Pirates Ahoy!: Pirates Ahoy! News

"Our motto is, ‘It’s good to be a kid again.’ The two guys who helped me build this are in their 80s, and they loved working on this and being a part of this," said Woodson, who has been a commercial artist and a boater for 30 years and is an island-style solo singer. "I’ve always loved pirates and buried treasures. I always thought it would be great to go to the Caribbean and look for sunken treasure. I’ve seen ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ 50 times, looked at designs of ships, looked at Blackbeard and other pirates. I did a lot of research."

Woodson built the Gypsy Rose from an existing vessel, a twin-engine 1977 Carver. He worked on it three months last spring and finished the ship last winter with the help of two friends and his girlfriend, Martha Ifland, of Ballwin, Mo., who is known on the Gypsy Rose as "Wench Martha" to Woodson’s "Captain Tim."

Anglers - c. Cheats, petty Thieves, who have a Stick with a hook at the end, with which they pluck things out of Windows, Grates, &c. also those that draw in People to be cheated.

Arsworm - a little diminutive Fellow.

Buffenapper - c. a Dog-stealer, that Trades in Setters, Hounds, Spaniels, Lap, and all sorts of Dogs, Selling them at a round Rate, and himself or Partner Stealing them away the first opportunity.

Bumfodder - what serves to wipe the Tail.

Bundletail - a short Fat or squat Lass.

Cackling-farts - c. Eggs.

Dandyprat - a little puny Fellow.

Farting-crackers - c. Breeches.

Humptey-dumptey - Ale boild with Brandy.

Grumbletonians - Malecontents, out of Humour with the Government, for want of a Place, or having lost one.

Fizzle - a little or low-sounding Fart.

THE HAGUE — Dutch solo sailor Laura Dekker, 14, began her round-the-world record bid from Gibraltar Saturday, after slipping away from the media spotlight and Portuguese police, the television company covering her voyage said.

"She left the harbour of Gibraltar," Marijke Schaaphok, whose television company Masmedia has signed an exclusive rights contract with Dekker, told AFP, saying she had spoken to the teenager's agent Peter Klarenbeek.

Schaaphok said Dekker would probably head for the Spanish Canary Islands or possibly Portugal's Madeira, depending on the wind, arriving in six or eight days.

She said Dekker had finally decided to make the British possession at the southern tip of Spain the starting point for her voyage because "the Portuguese police were making problems because of her age."

The police had paid her a visit at sea while she made final tests of her boat, the red-hulled, 11.5 metre (38 foot) ketch Guppy, in which she had arrived from the Netherlands in the southern Portuguese port of Portimao a week ago, Schaaphok said.

Klarenbeek had told AFP that she would be leaving Portimao on Saturday, but other sailors in the marina there said she and her boat had not been seen since Wednesday.

Port authorities confirmed a report by the Lusa news agency that Portuguese law does not allow a minor to sail alone.

At the end of July Dekker won a 10-month court battle with Dutch child welfare authorities who had been preventing the voyage for fear it would stunt Dekker's social and emotional development.

The petite blonde wants to break the record for the youngest world solo sail set in May by Australian teenager Jessica Watson. Watson completed a non-stop, unassisted round-the-world trip a few days before her 17th birthday.

Dekker turns 17 on September 20, 2012, allowing her a little over two years to complete the trip, during which she intends to stop at several ports along the way.

She has said her route from Portugal will take her across the Atlantic Ocean and into the Pacific via the Panama Canal. She plans to stop at the Galapagos islands before heading to Australia, Thailand and through the pirate-infested Gulf of Aden back to Europe.

Ile Sainte-Marie, or St. Mary's Island as it is known in English, became a popular base for pirates throughout the 17th and 18th centuries due to several reasons: it was not far from the maritime routes along which ships returning from the East Indies sailed in transit, their holds overflowing with wealth, it was provided with bays and inlets protected from storms and finally, it had abundant fruit and was situated in quiet waters. Legendary pirates like William Kidd, Robert Culliford, Olivier Levasseur, Henry Every, and Thomas Tew, lived in the île aux Forbans, an island located in the bay of Sainte Marie's main town, Ambodifotatra. Many of them would found a family line. A lot of vestiges of this history remains at Sainte Marie. For example, several authentic pirate vessels still lie within a few meters of the surface in the Baie des Forbans. Two of these have been tentatively identified as the remains of Captain Kidd's Adventure Galley and Captain Condent's Fiery Dragon.

The utopian pirate republic of Libertatia was also rumored to exist in this area, although the republic's existence, let alone its location, has never been proven.

P'town explorer heading to pirate ships

PROVINCETOWN — Pirating the world's great sailing ships in the Indian Ocean was a career option in the early 1700s. In late September, underwater explorer Barry Clifford of Province-town will head to an island off the east coast of Madagascar to get to the bottom of it.

Clifford first discovered five antique ships sunken in the harbor of Sainte Marie Island in 1999 and 2000 along with underwater tunnels that may hold the stashes of renowned French pirate Olivier Le Vasseur, known as "The Buzzard."

"The Buzzard" was an apprentice pirate with Capt. "Black Sam" Bellamy, Clifford told the Times yesterday. Bellamy captured 50 ships in the Caribbean and the Atlantic, including the Whydah in 1717, a three-masted English slave ship with silver and gold treasure that sunk off Wellfleet three months after it was seized. Clifford discovered the Whydah wreck in 1984, shooting him to fame.

Artifacts from the Whydah are housed at Clifford's museum at MacMillan Pier in Provincetown and a National Geographic exhibition "Pirates of the Whydah," in cooperation with Clifford, is currently touring museums across the country.

The shipwrecks off Sainte Marie Island, which Clifford calls "pirate central" of the late 1600s and early 1700s, include the Adventure Galley, a ship of Scottish pirate William Kidd, and the Fiery Dragon, commanded by pirate William Condon, according to Clifford. Three other shipwrecks in the area are the Ruparrel, the Mocha Frigate and possibly the New Soldado, he said. The ship presumed to be the New Soldado may be another ship that was returning from a religious pilgrimage and possibly be loaded with religious items, Clifford said.

The pirates who holed up around Sainte Marie Island would capture ships on the high seas of the Indian Ocean, get rid of the passengers, raid the jewels, then sink the ships in the island's harbor, he said.

"The pirates had no use for porcelain or religious artifacts," Clifford said.

Clifford and his crew will work with Madagascar government officials to excavate the wrecks and investigate the tunnels in waters that are 30 feet deep and prowled by white sharks and stone fish.

A contract with a cable television network is helping to fund the trip, he said.

Clifford said he does not sell any of the artifacts that he brings to the surface. He said artifacts recovered off Sainte Marie Island would go primarily to the government of Madagascar, with some returning to the United States for Clifford's exhibitions.

An archeological observer representing the Madagascar government will participate in the exploration effort, Clifford said.

IN CLOSING
Commander: Conquest of the Americas is better than East India Company, but not by much. The game’s excruciatingly slow pace remains: you must accelerate time because so little profit is earned early on, due to the high cost of maintaining colonies and having access to only a few items to sell. Because of the lack of loans, you have to be really, really careful never to carry a negative balance, as there is no way to rebound (since you must spend money to get goods to trade). It can be quite easy to "break" the game by going in to debt (you can be one building away if you plan poorly), relegating you to an old autosave or restart. The automated trade means the game will play itself while you wait for profits to slowly increase, constantly shuttling goods from your handful of colonies to the home port. It’s impossible to see a list of all goods in order of price, a really distressing limitation that still not fixed. Your advisors will give you some goals along the way, which is a nice way of providing guidance to new players, although their requests are similar each time you play. Once you do earn enough cash, there are lots of buildings to construct that will produce advanced goods that earn slightly more income. Ships can be given upgrades when they are built: a nice touch. The limited diplomatic options are disappointing. The AI is typically hostile, but it does provide an efficient challenge. The tactical battles are the same, except for the odd removal of multiplayer, but you do get some nice graphics. I would still like to be able to get goods from enemy ships when auto-resolving conflict; why have the option if you are at a disadvantage by using it? I am being harder on Commander: Conquest of the Americas because of my familiarity with East India Company, but I think that's fair for a $40 semi-sequel. It's a better game overall, but with sequels come higher expectations. Things are more interesting when international tension is involved, but Commander: Conquest of the Americas would have fit better as an expansion based on the totality of changes contained herein.

Features:

- Ship highlighting in tactical level
- AI will now build fleets with 1-3 squadrons
- A message is received when colony has a need
- Resource window can now be accessed by clicking the 3D resources and from Colony-founding view
- Morale information now shown in port name tags on strategic level

Balancing:

- Overall autoresolve balancing
- Overall ship balancing (schooner, xebec, brig, carrack, cutter)
- AI has now the possibility to select upgrades to ships
- More damage inflicted when fleeing from autoresolve
- Destroyed fort affects ships' morale less
- Need amounts are decreased
- Smaller visibility range for squadrons
- Increased warehouse capacity (all levels)
- Reduced birth rate
- Reduced damage to crew from grape shots
- Ship upgrade prices are now relative to the ship price
- DLC 1: Colonial Navy overall balancing

Fixes:

- Info text and tiny icon shown over ship icon in shipyard if the shipyard level is too low
- Problem with water showing black with some older graphics card drivers fixed
- AI nations will not make war offers to player anymore, if it is in war with him
- strategic camera scroll tweaked
- Impossible to select "heavier cannons" upgrade if the ship has no cannons
- Soldiers don't shoot from sinking ships anymore
- When Port attack is clicked from squadron interface, it'll show red crosshair on enemy ports, when mouse hovers over them
- No "cannon accuracy" upgrade for ships with no cannons
- Tooltips for upgrades in Shipyard now show full upgrade description
- Graphics and tooltips for shipyard build button improved
- "Build more warships" -mission fixed
- Fixed tax-slider (smoother)
- Now to move trade items from warehouse to squadron also when balance is under 0
- Fleets cannot resupply at colonyspots anymore
- AI doesn't add more colonists than there is space left
- It's not possible for forts to flee the battle anymore
- Problem with squadrons of a larger fleet disappearing when entering a port fixed
- CTD-fix: AI squadron-merge caused a crash on savegame
- CTD-fix: clicking "sell all" in the colony trade view caused a crash sometimes
- CTD-fix: When trying to load a game or trying to return to main menu while in tactical with a fort, the game could crash
- screen edge scrolling fixed for dualscreen & triplehead (triplehead can be enabled from options.txt)
- possibility to lock cursor to game window or on dualscreen to the other screen (can be changed from options.txt)
- Strategic camera problem with low fps fixed
- GUI shows amount of cannons correctly now
- AI will now repair their fleets at port in month change
- Fixed flashing strategic loading screen when loading a game from main menu or ingame-menu before showing the correct loading screen.
- Player can't see AI squadrons in docks/trade/people-windows anymore when in alliance and AI squadron arrives to player port for resupplies.
- New commander created for captured AI squadrons
- Friendly fort not spawned anymore on top of enemy fort when attacking enemy colony after multiple defending colony battles.
- Tooltips for specialist fixed (squadron info window)
- DLC ships used to display wrong icons in shipyard
- Building prices now correct in every difficulty level
- Building prices sometimes didn't fit the designated area
- pressing tab (changing colony) did not hide selected fleet bouys
- rare CTD caused by native raid fixed
- "Buy soldiers" button disabled ( grey ) when no more room for soldiers
- tactical level tip-text removed since we now have a tutorial box on the top right corner
- "Barcelona" is changed to "Sevilla"

Jolly Rover, a pirate-themed adventure game from Melbourne developer Brawsome, won the Best Australian Game award at the Freeplay Independent Games Festival last night.

“This is a huge honour for me and the team that worked very hard to make my dream a reality!” says Andrew Goulding, head of Jolly Rover developer Brawsome.

“Since Jolly Rover just won the award for best game I decided I could do what I liked for the rest of the night, so I decided to go home and spend time with my family who have been so supportive over this long project. I don’t care how cheesy it sounds, but reading my two year old daughter a story before she goes to bed is more important to me than any after party.”

The Freeplay Awards are all about honouring creativity, artistry, and innovation in the local indie development community.

Last year, Telltale Games, made up in part of former LucasArts adventure game team members, released its five part revival of the classic Monkey Island series. Oddly enough another developer made up of former LucasArts team members, Autumn Moon Entertainment, released its own adventure game in 2009, Ghost Pirates of Voojo Island.

So why haven't you heard about this game? Because it was released in Germany, where the PC adventure game industry is still pretty strong. It was also released in the UK in February 2010. However the GameStop web site has posted up word that ValuSoft has plans to release the game to retail stores in the US on August 30.

The game itself has three main characters out to stop a demon god from coming back to life. The kicker is that not only do each of the main characters have their own special skills, they can also turn into ghosts which allows them to wall through walls, among other things, in the game. We plan to contact Autumn Moon to get more info on the title's US release.

On 10 August 1628, Captain Söfring Hansson ordered Vasa to set sail on her maiden voyage to the naval station at Älvsnabben. The day was calm, and the only wind was a light breeze from the southwest. The ship was towed along the waterfront to the southern side of the harbor, where three sails were set, and the ship made way to the east. The gun ports were open, and the guns were out to fire a salute as the ship left Stockholm. Finally the great ship had begun her voyage.^[11]

After Vasa emerged from the lee of the city, a gust of wind filled her sails, and she heeled suddenly to port. The sheets were cast off, and the ship slowly righted herself as the gust passed. Soon another gust came, which again forced the ship onto her port side, this time causing water to flow through the open lower gun ports. The incoming rush of water caused Vasa to heel further, and she sank to a depth of 32 meters (105 ft) only 120 meters (390 ft) from shore. Survivors clung to debris to save themselves, and many nearby boats rushed to their aid, but despite these efforts and the short distance to land, 30 to 50 people perished with the ship, according to reports. The flags and the tops of the main and fore masts, still visible above the surface, leaned heavily to port because of ballast that had shifted during the sinking. Vasa sank in full view of a crowd of hundreds, if not thousands, of mostly ordinary Stockholmers who had come to see the great ship set sail. The crowd included foreign ambassadors, in effect spies of Gustavus Adolphus' allies and enemies, who also witnessed the catastrophe.