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Michigan Pirate Fest, August 2012 - Grand Haven, MI

Photo: Mission
The boys standing around before the battle meeting
Chapter 7th: Sunday afternoon - Of the Sunday battle preparations and battle; More time spent with the Dufrense children; Further comments on the Forsaken/Mercury encampment; Various punishments of malefactors including a errant Roman soldier and a birthday boy and A look at Sergio the photographer.

There was another Sunday Battle planning session that was so fascinating that I didn't take any picture of it other than ones like you see at left. The plan for the battle today was essentially the same as it was for Saturday with a little more integration of the trebuchet and ballista and a little less vigorous screaming on the part of the messenger Tinkerbell.

There may have been other refinements, but I confess that I was more interested in taking bad photos.

Once the battle meeting was over, I wandered around a bit more since I was already away from my surgeon's table. I found myself at the Dufrenses place again and I talked with the folks there for awhile.

Photo: Mission
The Dufrenses (minus Zeke the Salesman:
Danielle, Trudi, Zach, Dennis holding
Alexander aka 'Lil' Flint', Elisabeth and Ruth.
I learned that Zach (the story-teller) was particularly good at providing sound effects for stories. In fact, when I told Dennis that I had spent part of the evening listening to him tell the rather disjointed tale of Chicken Joe, Dennis said that he was surprised that it was a story at all. "Zeke usually tells the story and Zach supplies the sound effects."

Zeke is a mysterious figure to me. The only place I can recall meeting him was when he decided to hijack my surgical presentation to sell my listeners and me fake pieces of eight. The family came round to see the Forsaken and Mercury site later in the day... all except Zeke. I can only guess that he was still running around extorting real money from patrons with his basket filled with fake money.

The Dufrenses are pretty focused on the historical aspect of pirate reenacting. In fact, they actually set up a 'legitimate front' for their privateering enterprises (seen below left.) Many pirates turned to logwood cutting when they left the profession for one reason or another, so I am guessing that this is what the Merentha Shipping Co. was set up to do.

Talking further with Zach, I learned that his pirate familiar was the turtle. Just as his sister Danielle is fond of Dolphins (thus her photographer moniker: Dolphin Danie), Zach liked turtles. He even had a pouch made from a turtle shell for carrying whatever it is that young boys carry around with them. (Snakes, snails and puppy dog tails?) (Actually, that's kind of morbid when you think about it.) I do wonder what Elizabeth's and Zeke's pirate familiars were. (Come to think of it, Zeke's is probably a fox. Or a weasel.)

Photo: Mission The Dufrenses 'Legitimate front'

Photo: Mission Ruth and Zach

Photo: Mission Zach's pouch

Photo: Sergio Mazzotta Danielle, lover of dolphins

I finally returned to my table, where I stayed until Mark Gist told me we needed to prepare for battle. I already suspected that this was the case because I had seen the civil war reenactors walking their cannon out to the pirate's end of the battlefield. Hearing the (somewhat muted) shrieks of Tinkerbell confirmed it for me.

Photo: Rootjack The boys out walking their cannon. The civil war joins forces with the pirates. (That's Dan Leonard leading the way.)

Photo: Mission's Camera Tinkerbell attacking Caesar. Kids! See how many historical inaccuracies you can find here!

Photo: Mission
Once they had captured Caesar, the pirates again gathered at the opposite side of the field to engage in the battle and try and negotiate a ransom for the Roman leader.

The defenders took the field in the person of the Forsaken and the various Roman soldiers who wanted their leader back.

We obviously refused the ransom or something like that (I say 'we' because I was on the defenders side again. That's where the deck gun was located.) There was some further back and forth between the two factions that I don't recall because I was busy getting the deck gun ready to fire.

Photo: Mission Defiant pirates holding Caesar and rattle their swords

Photo: Mission Thomas and Rats prepare to fight

Photo: Mission The enemy's over there!

Photo: Sergio Mazzotta
Having completed the necessary preliminaries, the weapon firing began in earnest. It was a pretty coordinated thing, with all the weapons being fired at once this time. However, I have decided to separate them into types of weapons. Why? Because I can.

We begin with the hand weapons. The pirates seemed to have a few more than yesterday. Or maybe the photographers just
Photo: Sergio Mazzotta
captured a few more. Either way, here you see some nice shots of Dan Leonard and Hookah Joe discharging their pieces. (Their handguns would have been bloody useless at this range, but why spoil their fun by telling them?)

On the other side of the field, the Forsaken using long guns and blunderbusses that would have had greater range, but not much accuracy. (But again, why spoil their fun? They made a lot of racket and kicked up a lot of smoke which made them happy.) M.A. d'Dogge appears to have been so engrossed in a shot that he somehow managed to get his magic helmet stuck on his head. Fortunately, Rats came to his rescue.

Photo: Sos Boss

Photo: Sos Boss

Photo: Rootjack

Now hand weapons are fine instruments, but for racket and smoke, you can't beat the large weapons. On the pirate side, they once again were using the civil war cannon that we saw earlier. Here was a cannon that could kick up a lot of smoke! We defenders had Mark Gist's deck gun and smaller cannon. These didn't create as much smoke, but they still made a heckuva racket. I'm proud to say that one of my deck guns shots was possibly the loudest at the event. (We couldn't measure that of course, but it seemed awfully loud.)

Photo: Sergio Mazzotta Now THAT'S some serious smoke!

Photo: Sergio Mazzotta Mission and Mark preparing to fire

Photo: Sergio Mazzotta Smoke, but not quite as serious.

The Roman arrows and ballista and the trebuchet
Photo: Dolphin Danie
The Romans firing arrows at the enemy

Photo: Rootjack
Rats preparing to return some of the arrows
were a dead loss if you were going for fire and noise, but they have an intrinsic cool factor that sort of trumps the black powder weapons. Or maybe that's just the engineer in me.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, it was decided to launch these weapons in tandem with the black powder firing. So if you want to get the sound of the battle, you have to add the black powder hand weapons firing to the cannons firing to the springy, creaky wooden weapons launching. Got it? Me neither. And I was there. (I'm telling ya', that deck gun was loud. My ears were ringing and I couldn't hear much else.)

Photo: Dolphin Danie Firing bolts and balls from the ballista

Photo: Dolphin Danie Trebuchet unloading

Photo: Mission Run, pirate, run! A melon explodes on the field

Eventually everyone ran out of ammo and they had to come to some kind of agreement. So the Forsaken nervously came forward to meet Hookah Joe, esteemed representative of the pirates and local restaurant critic. While the pirates and the Forsaken negotiated for Caesar, his loyal soldiers snuck around the distracted pirates and grabbed Caesar and took him away from them without their knowledge. At least I assume that's what happened based on these pictures. I couldn't actually hear any of it and hadn't listened very closely at the battle planning meeting as I mentioned.

Photo: Mission The defenders and pirates nervously parley

Photo: Rootjack "Five! Five rounds fired! Ah ah ah!"

Photo: Sergio Mazzotta Romans spirit Caesar away

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With the battle over, everyone returned to camp to take care of various tasks that needed taking care of there. I was planning to leave soon, so I started packing up my surgical gear. The Forsaken crew went right back to their display as you see below.

Photo: Mission Thomas Alleman and Rats sit around chatting while they clean their guns

Photo: Rootjack "One for you, one for me. Two for you, One, Two for me, Three for you, One, Two... "

Photo: Sergio Mazzotta M.A. d'Dogge and a young man haul Joe away.

While I was packing my stuff away, there was a hubbub in the Forsaken Camp.
Photo: Dolphin Danie
The Romans capture Mykien Minimus
This in itself wasn't all that unusual - the Forsaken seemed to regularly engage in hubbubs - but this hubbub centered around a bunch of the green toga'd Roman Soldiers and their prisoner in white.

Now, this prisoner had some kind of backstory that I became aware of only when searching through the on-line photos which people posted. Obviously I wasn't there, but I will tell you exactly what happened without the need to unnecessarily clutter my explanation with actual facts.

Mykien Minimus was starving to death because his father Fatuous Minimus's habit of playing at dice (or whatever way people gambled during the first century) and lost the family fortune made by their grandfather, business Maximus Minimus (come on - surely you saw that one coming) who ran a company that mass produced ionic architraves.

Being needy and self-rightous, Mykien snuck up to a local Roman vendor (not seen here because he doesn't exist) and stole a sip of water, a discarded crust of bread, a melon rind and the bracelet of Anubis. (Wait, I think I'm
Photo: Dolphin Danie
The Romans drag the schlub off
confusing my ancient peoples here. Oh, well. It doesn't matter.)

The Roman soldiers were sent off to find him and treat him with extremius prejudious, which they did. They dragged his sorry Roman thief butt back to the Roman encampment and crucified the poor schlub. Curiously, they appear to have fed him grapes after his crucifixion, which seems to be counter to the intent of the whole crucifixion thing, but what do I know?

Then, because the poor schlub hadn't suffered enough, they brought him over and locked him in the stocks. This is where I came into the story of Mykien's life. I was packing things up and I saw all the Romans tromp into the Forsaken encampment and stick him in their stocks.

The Forsaken crew are forever telling people that when someone was locked in the stocks, the hoi polloi threw rotten food, dead animals and waste water at them. Since Mykien had eaten grapes after being crucified, Caesar decided to punish him for that transgression by having Jaime throw water at him in the stocks. (Seen below right in a really good photo of it.)

Photo: Dolphin Danie Feeding grapes to the crucified. (?)

Photo: Mission The Roman Prisoner in the stocks

Photo: Mission An action shot of splashing Mykien

Since torture seemed to be the order of the afternoon, Billie Beach decided to get involved.
Photo: Rootjack
"I believe I can fly. I believe I can touch the sky."
Among other things, he let the Forsaken crew string him up on the block and tackle system used to raise the gibbet. They did some hanging shots that I could have posted here, but I thought the flying shot was funnier because it looks like he should be singing. (The original song I thought of was "You can fly" from Peter Pan which fits, but the song is broken up by a bunch of talking.)

Based on the number of photos I found of this, they must have left him up there for quite a while. I suppose it would be sort of fun to be strung up like that if they had a good harness on you. (And yet, something tells me the Forsaken don't have a good harness on you. It's probably an old piece of tarred rope that goes around your chest under your clothes.) Whatever the case, Billie didn't seem to mind it too much.

Then they locked him in the stocks. Now those of you who are regular readers will immediately recognize what this portends. Recall that it was Billie's birthday weekend celebration/ Only a fool who was celebrating his birthday would agree to be put into the stocks by this crew.

Photo: Sergio Mazzotta
Billie locked in the stocks. What me worry?
Why? Think back to Saturday afternoon at the Spring Santa Maria event and Sunday morning at Put-in-Bay. Yeah, remember it now? That's why.

But Billie had already made that mistake and was in the stocks during his birthday weekend celebration. On cue, Trish (the last victim of this childish prank) appeared with a tray of cupcakes. The inevitable occurred as you see below.

As an aside, if you look at the photo below left, you will notice that all the tormenters are women. If you think back to the first time this stunt was pulled, it was the idea of a woman (Michelle Murillo.) What is it with women and the birthday cupcake torture?

Photo: Mission Trish appears with a tray of cupcakes.

Photo: Mission She teases him - it's close to his beard...

Photo: Sergio Mazzotta ...and inevitably smears it all over.

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I don't want to end this Journal on such a horrible torture note, so let's do a profile of someone who the crew was able to spend a little time with after all that nonsense was finally over. You may have noticed a lot of the photos in this Journal are courtesy of Sergio Mazzotta

Photo: Rootjack
"I believe I can fly. I believe I can touch the sky."
Sergio has been dressing in pirate garb for the last four years, gradually 'building his collection' as he puts it. He told me that he first became interested in pirates as a kid, watching pirate movies. His interest was renewed when he came across the artwork of Howard Pyle and NC Wyeth about 5 years ago.

Sergio is a professional artist. In fact, the reason he takes all the photos he does is so that he can use them as a reference for his artwork. He had a booth set up at the event where some of his Michigan Pirate Festival related art was on display as you see in the photos below.

Sergio told me his favored media are acrylic paints, watercolors, pen and ink, and pencil. "I enjoy painting period clothing, performers, and images with mood or story." He mentioned several different jobs he held including working in the animation industry in Toronto and Ontario, teaching art to youths and adults, creating art for shows and exhibitions and doing commission orders on request. He told me that when it comes to his artwork, "I have credited everything I do at my drawing table to Godzilla. When i was little I loved Godzilla (still do) and I would draw him and draw him... and here I am now!"

Photo: Mission Sergio talking with Billie after the birthday episode.

Photo: Mission Sergio's art booth at the Festival

Photo: Mission A sampling of Sergio's artwork

Once I had finished packing, I loaded all my gear into my truck and said my farewells. I am generally not a big fan of going around and saying goodbye (it takes too long), but this was the kind of event where I wanted to do that. Then I headed out, the memories of a fun and interesting weekend tumbling around in my mind.

 

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