Rite that Haytham would put together after his death.

　As the leader of the Templars in the colonies, he showed considerable skill at administration, managing not only his local Templar circuit, but also reaching out to the other colonies along the continent's east coast, and even expanded his reach as far south as the West Indies, a major Assassin territory at the time. He prioritized building an infrastructure to ensure the Order's survival and smooth operation in the area, both necessary in order to facilitate their search for the Grand Temple, especially after the Assassins joined the fray in the mid 1740s.

　However, he wasn't just a pencil-pusher―his account of his excursion in Haiti, where he made his way through an earthquake that rivaled Lisbon’s and stole the Precursor box and manuscript in person, showed that he was quite the efficient field worker as well. If he could manage that while already on the last stages of his illness, what he could do in better health must've been quite impressive.

　On the personal side, though merciless while carrying out the Order's work, Lawrence didn't completely lack a more human facet to his character. This showed most clearly in the soft spot he had for his brother George, but also across scattered details, such as his disgust at the Haitian Brotherhood's bloodthirsty Mentor, Mackandal, who he lambasted as a "reckless tyrant"; and, for what it's worth, Gist did remember him as "a good man", so he seemed to have had the respect of his subordinates, even if he didn't have Birch's.

　He was also ambitious, which was a trait he'd shown since a very early age. He may have been subservient to the British Grand Master until the very end, but his need to have his leadership in the colonies acknowledged suggests that he'd always aimed higher. Given his position as more or less the head of the colonial Templars, and his pride in that fact, it's not unlikely that he'd hoped to one day be a Grand Master himself―and considering he quite literally spent his life building what would become the Colonial Rite from the ground up, had he lived long enough to be one, it would have been nothing if not a well-deserved post.

[earlyandoftenpodcast]

(New Amsterdam in 1664.)

We look at the history and government of New Netherland, the Dutch colony which would become New York after its conquest by England.

>>>Direct audio link<<<

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Transcript and Sources:

Hello, and welcome to Early and Often: The History of Elections in America. Episode 17: The City on the Edge of Tomorrow.

Last time we sketched out the history of the Iroquois, a confederacy of Indian tribes living in upstate New York. Iroquois culture was changed drastically by contact with Europeans. They launched a massive war of expansion even as their numbers were being reduced tenfold by disease, until finally they fell under Western domination.

Today, we’re going to talk about the Europeans who were closest to the Iroquois in the 1600s, the Dutch in their colony of New Netherland, which stretched in between the Chesapeake and New England. This episode will draw especially from the book New Netherland: A Dutch Colony in Seventeenth-Century America by Jaap Jacobs [Yaap Yacobs], as well as The Island At The Center of the World by Russell Shorto, which is the more accessible of the two.

Our story begins in the Dutch Republic, or what is now the Netherlands. If you don’t know, the Netherlands are a low-lying country in Northern Europe, sandwiched today between Germany and Belgium. Throughout the 1500s the Netherlands were under control of the Habsburg dynasty in Spain, and so they were known as the Habsburg Netherlands. But in 1568 the Dutch revolted against their overlords, and over the course of a decades-long war, won their de facto independence.

After the Dutch broke away from Spanish rule, their society progressed rapidly. They were pioneers in banking, finance, and law. Much more so than any other nation in Europe they became a commercial people, filling the role that Venice and the Italian city-states had in the late Middle Ages. They were middle class and mercantile.

The Dutch were also pioneers in government. Upon independence they became a republic, which was highly unusual amid all the European monarchies of the day. They had at first tried inviting aristocrats to rule them, but everyone refused out of fear of offending the Spanish. So a republic it was.

The Dutch Republic was also known as the United Provinces, and as that name would suggest, it was a confederation of seven quite independent provinces. These provinces each had their own currency, their own laws, their own courts, and their own assemblies, with varying levels of representation and suffrage. Of these provinces, Holland, which was as home to the capital, Amsterdam, was by far the largest, the richest, and the most powerful. Holland paid for over half of the budget of the Dutch Republic. Which is why, even today, “Holland” is often used to refer to the Netherlands as a whole, even though that’s not actually correct.

The government of the Netherlands as a whole was in the hands of an assembly known as the States-General, which mostly just had control over foreign policy, since each of the provinces were in charge of their own internal affairs. Each province had one vote at the States-General, though they could send as many representatives as they wished. Under the control of the States-General there was an executive council, as well as various other officials and administrative bodies, as one might expect.

Although it was a republic, the government tended to be dominated by the elite merchant families as a de facto oligarchy, especially as time went on. And there were some offices, such as stadtholder, a very important position, which became openly hereditary over time.

That’s how the republic operated in a nutshell. It was complicated, decentralized, semi-representative, and relatively open by the standards of the day. Things were much more complicated than what I could describe in this extremely brief sketch, but there’s no need to get into more detail, since the government of New Netherland was actually nothing like this. It was much simpler and much less representative, as we’ll see. But I still want to give you an idea of where the colony of New Netherland sprang from.

The Dutch Republic was a strongly Protestant nation, but it was also known for its tolerance. The law stated that “each person shall remain free, especially in his religion, and that no one shall be persecuted or investigated because of their religion.” There was a national church, but membership wasn’t obligatory.

As a result, the Netherlands became a haven for dissidents. Jews from across Europe flocked there. And when the Pilgrims fled England, it was to the Netherlands that they went first, before they decided to press on to America. So too did John Locke spend five years there. Many controversial books were first published in the Netherlands, even if the authors came from elsewhere, like Galileo. According to Colin Woodard, “Modern scholars have estimated that Dutch printers were responsible for half of all the books published in the seventeenth century.” This tolerance wasn’t absolute, but it was certainly freer than the rest of Europe.

This openness helped make the Dutch Republic into one of the cultural centers of Europe. The philosopher René Descartes lived there for 20 years, and the philosopher Baruch Spinoza came from a Jewish family that had fled Portugal during the Inquisition. Painters such as Rembrandt and Vermeer were Dutch. You can see why they called the 1600s the Dutch Golden Age.

And the Dutch weren’t just developing domestically during this period, they were also expanding their presence overseas, through both trade and warfare. Their primary interest was in Asia. They had begun conquering parts of Indonesia in 1605 and they’d gone as far as Japan by 1609. This was at a time when English efforts at expansion and trade were really only just beginning. Although the Dutch Republic was young, it soon became a trading powerhouse, the envy of Europe.

The Americas, however, were a secondary priority in all this. And to the Dutch, North America was even less of a priority than their possessions in Brazil. So the colony of New Netherland was at the time a sideshow to a sideshow. Nevertheless, it is to that colony that we now must turn.

The story of New Netherland itself begins with Henry Hudson, an English explorer. Hudson had led several expeditions for the Muscovy Company, one of those trading monopolies created by Queen Elizabeth. He had been looking for a northerly route to Asia, with no luck. Thanks to information sent to him by his friend John Smith of Jamestown, he now believed that he could find a route through North America to the Pacific. (Remember, no one knew just how wide the continent was back then.) The Muscovy Company declined to fund his next expedition, so he got support from the Dutch instead.

In 1608 the Dutch East India Company hired him to find a northeast passage, above Russia, but he disobeyed his orders and went to America instead. He reached the mouth of the Chesapeake but didn’t go in, instead sailing north, to a land which had still hardly been charted.

Now, I should probably explain the geography here. If you sail up the coast from the Chesapeake, after about a hundred miles you’ll reach the next big body of water, Delaware Bay, which today divides the state of Delaware from New Jersey. Hudson and his men entered the Bay, but they found it to be treacherous and so they turned back around and continued north. After another hundred something miles they reached what is now known as New York Harbor. This was a much more promising location. If you aren’t familiar with the layout of New York, it’s basically a tightly packed cluster of islands right near the shore, from the western tip of Long Island to Manhattan to Staten Island. It was a great spot for a port. And it was where the Pilgrims originally intended to settle.

But Hudson wasn’t interested in that. He wanted the Northwest Passage. So after some encounters with the local Indians he sailed up the main river which flows into the harbor, now known as the Hudson. But the river was just a river. It certainly didn’t lead to the Pacific. His mission was a failure, so he sailed back to Europe. He hadn’t found a route to Asia, but his report of New York Harbor piqued investors’ interest. It seemed like an excellent location for the Dutch to get in on the profitable fur trade which was at the time controlled by the French.

Hudson, by the way, would make only one more voyage, this time exploring Hudson Bay in Canada. His ship got stuck in the ice and they were forced to spend the winter there. In the spring, when the waters cleared, he wished to continue exploring further, but the crew mutinied and abandoned him, along with his son and some other loyal crewmen, leaving them to their fate in a small boat. They were never heard from again.

But that was of no matter to the future of New Netherland, as the region was named.

Within a few years Dutch traders sent several more expeditions to the area. They established an outpost up the Hudson river at what is now Albany, but for a while the Dutch presence was rather minimal. That began to change in 1621. That year, the Dutch government created the West India Company, which was to be the American counterpart to the Dutch East India Company, which had proved so successful in Asia. The West India Company was given a monopoly on trade with the Americas, and it was hoped by the government that the company would be an effective way to attack Spanish and Portuguese interests in the New World. The main focus of the West India Company was therefore in South America and the Caribbean, but New Netherland fell within their sphere as well.

One of the early goals of the Company was to send colonists to New Netherland, in order to more firmly support the Dutch claim on the lands. The exact borders of their new colony were ambiguous, but it began just above the Chesapeake and stretched into Connecticut, which was also claimed by the English. So basically the modern states of Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut.

It was hard to get people to go to the New World. Times were good in the Netherlands and there were no persecuted religious minorities like in England, so the pool of recruits was quite small. But the West India Company managed to scrape together a few dozen people, mostly foreigners, and convince them to sail away to America. One of the ships they sent was filled with 30 families. Four couples in the group were even married at sea.

The newlyweds and everyone else began arriving in New York Harbor in early 1624, so in between the arrivals of the Pilgrims and the Puritans. They set themselves up on an island just south of Manhattan. Their first homes were simple pits dug into the ground and covered with bark. It was the beginning of what would become New York City, although under the Dutch it was known as New Amsterdam. A few of the settlers were also sent south to the Delaware Bay and north to Connecticut, to ensure the Dutch claims on the land.

The year after that, settlement began on Manhattan itself. The common story is that the island was purchased from the local Indians for some beads worth $24, but that’s apocryphal. In truth the island was bought for goods worth perhaps a few thousand dollars in today’s money. Still a very good deal, all things considered. New Amsterdam, situated at the southern tip of Manhattan, soon became the capital and the center of economic activity in the colony. It was about 300 miles from Jamestown and 200 miles from Boston. It was also 100-something miles south of Iroquois territory.

This wasn’t a full-scale colonization effort like what the English were pursuing, however. There were some people who supported that approach, but it was deemed too ambitious. Instead, this was more an effort to secure trading outposts. The Dutch wanted a permanent presence, but it didn’t have to be too large. The economy was thus based on trade rather than on farming like in New England or the Chesapeake. There were still plenty of farmers, of course. But that wasn’t what New Amsterdam was about.

People continued to arrive in the colony, in dribs and drabs. (By the way, the mortality rate on a voyage like that was about 4 percent, according to Jacobs. Imagine if every time you flew across the country you had a 4 percent chance of dying. Not great.)

Many who came to New Netherland were merchants or craftsmen. Others were soldiers in the service of the Company. Most of these men left America after a time, but some remained, forming the nucleus of a new community. There were servants too, who were generally better treated than their counterparts in Virginia. Their terms of service were briefer, their contracts couldn’t be bought and sold and it was easier for them to escape from abusive masters.

In addition to New Amsterdam, the Dutch also continued their presence up the Hudson River, at Albany. This brought them to the southern edges of Iroquois land. Specifically, land controlled by the Mohawk. The land to the south was controlled by various Algonquian tribes, as I discussed last episode.

The Dutch had at first befriended the Mahican tribe, an Algonquian-speaking group that lived closer to the coast. The Mahicans had welcomed the Dutch as potential allies against the Mohawk, who were aggressively expanding their territory. But when the Dutch tried to support their new friends against the Mohawks, they were swiftly defeated. One Dutchman was even cannibalized. The Dutch soon decided that it was better to befriend powerful tribes rather than weaker ones, and so they became major trading partners and sometime allies of the Iroquois instead.

Like the Puritans, the Dutch also adopted the use of wampum as money, along with beaver pelts, although fur was a less than ideal currency, since the quality of the pelts was quite variable.

Trade with the Native Americans was always a fraught issue. In order to keep the Indians weaker, selling them weapons was prohibited, and could result in the death penalty, at least in theory. But that wasn’t enough to stop the trade. Certainly the Iroquois got their hands on enough guns to rapidly expand their territory, as we heard last time. Later on those restrictions on selling guns would be loosened, in acknowledgement of their ineffectiveness.

Alcohol too caused problems. Alcohol and the social ills associated with it were European exports just as much as guns and diseases were. Drunkenness and alcoholism soon became chronic problems among the Indians. Because of the disruption it caused, not just to the Indians themselves, but to relations between the Indians and the Dutch, selling alcohol to Indians could result in “a fine of five hundred guilders, flogging and banishment. In practice, however, punishments were much lighter,” according to Jacobs.

Dutch efforts to convert the Indians to Christianity were less successful than those of the Jesuits in French territory. The Dutch were less willing to meet the Indians halfway, as it were, to learn their languages, that sort of thing. There were some wars between the two groups, but they weren’t as bad as what happened in the English colonies. Overall, the Dutch presence was just too small and too focused purely on trade to cause the same sort of problems.

The government of the colony was in the hands of the West India Company. The Company was not totally independent from the Dutch government — the state had a representative on the board of directors and it was also partly subsidising the Company — but it was a private, for profit enterprise. So the ultimate loyalty of New Netherland was to the Dutch Republic, but in practice administration was in the hands of the Company. Well, in actuality, a small committee within the Company made most of the decisions.

Within the colony itself, administration and justice were in the hands of the Director-General and an executive council, all of whom were appointed back in Europe. The Director-General was the equivalent of a governor, although of a slightly lower rank, since New Netherland wasn’t deemed important enough to have a full governor. The Director was the chief executive, but he was obligated to seek the approval of the council. He wasn’t free to act on his own. And all of their decisions and laws were ultimately subject to approval from the Company.

There were no elected positions within the colony at all. The West India Company was directly in charge. They appointed the Director-General and his advisors, with no equivalent to an elected lower house.

In its early years the colony was beset by bureaucratic infighting and weak yet authoritarian leadership. The officials who were willing to go to America were generally second rate, and in 1632 the Company, according to Jacobs, had to “replace the entire administration”. According to Charles M. Andrews, one director alone was “charged with pride and vainglory, with indolence and carelessness, with drunkenness ‘as long as there is any wine’ and with hostility towards religion.” The next director started a fruitless years-long war against local Indian tribes, only to be recalled in disgrace and then die in a shipwreck on the way back to Europe. Needless to say, this sort of general mismanagement didn’t help in attracting more settlers.

In the beginning, New Amsterdam was a rough town, violent and boisterous. Bars, prostitution, pirates, etc. Like Jamestown had been, the colony wasn’t yet a fully realized society, it was just an outpost.

In these first few years New Netherland didn’t prove very profitable. This led to a split in the company. Some wanted to minimize further investment. That way, the Company could still reap the profits of the fur trade without much further cost. Others wanted to expand the colony into profitability by attracting enough farmers to make the colony self-sustaining. Then, perhaps, even bigger profits could be made thanks to their monopoly on trade.

The two sides compromised by coming up with the patroonship system. The patroonship system was an attempt to attract wealthy settlers by offering them large estates. In exchange for bringing 50 or more colonists to New Netherland, these wealthy settlers, or “patroons” as they were known, would each be given a great deal of power on their lands, similar to what the Lords Baltimore enjoyed in Maryland. They would have near-absolute authority, with all powers of government, even the right to execute subjects. The goal here was to make others bear the costs of colonization, since the Company was unwilling to pay for it itself.

A number of members of the West India Company set up patroonships of their own, but unfortunately for them, few people wanted to live under such conditions. Some patroonships never got off the ground. Another was entirely wiped out by Indians. Only one lasted longer than a few years.

Just as in the English colonies, any attempts to establish feudalism in the New World were pretty much dead on arrival. Overlords like the Baltimores could keep things going for a while, but only in the face of ongoing resistance from the colonists.

You might think that it would make sense to go in the opposite direction and make the colony more politically open. That worked well enough in Jamestown, after all. Well, perhaps they could’ve, but the situation in New Netherland was different. The Virginia Company had had constant money problems, and Jamestown was the only settlement they controlled. The West India Company, on the other hand, had other, more important possessions in the Caribbean and Brazil. New Netherland was a secondary concern and they didn’t feel the need to attract a lot of migrants, as the Virginia Company had. And they weren’t sure about the financial wisdom of expansion anyway. Perhaps partly as a result, there wasn’t the same pressure to add some sort of representative element to their rule.

Nevertheless, over time towns popped up across New Netherland, but all of them remained small. A number of these towns, particularly on Long Island, were settled by the English rather than by the Dutch. As I mentioned, the border between New Netherland and Connecticut was unsettled. As a result, a number of English towns were founded in territory that was thought to be English but wound up being controlled by the Dutch instead. Other times, it was because settlers were fleeing the persecution of New England. You’ll recall that Anne Hutchinson left Massachusetts for Rhode Island and then went to New Netherland, only to be killed by Indians along with much of her family.

These English towns were given a good deal of independence, and to some extent they just replicated the New England way of doing things, although there was nothing like the full-on town meetings in New England proper that we’ve heard about.

Local towns often had at least some say in the officials who were put in charge of them, but their choices were still subject to Company approval. These local officials were tasked with routine administration and the hearing of minor court cases. But overall, as you can see, there was very little popular participation in government. Things were done in a top down way, even if the colonists were given at least some input from time to time.

Residents of the colony were also sometimes called on to give advice to the Directors, through the creation of informal groups of counselors. But in practice things often got more complicated than you might expect.

For example, in 1641 a farmer in New Amsterdam was killed by an Indian. In response to this attack the Director-General, Willem Kieft, the guy who would drown in a shipwreck, called together the heads of local households to give him advice. Those men then chose from among themselves twelve men to counsel the Director. That was at least kind of an election I guess.

This body, known conveniently as the Twelve Men, went well beyond its instructions, offering the director more than just recommendations on policy towards the Indians. They also requested changes to the colony’s administration and courts. The director was reasonably receptive to some of their proposals, but he nevertheless soon dismissed them and forbade them from meeting again, lest they start to get ideas.

However, relations with the local Indians broke down further, with a massacre of some 80 natives followed by further reprisals against the settlers. Kieft felt it wise to summon the burghers, who were sort of the equivalent of freemen, for further consultation. From those 46 burghers, eight were elected to serve on a new body, known conveniently as the Eight Men.

The Eight Men had a bit more power than the Twelve Men had had. They weren’t just there to provide advice on a specific issue, they also had the right to recruit soldiers as needed. But they weren’t supposed to have any real authority. Nevertheless, just like the Twelve Men, they also went beyond their instructions, going over the director’s head by sending requests for assistance back to the Netherlands. In the next year, 1644, they even tried to get the director removed, and convince the West India Company to grant them a representative government. They asked for the right to “elect from among themselves a Bailiff or Schout and Schepens,” (those are just the names for government positions), “who will be empowered to send their deputies and give their votes on public affairs with the Director and Council; so that the entire country may not be hereafter, at the whim of one man, again reduced to similar danger.”

This was quite a big request, to completely change how the colony was run. For the most part, the Company ignored it. They did decide to recall Kieft for incompetence, but that was about it.

Kieft’s replacement, Peter Stuyvesant [STY-vuh-sunt], would serve as Director-General for the next seventeen years. Stuyvesant, the son of a minister, was only 35 when he arrived in the colony. A college dropout, Stuyvesant joined the West India Company as a young man and quickly rose through the ranks. He was named governor of the island of Curaçao in the Caribbean. While serving there he led an attack on another island, only to get hit by a cannonball and lose his leg in the fighting.

He returned to the Netherlands to recuperate, and while there the West India Company named him the director of New Netherland. Beyond his bravery, he also had a reputation as a strong leader and a solid administrator, so he was a natural choice for the position, despite his new peg leg.

When he arrived in New Amsterdam Stuyvesant faced the problem of what to do with the Eight Men. After all, in their appeal to Amsterdam they had been quite disobedient to the previous director, even treasonous. And the new director was certainly no fan of representative government. After a trial in which the colonists refused to back down, Stuyvesant sentenced a few of the ringleaders to banishment.

The Eight Men were thus disbanded, but in their place Stuyvesant created a new grouping of nine men, conveniently known as the Nine Men. Realistically, he had to give the colonists at least some input if he wanted to raise funds and keep things running smoothly. The way this worked was that the local burghers named eighteen men, and Stuyvesant and the council picked nine of those men to actually serve. This practice is sometimes known as “double nomination”. It was a way to balance popular control with central control. Both the people and the government had veto power over nominees.

Anyway, three of the nine men were to be merchants, three were burghers, and three were farmers. Six of the nine men would be replaced each year.

Like the Twelve Men and the Eight Men, the Nine Men had limited authority which they nevertheless exceeded. When Stuyvesant got word that the Nine Men were sending a new petition back to Amsterdam behind his back to undermine him, he had their leader Adriaen van der Donck, imprisoned for libel, though he was later freed. Afterwards, van der Donck returned to the Netherlands to argue his position, on behalf of the colonists. They had several demands, including the creation of a city government for New Amsterdam, which actually had less independence than the outlying towns did. Most importantly, they wished to be freed not just from Stuyvesant, but from the West India Company altogether. They wanted to be ruled directly by the Dutch government.

He arrived in the Netherlands in 1649, soon after the beheading of Charles I, as well as after the signing of the Peace of Westphalia, which ended both the 30 Years’ War in Germany and the 80 Years’ War between Spain and the Dutch Republic. Finally, Dutch independence was fully recognized. The treaties of Westphalia were also an important precedent in the idea of states as sovereign entities on an equal diplomatic footing, as opposed to the earlier system based around webs of feudal loyalties. Big changes were happening in Europe.

Anyway, the colonists presented their lengthy petition to the States-General, arguing that the Republic would be strengthened by the full annexation of New Netherland, which could in time hugely boost the income of the small Republic.

The ideas were actually favorably received, although the government didn’t go so far as to agree to annexation. They did, however, agree to some substantial changes, such as adding a number of elected men to the council. But thanks to delays within the Netherlands and the start of the First Anglo-Dutch War, which I’ll get to next episode, those proposals never went anywhere. The only real change was the creation of a city government for New Amsterdam, but there weren’t any elections even for that. Instead, officials choose their successors through a process of double nomination, much like with the Nine Men.

Overall, the Company was still in charge.

So that’s a brief summary of what the government of New Netherland was like. It may have been a bit confusing, since there were a lot of half-implemented ideas and whatnot, but let me give a brief summary to make sure everything’s clear.

New Netherland was ultimately in the hands of the West India Company, and it was the company which appointed the top officials in the colony, the director and the councilors, who had final authority within the colony itself. There were no elected assemblies, but there were occasional advisory bodies chosen from among the colonists, with few official powers. Towns weren’t self-governing, but they did have some say over the officials who were placed in charge of them. And throughout the second half of the colony’s existence, there was constant pressure for greater self-government.

The rule of the West India Company was always going to be an awkward fit once colonization took off. The Company was focused on profit, but the colonists themselves wanted good government, and those two interests didn’t necessarily go hand in hand. Things were rarely terrible, but the Company was seen as an impediment rather than an ally. The Company perennially underinvested in the colony. Teachers were scarce, and public buildings were shoddy. Even the fort was in a state of disrepair. Quite a contrast to New England, where the citizens were in direct control of public spending.

Just like how in the English colonies many would have preferred direct rule to the control of some proprietor, many in New Netherland would rather have been ruled by the Dutch government itself, or maybe even by themselves. We can see in New Netherland the same sort of mildly rebellious attitude that existed in the English colonies. Nobody was thinking about full independence, but the citizens did want to have a major say in how things were run, and the ability to veto policies they didn’t like.

It seems clear to me that sooner or later, changes would have been made as the colony grew and as demands for reforms increased. But because of the English takeover, all of that came to a premature end. Well, the pressure for self-rule would continue, but it was under an English flag, and not a Dutch one.

Next episode, we’ll both continue and end the story of New Netherland, by diving into its conquest by the English. So join me next time on Early and Often: The History of Elections in America.

If you like the podcast, please rate it on iTunes. You can also keep track of Early and Often on Twitter, at earlyoftenpod, or read transcripts of every episode at the blog, at earlyandoftenpodcast.wordpress.com. Thanks for listening.

Sources:

The Colonial Period of American History Volume III by Charles M. Andrews

History of Elections in the American Colonies by Cortlandt F. Bishop

New Netherland: A Dutch Colony in Seventeenth-Century America by Jaap Jacobs

The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America by Russell Shorto

The Dutch Republic in the early seventeenth century by J.P. Sommerville

American Nations by Colin Woodard

[himbowelsh]

Your headcanons (and fics) make me so unbelievably happy!! How about the golden five honeymoon headcanons? Where do they go and what do they do (yeah, okay, we all know what they /do/, but like what activities — parasailing, museum tours, etc.) Thank you dear :)

WINNIX

destination: bora bora, tahiti

nix isn’t wild about the idea of a honeymoon. it just... seems like so much. so much effort, so much drama, and for what? a simple vacation.

what he is crazy about is making dick (the memory of his new husband, in his neatly-pressed tuxedo, ginger hair combed and shining in the chapel lights) happy.

the nixon family has a long history of vacationing in the caribbean -- so, of course, nix isn’t doing that.

instead, he books a flight to bora bora, grabs his sunglasses, and off they go.

nix is sure that 90% of his trip is spent slathering sunscreen on dick’s back. the ginger burns like a french fry in the sun. nix isn’t complaining, definitely, but it’s not like dick needs any more freckles.

they spend a lot of time relaxing on the beach. it’s something they’re both perfectly content with. they have a lot of books to read, their (very expensive) hotel has great beachside service, and the ocean is beautiful when you’re not actually in it.

not that they don’t go swimming. nix prefers the hotel’s heated pool, but he lets dick drag him past the shore a few times. it turns out dick loves to splash, and nix doesn’t appreciate salt water in his eyes. it turns into a competition of who can get the other the most wet, until nix settles it by just dunking dick under the surface.

they order room service liberally. nix is the type of guy to order a lone snickers bar at midnight, just because he feels like it.

they also visit some very nice restaurants. nix is eager to sample the local cuisine, and dick makes sure to temper his alcohol consumption. (”can i help it if the tahitians make one hell of a great cocktail?”)

at one point, dick convinces him to go parasailing. nix is a little terrified (he’s not afraid of heights. he’s just afraid of falling from a great height into the ocean with something heavy attached to his back to drag him down and he’s not afraid of heights, dick, it’s different --) but agrees to go. they wind up couples-parasailing and both spend the first five minutes whooping in utter amazement. from up there in the sky, it feels like they can see the whole world.

they’re both reluctant to end their trip. they’ve had a blast, but there’s still a part of nix that’s convinced he didn’t do enough.

in the airport terminal, dick kisses him and assures that he couldn’t have asked for a better honeymoon.

SPEIRTON

destination: the greek islands (or at least as many as they can get to in two weeks)

lip would have been totally cool just relaxing at home for their honeymoon, because he’s that kink of low-maintenance person. ron, unfortunately, is not.

he’s also much more practical than romantic, though he has his moments. ron knows that honeymoons are A Big Deal, and also knows lip would be fine not doing anything. hereby he wants to give lip the best honeymoon possible.

he doesn’t tell lip where they’re actually going until they’re already on their way to greece.

they land in athens, and that’s where they stay for two days. the city is beautiful and ron is determined to see as many historical landmarks as he can before they move on. eventually, though, they do set out on their tour.

they don’t stay in one place for too long, because they’re eager to see as much as possible. speirs is fascinated by the history of each island; while lip is more in it for the beautiful views, he finds the history interesting as well. 

they dine out at various restaurants, sampling local cuisine, though on a few occasions they’re happy to just stay in the room and relax with room service.

they visit more than a few museums, and at one point ron gets so caught up in the exhibits that he’s totally dead to the world. lip has to take his arm and guide him along. he knows what it’s like when his husband gets his Zone, and he loves seeing ron so fascinated.

they also go swimming. ron proves he can stay underwater for a terrifyingly long time.

they even go exploring some secluded caves, which has carwood a little terrified they’re going to get caught in a cave-in. ron, however, kindles his adventurous spirit, and lip finds himself having a blast. they don’t find any hidden treasure, but they do get very... adventurous in the seclusion of one of the caves.

they go for long walks on the beach, just lost in each other. they’re the sort of couple that can spend hours just talking, and that’s what they do. the sunsets are beautiful, but ron thinks the dusk reflected in carwood’s eyes is the most gorgeous thing he’s ever seen.

BABEROE

destination: paris, france

it’s always been a wish of gene’s to visit (happy, unoccupied) paris, so babe knows exactly where they’re going for their honeymoon.

he comes prepared. he buys a french learner’s dictionary and spends the entire plane ride with his nose buried in it (literally, he passes out for most of the flight and winds up drooling all over the book. he cannot stay awake on airplanes.)

he still doesn’t know a word of french, but gene is happy to translate.

babe wants to take pictures of everything. he’s a big picture guy in general, but he doesn’t want to forget a moment of this trip. they take pictures in front of the eiffel tower, the seine, the lourve – everywhere they can think of. often they ask people to take pictures of both of them.

(babe hands his camera to one “helpful” man, who promptly takes off running with it. babe sprints after him. the guy makes it about thirty yards before babe tackles him. he gets his camera back.)

they don’t feel pressured to see all the sights – they’re just happy to be spending time together. their first few days are spent just wandering around the city, seeing where that takes them. they eat at fancy little cafes, pose for goofy selfies together, and babe continues to butcher any french he picks up.

their hotel is lavish, with a very large jacuzzi bath. they take full advantage of this.

there are a few places they absolutely have to see. versailles is on the list. gene is so busy listening to the tour and making other french-speaking friends that babe gets bored (definitely not sulky) and wanders off. somehow he winds up lost in the palace. he swears he saw marie antoinette’s ghost.

one of gene’s favorite things is the jardin du luxembourg. he thinks it’s gorgeous there, and loves all the flowers and watching the tiny boats sail on the water.

at one point, gene and babe get so tipsy off of red wine in the hotel room that gene becomes determined to seduce babe out on the balcony, for the entirety of paris to see. babe manages to coax him to bed, but only just. (and then they try to play around in bed, but babe falls off and winds up getting a bloody nose. the fun stopped there.)

they take a very late flight back, and gene is so worn out that he falls asleep soon after takeoff. babe spends the majority of the eight hour flight alternating between dozing and staring out the window at gene’s reflection past the pitch-black sky, marveling at how lucky he got.

WEBGOTT

destination: galapagos islands

joe doesn’t really want to go anywhere for his honeymoon.

why do they need to travel halfway across the world?? they live in san francisco. they could just book a hotel, stay in for five days, and spend the entirety of that time having hot, dirty sex.

but he had to marry a romantic.

web has been chattering about the honeymoon since before the wedding, and he’s made it very clear that he expects joe to plan it. he hasn’t said where he wants to go, but he’s been dropping enough hints that joe is borderline concussed at this point.

web wants to go somewhere with three things: beach, ocean, and sharks.

basically, web would have a blast in the town from jaws.

instead, joe decides to book a trip to the galapagos islands, because he figures it’s both adventurous and romantic enough for web’s tastes.

web spends the entire week before the trip studying spanish, but barely picks up anything. he winds up not needing it, since their guides all speak english, but that doesn’t keep him from trying. and butchering the language horribly.

they of course go scuba diving, which web thinks is about the coolest thing in the world. (he’s hoping to run into a shark; he says this and joe looks at him like he’s sprouted three new heads and a tail). instead they just have an exciting time underwater. web runs into a school of tiny fish, and is absolutely thrilled as they swim around him. joe finds a cool statue under the water and names it “jaws”.

they go snorkeling over the reefs, and then sit on the beach until joe has a nice tan and web is bright red. even the sunburn doesn’t deter him. he is happier than joe has seen him since their wedding, and it thrills joe to see his boyfriend shining so brightly.

and then web wants to go into the shark cage.

joe is just trying to eat his breakfast at their very nice hotel. in the meantime, web somehow runs into a man who runs a shark diving expedition, and talks him up while his husband stuff his face.

joe does not want to get in a cage with sharks. this is the absolute LAST thing he wants to do, and his first instinct is to run very far in the opposite direction.

then web dares him, and he just has to go in the stupid shark cage. (besides, like hell is he letting his new husband get eaten down there alone.)

it is the best experience of web’s life, and the most terrifying one of joe’s.

even so, they both agree that this has been a damn great honeymoon -- especially when they’re curled around each other in their hotel’s king sized bed at night.

LUZTOYE

destination: machu picchu pueblo, peru

joe will not admit to being a history buff, but he’s always been a little interested in ancient civilizations. especially the aztecs and incas – their stories were ones he read about as a little boy and was fascinated by.

meanwhile, george just wants to do something cool for his honeymoon.

so, together they plan out a visit to the ruins of machu picchu.

george is not crazy about the idea of sleeping in tents, but they both agree they’re up for the hike. they pack their best sneakers, hiking gear, rainjackets, and together they set out.

george is fascinated by the jungles. he sees this bird that’s “got to be some sort of freaking dinosaur, i swear” and when he spots a llama, the first thing he does is try to ride it.

(it spits in his face and joe calls him an idiot while dragging him away)

they stop for a night in aguas calientes, a nice little town with natural hot water pools that are supposed to be able to cure any ailment. joe and george stay there until their bodies feel like they’re melting. george has to coax joe out with the promise of more fun when they get back to their room, because joe just won’t move

when they finally reach the ruins, they’re both so thrilled that it hardly matters that they’re sweaty and exhausted. the place is fascinating. they both spend a while wandering through the ruins, taking as many pictures as possible.

after a while, the thin air starts to make george really dizzy (probably because he’s talking too much). he knows something’s wrong, and tries to tell joe, but he doesn’t quite get the words out before he passes out in the middle of the pueblo.

when he wakes up again, his head is in joe’s lap and they’re on a bus headed back to aguas calientes. “you sure know how to ruin a vacation, georgie.”

(he was so exhausted that he crashed for almost two hours. he didn’t even feel joe carry him down to the bus.)

they spend another night in town, soaking in the last of the water, before setting off for home. they both agree that it’s been a vacation they’re not likely to forget.

[shmosnet2]

10 Totally Reliable (Mostly) Sane People Who Have Seen A Mermaid

10 Totally Reliable (Mostly) Sane People Who Have Seen A Mermaid

Most people these days accept that mermaids are a charming myth, symbolizing the power of nature over man or a cautionary reminder that things are not always as they seem at first sight. Of course, there’s also the old metaphor of women as temptresses, luring helpless men to their destruction with their devilishly feminine wiles. Or maybe the mermaid is a singing cartoon character with alarming hair and the voice of an angel. However, there was a time when perfectly rational people not only believed in mermaids but sometimes also convinced themselves that they had seen one in the scaly flesh. Here are ten such reports. 10 Christopher Columbus

In 1492, Christopher Columbus set off to find a new trade route to Asia and famously “discovered” the “New World” of the Americas by mistake. Not only did he find a new continent, but he also observed a few mythological creatures. He recorded in his journal that he was sailing in waters close to the Dominican Republic when he saw three mermaids, which he described as “not half as beautiful as they are painted” and as having “some masculine traits.”[1] It is now generally accepted that what Columbus actually saw was likely a manatee or dugong. Both creatures are able to do “tail stands,” which would lift their heads and torsos out of the water. Their forelimbs look vaguely like arms, and they are able to turn their heads from side to side. So, in the dusk, after having been at sea for six months and possibly having had too much rum, it is perhaps understandable that an experienced sailor would mistake a sea cow for a Siren. Though it must have been pretty strong rum. Columbus wasn’t alone, however. The supposed skeleton of a mermaid was presented to the Portsmouth Philosophical Society in 1826, but it turned out to be a dugong, which was no doubt disappointing, as a mermaid would have livened up their meetings considerably. 9 Taro Horiba

In 1943, at the height of World War II, a group of Japanese soldiers were stationed on one of Indonesia’s Kei Islands. They began to report seeing strange creatures in the waters around the island. The creatures were said to have a humanlike face but a mouth like a carp’s, with needle-sharp teeth. They were also about 0.9 meters (3 ft) tall, with pink skin and spikes on their heads. The creatures were seen around the edges of the many lagoons or cavorting along the beaches. If approached, they would dive into the water and not resurface. When the soldiers asked the locals about the creatures, they were told that the mermaids were known as Orang Ikan, which translates from Malay as “fish people,” and were fairly common in the area. Reportedly, local fishermen sometimes found them caught up in their nets and promised to keep one for the soldiers. Sergeant Taro Horiba claims to have been shown a creature that looked half-human/half-ape/half-fish (yes, that is three halves) and had webbed fingers and toes like some kind of amphibian. Horiba did not think to take a photo of this creature, which was unfortunate, but he did spend a great deal of time trying to persuade zoologists to investigate the creature after the war. So it must be true.[2] 8 The Chief Of A Scottish Clan

In 1830, crofters in the Outer Hebrides, off the coast of Scotland, were cutting seaweed on the shore when they spotted the figure of a small woman in the water. Some of the men tried to catch her, and as she was escaping, a boy threw a rock at her. The crofters said that they heard her cry out in pain as she disappeared beneath the waves. A few days later, her body was found washed up on the shore. Crowds gathered, and they sent for the most important person around, the chief of MacDonald of Clanranald, part of the great Scottish MacDonald Clan, who also happened to be the local sheriff. The upper half of the mermaid was said to be the size of a four-year-old child, albeit with abnormally large breasts. Her skin was soft and white, and she had long, dark hair. The lower half was like a salmon without scales. The clan chief ordered a shroud and a coffin be brought to the beach, and the mermaid was buried in the nearby churchyard. Her funeral was said to be the best-attended funeral they had ever had. Unfortunately, they didn’t think to take a collection for the headstone, and the exact location of the mermaid’s grave is unknown. This is not the only mermaid to have found its way to Scotland. In 1833, a professor of natural history at Edinburgh University reported that Scottish fishermen had captured a live mermaid and held it captive for three hours while they studied it. The creature apparently had a face like a monkey, the torso of a woman, and a tail like a dogfish.[3] 7 The Shaman Of Hakata

Japan has a long association with mermaids, although the mermaids of Japanese legend are significantly more fishlike than the buxom European ones we might be used to. They usually have razor-sharp teeth and occasionally horns as well and are said to have magic powers, though these are usually unspecified. The purported remains of one such Japanese mermaid can be seen in Fukuoka at the Ryuguji Temple. In 1222, a mermaid is said to have washed ashore at Hakata Bay. The local shaman declared that the mermaid was a good omen, and its remains were buried in the Ryuguji Temple, whose name means “the undersea palace of the dragon god.” Fitting. For many years, visitors to the temple were offered water to drink, in which the mermaid bones had been soaked. The water was said to be a prophylactic against numerous epidemics. Six of the bones still remain in the temple, rubbed smooth by their time in the water.[4] Many visitors still find their way to the mermaid’s tomb, which may or may not explain why the guardians of the temple have decided not to DNA-test the bones. Some scientists who have studied the bones, however, believe that they may well come from more than one animal and probably not from any known aquatic creature. Some scientists even believe that the mermaid’s bones may, in fact, be those of an ordinary landlubbing cow. 6 Henry Hudson

Henry Hudson was an English explorer in the early 17th century. He is best known for his explorations in North America and for the bay, strait, and river that are named in his honor. He made four expeditions looking for the fabled Northwestern Passage to the Far East. When his passage through the Arctic was blocked by ice during his second voyage, he changed course and sailed northeast toward the Russian region of Novaya Zemlya in the Arctic Ocean. Again, his passage was blocked by ice, and he was forced to retreat. While in the Russian waters, however, he had an encounter with a mermaid. Hudson described his mermaid as being, from the navel up, the size of a full-grown woman with white skin and long, black hair. “Going downe,” he saw a tail the shape of a porpoise, with a speckled Mackerel pattern.[5] Or perhaps it was a porpoise, with the tail of a porpoise. 5 Prince Shotoku

Prince Shotoku, one of the most important figures in Japanese history, was a powerful and sober man. In the seventh century, he introduced the Seventeen Article Constitution, which set the expected ethical behaviors for officials. The prince was not the kind of man to believe in fairy tales. However, a merman was said to have appeared to Prince Shotoku at Lake Biwa. The merman was dying and so, as dying people always do, found time to tell his story to a stranger. The merman said that he had once been a fisherman who had sailed into forbidden waters. As a punishment, he was turned into a hideous, fishy creature. The merman, or ningyo, clearly felt that this was a just punishment because he asked the prince to build a temple to display his body after his death, as a warning to other fishermen to stay inside the lines. This temple, known as the Tenshou-Kyousha Shrine, can be found near Mount Fiji, where the mummified remains of the mermaid are watched over by Shinto Buddhist monks.[6] 4 Captain Richard Whitbourne

Richard Whitbourne was an explorer, writer, and colonizer of other people’s land in the 16th and 17th centuries. He led ships in battle against the Spanish Armada and organized the supply of fish from Newfoundland to the Mediterranean. So, he was a man of wide experience, one might think—not one for fanciful imaginings. In 1610, off the coast of Newfoundland, he described his encounter with a mermaid that swam “cheerfully” toward the small boats he and his crew were sailing offshore. He stated that the mermaid swam swiftly, diving under the water at times and then rising out of the water high enough for him to “behold” her bare shoulders and back. He claims not to have looked at the front of her. Whitbourne described how she came up to their boat and tried to climb in, but the sailors were afraid, and one of them hit her over the head with his oar, whereupon she let go and swam toward another boat. All the men, then, being frightened, made for the shore as quickly as they could.[7] Whitbourne’s account appears to be very detailed and is written in his usual neat handwriting, which must have been particularly difficult after all that rum. 3 Captain John Smith

The explorer Captain John Smith may or may not have rescued/been rescued by Pocahontas (not). He was elected leader of the Jamestown colony and traded largely peacefully with the Native American Powhatan tribes around them. He seemed to be a levelheaded kind of guy. Thomas Jefferson once described him as “honest, sensible, and well informed.” Surely, then, his account of seeing a mermaid can be taken at face value? It is claimed that in 1614, he saw a green-haired woman, “by no means unattractive,” swimming in the water. When she turned to dive, Smith was apparently shocked to see her mermaid’s tail. Manatees are often sighted in the bay where Smith had his Sirenian encounter, so it may be tempting to believe that he, like others, saw the manatee from behind and thought he had seen a mermaid. However, it has been suggested that not only might Smith have not seen a mermaid, but he might not even have claimed to have seen a mermaid. Some scholars believe that the account of the mermaid sighting was written not by John Smith but by Alexander Dumas, author of such novels as The Three Musketeers and The Man in the Iron Mask. The account was purportedly written contemporaneously by Smith in 1614, whereas, in fact, Smith had not been in that area since 1607. No evidence of the mermaid entry can be found in Smith’s original notes, most of which are still available. The first mention of Smith’s encounter with a mermaid is in a tale by Dumas, in which he cited Smith’s account. Smith’s supposed adventure lent credence to Dumas’ own story about a man who sired four children with a mermaid.[8] 2 Blackbeard

Edward Teach, the legendary pirate known as Blackbeard, served first as a privateer during Queen Anne’s War. He became a pirate after the war ended. He named his ship the Queen Anne’s Revenge in honor of his former employer. Blackbeard and his crew cruised the Caribbean, plundering ships and adding them to their fleet. His pirate crew of 300 was the largest ever to trouble shipping on the high seas. At one point, he brazenly blockaded the port of Charlestown, seizing any ships that attempted to enter or leave and demanding ransoms for the release of captured sailors. In 1718, the Queen Anne’s Revenge was run aground. Some scholars maintain that Edward Teach deliberately scuppered his own ship in order to break up the crew, who were fast becoming a liability. Blackbeard was soon caught and killed, and his severed head was mounted at the front of his captor’s ship as a warning to others. Before he met his grisly end, however, Blackbeard had an encounter that was altogether more ethereal. It is recorded in his logbooks that he ordered his crew to steer away from certain “enchanted” waters because they were populated by merfolk. He was said to have seen the merfolk with his own eyes and to have been wary of vexing them.[9] 1 Henry Loucks

Henry Loucks was a fisherman working the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. He was said to have been “as reliable as any fisherman on the river,” which may or may not be a testimonial. In 1881, Loucks reported five separate sightings of a mermaid on the Susquehanna River. He claimed that the mermaid came out at sunrise and at dusk, rising to the surface of the water, whereupon it had a good look around, floated on top of the water for a while, and then slowly sank beneath the surface, leaving its hair floating on the surface for a moment before finally diving to the depths below. Loucks said that he had considered shooting it but was worried about being charged with murder, so he let it go. When asked if, as in the fairy tales, the mermaid carried a comb and a mirror, he replied, “It might have had, but I didn’t see it.” When asked where he thought it went, he supposed that it had a cave somewhere at the bottom of the river. Newspaper reports appealed for the mermaid to be captured, alive if possible, and reassured potential mermaid hunters that they would be immune from prosecution if they brought it in dead. To date, no one has taken advantage of the offer.[10] Ward Hazell is a writer who travels, and an occasional travel writer.

https://ift.tt/2OWfhT7 . Foreign Articles December 06, 2019 at 11:58AM

[deathsmallcaps]

The Palace of the Eagles The Eyrie

I listen to the Myths and Legends podcast by Jason and Carissa Weiser, and episode 118 really stuck with me. In fact, I decided to stick it into rotation for the coloring story books I’m making for my little cousins, (I release one story a month for my *Win A Commission contest), and so I looked up a version of it I could use. But the ones I found online lacked as much detail, so I decided to use the podcast version.

That was sort of a mistake. You see, they don’t give transcripts out for free. Understandably of course, as they are well written and they have to make their living. But that meant I had to do a lot of work. 

So this here, under the cut, is the fruit of my efforts to write the episode down. There is minimal changes, as I’m sure some words escaped my notice, but some of what I converted to dialogue or into paragraphs may also be a bit clunky. Italics is more for how Jason added a couple personal thoughts to the story. But anyway, if you’re a fan or the show and/or the story, here you go!

I actually don't know much about the origin of the story. I found it in the collection of Jewish folklore published in 1919, by a woman by the name of Gertrude Landa. It's a folktale, so it's not really linked to anything historical and its in kind of a faraway fantastical land. So we’ll just jump right in. 

Far to the East, even farther than the rising sun, the story says, there existed a kingdom. It sat in a peninsula, that stretched far into the ocean. It was a rich in bountiful and where no one wanted for anything. It lived in such luxury that, well, no one really did anything.

Most of all, the King. 

You know, I once had a boss who got in at 10:30am and left at 2pm. So that means if you really wanted to push it, you could get there at 10:15am and leave at 2:30. Not that I ever did that, Mr. Reynolds. 

But that's what the King's advisors did. He liked his naps and daytime drinking and hunting expeditions and literally anything other than being a ruler. He ordered his advisors to manage the Kingdom for him, and for a while they did. Until they didn't. You see, when you get a taste of spending all day not worKing, it's really hard to force yourself to wake up and manage a Kingdom for a guy who wakes up and spends all his time partying. Soon the people who should have been managing the Kingdom in the place the guy whose hereditary responsibility was to manage the Kingdom just stopped showing up altogether. 

Worse yet, they really started to stick their claws in and started extracting more and  more from the people. 

For a time everything seems fine. The land was fertile, the ocean bountiful and the people basically peaceful. Then, things began to change. 

The weather grew colder one year. Then even colder the next. At first the people had enough, and then just barely not enough. The fish population started to wither, and the following summer was dry, hit by drought. 

Soon, things became so bad that the King himself actually had to do some work. His advisors pestered him to rise before 11am, like a commoner. They said they wanted to let him sleep, but the people, the people were out front. They were hungry, the advisors said. And they worried that things were too far gone. Of course they still had the royal food storage, the one they had filled up by taking heavy taxes from the people. But if that dwindled, the entire Kingdom, including the King, would have no protection against the whims of nature. Another cold winter or hot summer, that could be the end of them. 

The King laughed it off. “Okay, okay, okay,” he would take some time off that day and save the entire Kingdom. “You're welcome.”

He threw open the doors and stepped out onto the balcony. He announced to the crowd that he knew they were hungry, and he was going to save them. One man yelled back from below, asking him if he was going to open the royal food stores for his starving people.

The King held up both hands. “Whoa, okay, let’s not get drastic.” He was going to hunt. A lot. They probably didn't know this, because they were all scraping by trying not to starve, but the King spent a lot of time hunting. Almost all the time, actually. He was really great at it, and he would single-handedly kill enough animals to feed the entire Kingdom. That afternoon. And they can take that to the bank. “Well, not really because there is a run on the banks that morning and they’re completely bankrupt.”

That obvoiusly wasn’t quite the pep talk the people needed, but at least they were heartened by their stupid, stupid King's confidence. Besides, they never really got to eat a lot of meat, so this might be nice.

On the return trip into town, the King ordered his Royal Guard to surround him. He just needed to get back into the palace safely. If he could return to the palace, everything would be fine. The King had to lie, kind of a lot, to make it inside before the riots began. 

He had shot one underweight boar, six rabbits, and a handful of squirrels. That was it. Barely enough for his own dinner, let alone the city. The winters and summers had reduced the animals’ food and water, and thus had reduced the animals. 

At this point, the King called together his counselors and demanded to know what he should do. His advisors threw out a lot of good ideas, like to run away, or hole up in the castle with the rest of the food, until the commoners sorted everything out, and pray that next spring will be enough for the survivors to replant and hopefully get everything back on track. 

The King sat back. Those were appealing options, definitely. More so the running away part. He didn't think he’d be able to sleep very well with all the starving people complaining in the streets. So, hypothetically, if they were going to run, which way would they go? 

The advisers pulled out of map. They could really only go east, across the ocean. Granted, those that have gone that way before, had either sailed for a month straight and found nothing, or had been lost to pirates. The King pointed to the map. To the mountains. “What about west?”

The advisors laughed. You couldn’t go west. No one had gone west. Though they lived in a peninsula, there was a miles long barrier of rocks, impassable to horses and carriages. No one had ever managed to make it more than halfway. Sailing west wasn't an option either. As far as anyone had ventured up the coast, it was a sheer cliff surrounded by sharp rocks jutting up from the ocean. No captain dare to sail close to it. No. West was out. So if they were going to flee, they would risk the pirates and head east. The King looked at each of his advisors. 

And what if he wasn't going to flee. Confused, the advisers hesitated. They didn't understand. The King started pacing back and forth. His people were starving, and despite his extremely minimal effort, which also happened to be the most work he had done in months, he couldn't save them by doing the same things. “What if, just beyond the mountains, there were people that can help? What if there were fields they could tame, or waters full of fish, and forests full of game?” What if he could save his people? 

One bold advisor asked if it even mattered what they said. He was just going to do it anyway, wasn’t he?

The King, lost in thought and already packing, looked up briefly. “Did he say something?”

That very night, the King slipped out of the city. It was easy with the riots in the chaos. He had taken his hunting party and his best knights, and together they camped for the evening by the barrier, on the edge of their world. 

In the morning, the King woke early with a start. Early rays illuminated the rocks, and he grinned. “The people that have been sent before, they were commoners, right?’

The knights thought about it. “Yeah, why?”

The King shrugged. “It wasn’t their fault, but they didn't understand the old ways. The ancient tongues. Someone had chipped away at the rock here, and to someone who hadn't been relentlessly educated against his will in ancient languages by a royal tutor, it just looked like an odd crack in the rocks. It wasn’t, though.” It was a symbol, a word. It meant: 

Here.

It took the better part of the morning, before they were able, with ropes and pulleys and a wedge, to wrangle the massive rock free from the opening. 

And it was an opening. A dark tunnel that stretched far into the rocks. It looked like it was naturally formed, now one had hewn it from the rocks. And yet it had been closed off. Why?

The King smiled and pointed down into the darkness. It seemed that the mountains weren't impassible anymore. It was time to go see what was on the other side. 

Progress was slow going. The hidden passage became so narrow in some spots that they had to walk sideways, and inching along. At the first neck, they had sent the horses back the capitol with one of the men, and continued on foot. Wider spots opened occasionally where the band could stop to rest, and by evening, they saw the light of the setting sun poking through the shadows up ahead. After hours upon hours of walKing in the dark, they arrived. Finally, on the other side of the mountains. For the first time in their history, someone had gone west. 

But it was cold, and barren. They couldn’t see much of the setting sun. As they squinted towards the highlands, stretching off into the distance, there wasn’t farmland, only mountains and barren crags. 

The King blinked and squinted again. It was far away, barely visible, but he saw it. He was sure of it. It was this silhouette against the darkness, but it was there. A tower. There were people west of the mountains. He smiled. Maybe all hope wasn't lost quite yet. 

When he awoke the next morning, the King commanded his knights and hunting party make all haste towards the tower. His people were dying, and they needed to move as quickly as possible if he was going to save them. 

The land was vast, and beautiful, and despite a tower being so close, the hunters said with certainty that no foot had ever trod in that region. Not in hundreds of years at least. The trees were old, older than any on the eastern side of the mountains, and they gnarled into fantastic shapes. The whole countryside had an eerie stillness to it. They saw no people, no animals, not even insects. 

Over the next four days, the royal guards stayed close to their King, and the hunters scattered out in all directions, as they made their way to the tower. Every hunter returned at the end of the day, saying that there was nothing, nothing at all in any direction. This place was as still has a tomb. When they finally heard a river, it came at them like a deafening flood, after the stillnesses of the previous few days. By the dawn of the fifth day, they arrived at the river that encircled the base the mountains. 

The King glanced up. And his heart sank. There was a walkway, but it was overgrown with moss and trees, and it had collapsed in some places. There weren’t people here to maintain it. By the look of it, this place had been abandoned hundreds of years ago. The King ordered the hunters to stay below, to keep scouting in all directions. They had to find a field, fertile soil, animals, something. Even if it meant bringing his people through the mountains, and leaving their homes, he wanted them to live. As for him, he was going to climb, to see what the top of the mountain held. Maybe there would be some answer up there. At the very least, they could see for miles. Maybe there would be some way to save his people.

It was another two days of climbing before they reached the base of the tower. And from that vantage point, the King could see that it wasn't just a tower on the mountains, it was actually a small city, built into the stone. The King took another step, and then nearly fell hundreds of feet to the sharp rocks below. 

In that moment, he heard it. The first sign of life. 

The Eagle flapped its enormous wings. It must have been twice the size of the largest Royal Guard member. It screeched when it saw the party maKing their way up the mountain, in its soar to its peak, the tallest tower. The King looked back at his guard, who weren’t nearly as bewildered as he was. They tapped their crossbows hanging on their backs, and nodded. And so, they continued their climb. 

There wasn’t just a city at the top of the mountain, but a vast palace. The palace alone was bigger than any the King had ever seen. It was bigger than his own town. The King stood in awe, and said that they should try to find a way inside. Obediently, the royal guard split up, and began looking around. 

The King thought it was the oddest thing. It was the largest, most impressive palace he’d ever seen, but there wasn’t a single door or window. His men scoured the perimeter, but found only a shear stone wall. Pulled from his thoughts, the King’s attention fell to the sounds of squawKing and yelling.There was trouble.

He rushed to the courtyard where one of his knights stood, his knife to a baby Eagle’s throat. Wings beat above him, already darkening the skies of the courtyard. “Hey!” the knight yelled. “Muflog, can I get a little help here?” 

Muflog, one of the King’s closest advisors and wise men, ran to the knight and threw up his arms. The King thought it would be nice to deescalate, but they were wild animals, birds. He ordered the knights to ready their crossbows. His knight had done this stupid thing by going to one of the Eagles’ nests, but they weren’t going to die for his mistake. 

But the knights did not ready their crossbows. Instead, they watched Muflog bow low before one of the birds. It began making several alternating shrill and guttural shrieks. He turned to the knight holding the knife and whispered, “Let the bird go.” 

He did, and all the Eagles circled and perched. Well, almost all the Eagles. Muflog faced the offending knight, and said he was sorry. He'd had to make a deal. 

Immediately, an Eagle swooped down, with talons as big as the knight’s leg, and lifted him into the air. The knight screamed, his shouts fading as he disappeared into the clouds. The baby flew back to her parents, and everyone resumed breathing once again. Clearing his throat, the King approached Muflog, asKing him, “What … what was all that?” 

Muflog shrugged. He was just straight with the birds. He admitted that they were scared of the creatures, and the humans had come to this land looking for food, because their people were dying. And the knight was a coward. It wasn’t Muflog’s first choice to give up the knight, but the man took a giant Eagle baby from her angry, giant Eagle mommy. “What did he expect was going to happen? Anyway, he was going to get eaten anyway, seeing as he didn’t speak their language, and they were angry, hungry birds of prey.”

The King nodded. “I just don't get how you were able to talk to birds, you know? That was the confusing part.” Muflog shrugged again. It was pretty well known he could talk to birds. He took a few electives at the community college.

Anyway, Muflog then told the King that the Eagles lived a the top of the tall tower. The kidnapped baby was a young one, a spry 700 year old. She was the granddaughter of the King, who was nearly two thousand years old.

The King sighed. “Oh, okay, this is nice.” They just finished scaling a mountain, and now they had to climb the tallest tower, occupied bt angry birds older than recorded time. The King turned to Muflog, and asked if maybe the Eagles could give them a ride. 

However, Muflog knew better than to ask. Not wanting to push his luck, Muflog squawked some gibberish towards the clouds and shook his head when no reply followed. Giving strangers a ride wasn't something the Eagles did. And so the King and his crew began their climb toward the top of the tallest tower. 

The King, Muflog and the one other knight brave enough to climb the tower threw themselves up over the side and shivered. They were so high off the ground, but no matter, they had made it, and they had a job to do. 

Across the room, their missing knight lay sleeping at the talons of the Eagle King, the grandfather who ruled over everything on this side of the mountains. The King stole a glance at the surrounding countryside below the tower, and his shoulders slumped. There was nothing. For as far as he could see, there was only highlands, uninhabitable and inhospitable. No life. No people. There was nothing on this side of the mountains that could save his people. 

He directed Muflog to wake the Eagle King. They needed to retrieve their knight, and they couldn’t climb down, let alone make a four day journey back, with angry eagles on their tail. 

Muflog nudged to sleeping Eagle’s talons. Nothing. He shook it. Nothing. He tapped the feathery expanse that was the Eagle’s stomach. Nothing again. Everyone joined in, jumping on him like a bean bag chair, and eventually, the grandfather Eagle blinked awake.

Muflog bowed low, and screeched as he begged forgiveness for the wayward knight, asking if he could take their man home. He’d made such a stupid mistake.

The Eagle, fully awake, dismissed the request. “Yeah, sure, whatever.” He was now transfixed on the face of the king. “How could this be? That the man had returned after 2,000 years?” The Eagle inched closer to the king. He said that the Eagles could have the palace, that’s what he said. That’s what he’d written. The Eagles were only doing what he’d asked. 

The king shook his head. He wasn't 2,000 years old. He didn't tell the Eagle to do anything. He had a crown, sure, but a lot of kings have crowns. 

The bird sat back. “Ohhh,” he thought it was part of the human king’s head. “Well, that made a lot of sense.” He said that the king looked like the king of old, but all humans kind of looked the same to him, so he could be wrong. 

Through Muflog, the king kept talking to the old Eagle, asking him what happened to this place. The Eagle told him exactly what he had just said. One day, the Eagles were allowed here, and the old king sealed up the palace, and all of its secrets. He sealed up the thing that would keep them alive. 

The King stepped backwards. That was interesting. Was there any way in?

“Maybe,” the Eagle replied, still pretty sleepy. When he arrived it was sealed. He was still a young bird then, and had absolutely no interest in getting inside. The nest was all they wanted. It kept them safe from the animals that used to roam these lands. Now, there was nothing. Nothing but stillness.  The Eagle continued. None of the humans knew how to get in either. It was a secret, a secret none of the men knew, except for the last. 

He has been an old, wise man who only returned to his home far too late, after it was sealed. One of the last things he uttered to the Eagles was the location of the door. It was where the first light at the palace, so they could always greet the dawn. 

The king thought a moment. He had seen the miles and miles of emptiness surrounding the castle; there was nothing within a week's ride in any direction that could save his people. Maybe, just maybe, the secret was inside. Regardless, it was their last, and only hope.

At the morning’s rays first broke over the horizon, the King and his nights stood ready before the stone wall. There was no mistaking it. This was where the first light hit. The mountains made sure of that. One shaft of light hit the wall, and the king pointed. They had some digging to do after.

Two hours later, they found it. A seam. After six hours, they had unearthed the door. And by the next morning, all was ready. Whoever had sealed it didn't want it found, ever. The hinges had long since deteriorated, so they had to hack away the door. Finally, a hole appeared, and the King and the others recoiled. If there was a stillness outside in the forest, it was nothing compared to the stillness within. 

They finished hacking away of what was left of the door, and began stepping inside. Inside was a stillness, a void, a silence so dead it could drive you mad. It was a building, a building bigger than their entire city. The party stood, frozen, as they took it all in. Inside were piles, piles upon piles of gold, diamonds, rubies, paintings, generations of spider webs from the arachnids that had managed to find a way in between the stones, hung from the ceiling, weighted down by dust. The great hall led into the throne room, and the knights and the King gripped their swords as they ventured closer. They found the throne room, but it had ceased being a throne room millenia ago. It was now a tomb.

Skeletons were scattered throughout the room. Some were alone, others were huddled together. All have been dead for years. Muflog hollered to the group. They’d been looking at the bones, and they had found something. 

He picked an arm away from the stone tablets, nearly a dozen of them piled next to a skeleton, still gripping at an ancient stone chisel. They were in the ancient tongue, the language that had marked the passageway. Muflog held them, and both he and his King read.

At first they were boring, almost pedestrian. They described a castle under siege, but the King looked back at the doorway. Who could besiege a castle like this? It was basically a city in the sky. There were spots where only one person could fit in the winding walkway there. The man who apparently wrote this, the one sprawled out on the floor, didn’t seem concerned. He said they had enough food with them to last months. Those outside would give up before then. Meanwhile, they had sealed the doors and windows. They were here with the food. All the attackers were outside with nothing. It was only a matter of time. And, apparently, time passed. 

The King and Muflog shuffled the tablets, and they read out that there was infighting among the besieged. Some wanted to give up. Others wanted to bring down the weapons of war on those outside. The King was confused. “It was an attacking army, why didn't they do that at the start?” They continue reading. The prince had escaped with a small band, right before the fighting broke out. He was going to look for- but the tablet was broken, a brownish-reddish substance smeared along the bottom edge. Violence had overcome. 

They read as more and more months passed, those outside still not giving up. The Eagles had come, but still, the pounding at the doors and walls was omnipresent. Still more months passed inside. The lights were now going out. They were running out of fuel. They had almost run out of food. The strong had already started eyeing the weak. The knights were looking at their King. One man ground up rubies and gemstones, trying to bake bread with them. This was an outrageously bad idea, and in the end, he ended up the same as everyone else, but just a little bit faster.

The King and Muflog scanned over more and more tablets, until they came to the last one. It was in different writing. The new scribe said he had taken over for the one who had been writing. He knew there was no way out. He had been huddled in a crevice, in one of the darker corners of the castle during the worst of it. He had woken up one morning to the sound of swords and screams. The knights had turned on the nobleman, on their king. All semblance of honor disappeared with the food. 

The last scribe had hid for days, until all the sound subsided. Now, he was the last one left, and this will be his legacy. He said that the pounding outside was gone. The people were all dead. If hunger didn't get them,then the Eagles did. They would be the Eagle’s eyries when he died. 

The writer said he looked up on the carved image of the king, in the middle of the room. This wasn’t just his fault. This was all their faults. They had squeezed the people until they revolted. The king and his nobles had secretly packed up all the city’s riches, and stored them in his keep. They had shut and barred the doors, hoarding the last of the food. They told themselves that they were better than everyone on the outside. That's why they deserved to survive. 

The writer had looked around at what was left of them. The strong had lived long enough to starve to death. What had all their riches bought them? Other than agony, and likely some severe indigestion, like the guy who tried to eat diamond shard biscuits. The writer said that he didn’t have much time. He was going to join his people. 

His prayer was that the prince had made it east, that he and his band had somehow found a passageway to the ocean. That would learn from the mistakes of his forefathers, and they would build something better. 

The King and Muflog stopped reading at the same time, and looked up the carved image of the king. The King had never much cared for lineage, never looked back at the ancient records. But if he did crack open the warped and dusty tomes, he imagined he would read of the first of his line, coming east, finding his way through the mountains, and building the city. 

The King looked all around the room. This, this was them. This was going to be them. He had bled his people dry, and he was going to lock himself and his nobles up in his castle, with all the food to wait out the winter. He had come here seeking a secret to save his people. 

There was no secret. Only work.

If he retreated to safety, he might survive a few months. But he would meet an end all the same. No, he needed to work with his people. To be a true King. Survive or die, thrive or starve, they would do it together. And now, he needed to get home. 

He stormed from the secret palace, and his knights called behind him, asking him if he wanted them to loot the castle. “Leave it,” he told them. They had a long march back. They were going to make it before the first snowfall. And besides, look what good the gold and jewels had done everyone before. 

Outside, the King's mind raced. What should he do? That's when he had an idea. “Call the Eagles,” he told his advisor.

Muflog paused. “Did you mean the Eagles they just learned had killed and eaten all the people on the outside?” 

The King nodded. “The very same.”

It didn't take much convincing. Muflog, on the King's orders, said that the Eagles had their home because of the people that died here, their people, and now those people needed help. 

Soaring overtop the mountains on an Eagle, the King turned to Muflog, who was holding on for dear life. “You know, why do the Eagles always just help out in the end? I feel like, in general, a lot of stories I’ve heard where giant Eagles save the day, most of the problems could have been solved if the Eagles took on a more active role earlier in the story. Also Muflog don’t translate that.”

As the King and his advisors soared above their familiar city, it was obvious they’d returned just in time. Riots were in full swing, shouts audible from far away. He and Muflog looked out on the ocean. A seven day march had taken mere minutes on the Eagle’s back. They looked to the angry city, and then across the sea. How far could an Eagle fly? After a moment's hesitation, the King sighed, and Muflog asked the Eagle to land. 

When the knights and the hunting party finally returned weeks later they saw something that shocked them. The King was working? He was out among his people, among those who were hungry, which was everyone. But they were working together. There wasn't a lot they could do in the late autumn to help the crops, but come winter? The King would ration out the royal food supply. No one would starve.

The King was also pouring as much money as he could into building new ships. They might not have animals, but they had forests, both here and beyond the mountains. The King melted down iron, steel, and any other metal he had to help build the vessels. And, when it started to grow cold, he converted all of his ballrooms to shelters, to protect those who didn’t have a home. 

In the end, the King and his people survived the winter, and many winters after that. Soon, their numbers swelled, and they began to colonize the land west of the mountains, stretching as far as the old palace. 

When they asked the King’s great-great-granddaughter what she wanted to do with it, she said said that they would leave the Eyrie to the Eagles.

It would stand forever, as a reminder of one king's folly, and another’s wisdom.

*I release one picture from the story each day on the tenth, in scrambled order, until I run out and post the title and the story itself, along with an explanation for my art and any changes I made to the tale (I only do that the European stories). But if you guess the story before then, then you win an art commission! Check it out, I’d love for someone to win! :) I post other art every day - i’ve challenged myself to have a different piece of art each day of the year for my first year, and I’m not doing too bad :) A lot of it is old tbh. 

[ladystylestores]

How cell phones and Facebook are changing remote Nunatsiavut

Enlarge / The town of Nain.

Dennis Minty/Adventure Canada

Moravian missionaries arrived in Canada in the 1700s, forever altering the future of the country’s Inuit population. Beginning in the 19th century, Inuit children were taken away from their families and forced to attend residential schools (boarding schools), where they were not allowed to speak their own language. In the 1950s, thousands of Inuit in Nunatsiavut (the easternmost of Canada’s four Inuit regions) were forcibly removed from their land and stripped of their native language and customs. As a result, a generation of students that lost their culture gave birth to children who are now, themselves, searching for new ways to reclaim it.

Restoring that culture is a challenge, because many Inuit currently live in remote communities that lack roads and transportation infrastructure, leaving them isolated from each other. But technology has started helping them to connect with other Inuit across the country, to preserve traditional cultural practices, and to create a space for young people to learn about and participate in their heritage.

Of the 65,000 Inuit spread across Canada, about 7,200 are Labrador Inuit. About a third of these Labrador Inuit reside in Nunatsiavut, which has five major Inuit communities scattered along the coastline of Newfoundland Labrador province. None of the communities are connected to each other—or to anywhere else for that matter— by road, and they can only be reached by airplane or boat. Nain, with a population of approximately 1,200 people, is the largest and northernmost Inuit community.

But Nain has a key advantage in terms of integrating into the wider Inuit world: it’s the only one of these communities with mobile cellular service. Up until a year ago, web surfing and social media usage was largely confined to the home in Nain. In July 2019, however, mobile phone service arrived in Nain.

Some Inuit parents have the same concerns as parents in more connected regions, such as whether their children are spending too much time online. But some of those children are using the technology to connect with Inuit communities—and their traditions—that they might never experience otherwise.

Life before cell coverage

I arrived in Nain in September 2019 on an Adventure Canada expedition ship, just two months after cell service arrived in the city. We were the first (and only) expedition ship to visit the town of 1,100 people all year. After seven days of sailing and hiking without Internet access, the town’s new cell service was a very welcome surprise to the mostly Canadian and American passengers on board. Many of those passengers immediately logged on to social media.

Even though cell phone coverage wasn’t available until recently, some Nain residents had cell phones that they used to connect to the Internet using home Wi-Fi connections. But until 2019, they had no reason to take their phones with them outside the house unless they were traveling to another part of Canada that had service.

Many residents—the younger ones, especially—had learned to work around the limited access. Megan Dicker, a 20-year-old geography student from Nain, said of the new cellular plans, “It wasn’t really that big of a change from before. We knew all the houses with Wi-Fi so we’d just stop to connect along the route to wherever we were going.” Dicker firmly believes that the new cell phone service is a good thing, but she noted that it must be used “in moderation.”

Enlarge / Megan Dicker shows off her traditional tattoos.

Cassandra Brooklyn

According to Bert Pomeroy, the Nunatsiavut Government’s Director of Communications, Inuit communities have long struggled with not only access to cellular coverage, but to adequate Internet speeds. As recently as two years ago, bandwidth was so limited in Nain that even the local government employees had difficulty sending files among each other. “Someone trying to send time sheets or a PDF to the payroll department may have to wait a few minutes for it to go through,” Pomeroy said. “It got even worse in the afternoon when kids got out of school and got on Xbox or Netflix.”

When cell service arrived, Nain’s new mobile phone plans included data usage limits, so there was a need to educate the community on how these plans worked. Until this time, the only experience most people had with the Internet was with the unlimited access they enjoyed on a home Wi-Fi connection. 

To help their neighbors avoid overage charges, the local Nunatsiavut Government and some individual citizens took it upon themselves to inform the community. Local residents who understood the data plans began posting explanations on their personal Facebook feeds to help inform their friends and family. In other words, they were using technology to educate others about technology.

The social media debate

There are some obvious practical benefits to the expanded access. The Inuit-led Nunatsiavut regional government in Nain has also embraced social media, sharing posts about upcoming cultural commemorations and doctor visits. Optometrists and dentists only visit the community every month or two, so it’s crucial that residents know when they can make appointments. When COVID-19 hit Canada, the Nunatsiavut Government and local politicians used social media to share information about social distancing.

Though Facebook and social media had already been available on desktop computers, locals in Nain have noticed a significant increase in its use since mobile phone service arrived. Some parents and elders are upset to see their children and grandchildren whipping out their phones during community events. They lament that instead of engaging with their neighbors and participating in celebrations and sporting events, some youth now prefer to stare at their screens.

At least half a dozen community members I spoke with expressed concern with the increasing amount of time they and their neighbors now spend online. One woman said she enjoys browsing her family and friends’ Facebook pages for about 15 minutes, after which she begins feeling depressed. Several residents also expressed concern with “over sharing” and “inappropriate” Facebook posts—a symptom of social media culture that just about anyone with a Facebook account has witnessed firsthand.  

Enlarge / Wayne Broomfield worries that a focus on devices will lessen the younger generation’s connection to the land.

Cassandra Brooklyn

Young people see the experience a bit differently. They are finding Inuit peers in other communities through mutual friends on social media. Teenagers search through their friends’  Instagram followers and Facebook friends to find other Inuit youth with similar interests. They follow each other online and then share cultural information with each other, sometimes by live streaming from community gatherings.

Wayne Broomfield, the assistant expedition leader on Adventure Canada’s tours through Nunatsiavut, accepted the good aspects of social media but voiced a different worry. “A lot of young Inuit aren’t connecting with the land anymore because they can do it so much more easily online,” he said. “It’s good that they’re learning more about their culture on social media, but you can’t get the same connection online as you can from actually going out on the land.”

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[wayneooverton]

The curious story of the Falkland Islands

Deep in the heart of the Southern Ocean, roughly 500 kilometers due east from the bottom of Argentina, you’ll find the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), an incredibly wild and rocky conglomerate of hundreds of islands, home to some insane wildlife, epic landscapes, and a truly remarkable history, that I’m guessing, you probably don’t know much about.

I unashamedly admit I didn’t know much about the Falklands before we landed here after setting sail from Argentina to begin our adventure to the Antarctic with Quark Expeditions, even though I have a mild polar obsession. My knowledge was limited to vague textbook memories from high school about a war.

What I was greeted with was a remarkable surprise – the Falklands were amazing.

About as different as I could have imagined for being so close to Antarctica, the Falklands are made up of stunning beaches that intersect with rolling green hills with a cottage hidden away here and there, it was a mix of both the old world we are all familiar with and the utterly unknown. A true bridge to the Antarctic.

Often touted as the gateway to Antarctica, the Falkland Islands are well worth visiting on their own right and as an introduction to the subantarctic islands of the Southern Ocean.

There are far more voyages by ship that travel down to the Antarctic Peninsula than to the Falklands and South Georgia.

If you find yourself on a journey to the Falklands, you’ve discovered a place few experience. I applaud you. In fact, I believe the Falklands are the perfect introduction to Antarctica, a place easier to get to and will likely inspire a deep fascination with this part of the world.

We spent the first day at sea with Quark getting to know the ship the Ocean Adventurer, as well as the incredible expedition team and staff. This would be a collective experience for all and we couldn’t wait to get started. For someone who often doesn’t get to sleep in the same bed every night, it was a real treat to settle into my cozy bed in my cabin and tucking all my belongings away for an adventure.

As our wobbly legs and weak constitutions began to harden up, we caught sight of land at the Falkland Islands. It was sunny and warm, and not a cloud to mark the bright blue sky as we boarded the zodiacs for the first time guided by the expert expedition team, to heard to land and begin a exploring a world new to all of us.

We were greeted with friendly faces, white sandy beaches, and a lot of penguins, and it didn’t take long for us to understand that we had arrived at a curious, unique place in the world and we couldn’t wait to get to know it.

The story of these subantarctic islands at the bottom of the world is a fascinating one, utterly distinct from anywhere else on earth. Follow along with me as I introduce you to one of my new favorite places: the Falkland Islands. Enjoy!

Falklands (Malvinas) and South Georgia: Islands of the Southern Ocean

The history

Settled, claimed and disputed by many countries over the years, the Falklands are nothing if not controversial. Even chasing to say “Falklands” over “Malvinas” potentially is offensive.

Claimed by Argentina, the islands have been under British control since 1833, which simmered until it erupted in open conflict in 1982 before the Argentinians surrendered after the Falklands War. Nowadays over 98% of people on the islands vote to remain a UK overseas territory.

Also, did I mention the population is less than 3,000 souls? Lovingly nicknamed “Kelpers,” and mostly of British descent living in the only town of Stanley.

The birds

Let’s be honest, I’m just here for the birds.

When people say that the Falkland Islands are home to some incredible wildlife, they mean it. In New Zealand, we freak out if we see one penguin or an albatross. These are species that are super rare and endangered, and you count yourself very lucky to lay eyes on one.

In the Falklands over 220 species of bird live or breed, and you’ll likely to encounter 5 types of penguins. Welcome to this part of the world!

Our first landing on West Point Island brought us on a lovely hike up the hills to some incredible sea cliffs. As we made our way down, suddenly an incredible colony of Black-browed Albatrosses were visible amongst the tall grasses.

Well, if I’m honest, I could smell them before I could see them.

Dozens of albatross sat on nests and huge fluffy chicks were sleeping amongst them along with many rockhopper penguins and their chicks too.

It was a veritable zoo of wild and rare birds. Obviously I freaked out and didn’t know what to do. I had never seen anything like it, and it took several minutes of gazing adoringly at these fat fluffy chicks ooh-ing and ahh-ing to myself before I was even able to take photos.

And this isn’t a unique scenario – later on at our second landing of Saunders Island we encountered even more birds all living together seemingly cohesively, even with some sheep thrown in for good measure! What a place!

Honestly, how angry does this Magellanic penguin look in his hole? Caption contest, anyone?

The beaches

I seriously doubt if you asked anyone to describe what they imagine islands off of the continent of Antarctica to look like and they would reply with white sandy beaches. But here we are.

Perhaps one of the biggest surprises for me when we made our first landing on the Falklands were the white sandy beaches. Oh, and all the penguins on the beaches. Not what you expect!

On the first day I had time to catch up with our amazing expedition leader Ali who told me that Saunder’s Island, where we were about to visit, was one of her favorite places on the entire trip. And after spending a day there, wandering amongst many penguins on white beaches, I couldn’t agree more.

Surely there isn’t anywhere else like this on earth?!

As we zoomed close to the shore, the water became clear and turquoise, and you could see straight to the bottom. It looked like a swimming pool. One quick dip of the fingers though or a splash to the face and you’re very much reminded how close to the South Pole you actually are.

As inviting as it looked, you couldn’t pay me to jump in.

Penguins mingle on the white sand making for a truly ironic image that I’ll likely never to forget.

The Defenders

Can someone please explain to me why every other car in the wee town of Stanley are a Land Rover Defenders?

It’s a hipster Instagrammers dream come true.

We had several hours to wander Stanley, take in the sights and enjoy the local pub culture. But what began as a walking tour of the town with just Jarrad and I quickly degenerated into “let’s spot the Defender” photoshoot, both of us unashamed hipster Instagrammers who’s biggest dream would be to own one of these pricy rides.

Defender police car. Defender ambulance. Defender firefighter. Retro landies meet more modern whips. WHY? I must know why there are so many in a town of 2,100 souls.

My theory is that the Falklands are stereotypically British, between all of the Defenders, union jacks and small town pubs and red phone booths, it really felt about as British as you could get, being about as far from Britain as you can possibly get.

You could easily picture the Queen herself rolling on by in one of these rides with a bunch of corgis for company.

Curious, curious.

The views

The Falklands are also incredibly colorful and full of stunning views around every corner.

In Antarctica, the world is desaturated of color, everything blends into shades of blue, grey and white. But the Falklands couldn’t be more different, vibrant and alive, somewhat reminiscent of places like Ireland with its wild coastlines and green hills.

If only Ireland had less people, more penguins and a incredible population of Defenders.

Request a quote to adventure to the Falklands and South Georgia with Quark Expeditions today!

It’s one of the Antarctic’s best-kept secrets

There is no where quite like the Falklands. If you’re a curious and intrepid traveler like me, always seeking secret spots and getting off the map, it’s for you. 

The Falklands are a place that few travelers visit as there aren’t many voyages there, and many aren’t aware of the incredible views and exceptional wildlife opportunities that are available. It’s a place that intrigues and inspires, unlike anywhere on earth and a unique bridge between the modern world we are familiar with the and the vast emptiness of the Antarctic. 

These islands are a kept secret of the region and this definitely won’t be my last visit here.

Have you heard of the Falkland Islands before? Is visiting a place like this on your bucketlist? What’s the most curious place you’ve ever traveled to before? Share!

Book the Falklands and South Georgia today and use promo code LIZ150 for $150 onboard credit that can be used for purchases on board at the polar gift shop, or, cough cough, the bar

Many thanks to Quark Expeditions for helping get me to the Falkland Islands, like always, I’m keeping it real, all opinions are my own, like you could expect less from me!

The post The curious story of the Falkland Islands appeared first on Young Adventuress.

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[luckybouquetnachous-blog]

Which Wine? The Selection Is Yours

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It's merely one of the vital beautiful locations in Europe and holds a world heritage standing. You see the winter months could have occasions when there will probably be quite a long spells of clear skies, lovely sunshine with temperatures round 19 to 21 levels Celsius. This is the famous Mateus that introduced many of the older technology to the world of wine. Inside Portugal, folks could choose to travel by way of buses, trams, cabs, and underground tubes. Also the indigenous folks were probably extra worried of the conflict like Franks who lived above the Pyrenees than they were of the Berbers from North Africa whom they had identified for a few years as trading companions and other people of commerce. The closing meal's focus was selfmade chicken breast nuggets fried in oil with dried basil, black pepper, and crushed chilies. The rugged, volcanic rock shoreline, with a sharp decline in the sea-shelf, meant that Madeira attracted distinctive sea life to its neighborhood. The Algarve is the southwestern tip of Portugal and borders on both the Atlantic and Mediterranean oceans. Here on the port lodges you'll be able to pattern ports from the three sub-zones of the Douro Valley, the world's first demarcated wine region. For windsurfing and sailing, head to Meia Praia in the Lagos area of the Algarve, a popular beach with locals and guests alike. Once you realize in your coronary heart that you are working with reliable folks and are proud of the provide you've been made you have to be prepared to reserve your rental villa or house and benefit from the closing preparations for your holidays. The neoclassical nineteenth-century Stock Alternate Palace can be a wonderful structure where you may get a guided tour. Portugal experiences mild temperatures at most instances of the year. Do not accept the very first seemingly good deal you come across; sit down and spend an hour (or two) researching on numerous travel and airline web sites to see who is providing the best possible deals. At one time in the 15th and 16th centuries, lengthy after the influence of the Celts, Romans and the Moors, Lagos loved a golden age of discovery, with ships crusing to search out new lands and trade routes from its port. If you are feeling hungry one can find the museum restaurant to have a good selection of delicious meals. The final step that an individual must take when buying real property in Portugal is the payment of the Imposto Municipal Sobre, a tax imposed on real estate transactions in that country. Nevertheless in time because the years gently move to centuries it does sadly present many opportunities for persecution. When flowers are made into tea, it makes an excellent help to digestion and it helps in alleviating the discomforts of upset abdomen. A perfect method to have a very good time and cool down on a scorching day, and extremely more likely to be a spotlight for kids. They are superb, and the countryside around them consists of lush rolling inexperienced hills and could be very reality all of Ponta Delgada is. There are many other things you can do in Ponta Delgada like go whale and dolphin watching or visit the recent springs, not forgetting the pineapple farms. On 31 july 2005, after rolling over 9 occasions, the European lotto prize of €one hundred fifteen million ($152 million) was received on a ticket bought in Garryowen, Limerick, Ireland. Subsequently, it is only logical to have interaction in a reliable local tourist guide who is aware of the place inside out earlier than flying off to your holiday destination or during your vacation. Muslim invaders from North Africa during the eight-century have additionally enriched the structure in southern Portugal. With three lovely seashores - Praia da Rainha, Praia da Ribeira and Praia da Conceicao - you can be spoilt for alternative. Most tourists are shuttled off to the central Algarve leaving essentially the most stunning and unspoiled areas within the east and the west for unbiased tourists. Strolling is a well-liked pursuit right here, particularly along the coastal route from Cascais to the Boca do Inferno which is nice fun throughout a storm or at excessive tide, however not for the faint hearted! I all the time make an effort to know what type of leisure actions interest my golfers before reserving a golf holiday. The historic metropolis of Oporto presents an unlimited array of structure, a 12th century cathedral, outdated churches, the Maria Pia Bridge which was constructed by Eiffel (of the Eiffel Tower Paris fame) and once the longest arch bridge on this planet, medieval alleys leading off steep cobbled streets, an previous riverside quarter, waterside bars and cafes, shops, parks and gardens.