Cheers,
Small kids are great! This afternoon after the rain had stopped and the sun had come out, I was sitting outside near the river trying to draw the Tower Bridge and not having much luck. A family walked past and their small daughter, maybe 7 or 8, looked over my shoulder and said, “Nice drawing!” That’s why kids art is so wonderful; they just do it and if it comes close at all, they are happy with the results. And it is usually good and big and colorful. I just need to go out there and think like a kid.
Christmas Day we visited the Captain Kidd Pub. Here’s the story.
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Rebuilt wharves and the almost visible Captain Kidd Pub sign just where the folks on the right are standing. If you don’t know where it is, it’s easy to miss among the brick buildings. Normally you’d see buses and cars and people along the way.
The noose over the entrance to Captain Kidd Pub Captain Kidd’s fame was spread abroad by the popular ballad "My name is Captain Kidd, as I sailed, as I sailed." Many romances, such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Treasure Island’, have been inspired by the legend. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/655588.stm “Captain Kidd is a converted warehouse pub, situated very close to the site of the Execution Dock where Kidd was hung*for piracy and murder. “ (see below for a discussion of hanged or hung.) A lovely pub with a fantastic location, we saw the pub from a river boat tour, and went back looking for it. You come out of Wapping overground station, turn left, and it is 100 yards or so down a cobblestoned street. During the day, which is when we always went there, the front left table by the river windows is usually occupied by vocal and happy locals; the snugs against the far wall by solitary and seemingly serious drinkers, also local. That leaves a table or two by the river windows if you are lucky enough to get them; otherwise you are left with places that are not bad, but not great. We normally go there for lunch; the food is average/mediocre pub fare, but their fish and chips are good; the food is relatively inexpensive, so we went back several times while we were visiting London. The beer is the usual Sam Smith’s, which for me is fine since I only drink the stout. The upstairs dining room is open on Sunday, and if you can get a river window you have one of the finest dining venues in London. Of the locals who call the Kidd home, there is one fellow who sits by the door: he and his dog — one of those British breeds which looks like a pit-bull on steroids. I don’t think the fellow had him on leash, but then I did not look too closely as I edged past: this is the type of dog which attacks friend and foe alike, and eats children in London parks. I’m not sure I’d make the Kidd my local, but it is a nice pub.” |
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Colin and Sandi organized the Christmas Day pub walk; one of their holiday traditions. Public transit stops and everything shuts down except for a few pubs that open at noon. So other than church, pubs are the only place to go. Or I guess you could go from the church to the pub….. |
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Singkey, Sandi, Ed and Sue, Randal, Dick, Jake and Ginger, and Colin. |
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Singkey by the Christmas tree |
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A Christmas tradition begins for this family |
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As this is the Captain Kidd Pub….. Captain Kidd’s advertisement to recruit crew members promises ”compensation for the loss of a limb; 600 pieces of eight or fore able slaves.” “The Adventure Galley set sail from New York on December 12, 1696…… The Adventure Galley, which was specifically built in London for this mission, was a 34-gun, 300-ton vessel with three massive sails and 32 oars to be used when the sea was becalmed. A full complement of crew required 150 sailors. Kidd recruited 70 skilled seamen and then set sail for New York where he intended to take care of some personal business and recruit the remainder of his crew. Unfortunately, his first encounter at sea occurred when he passed a British man-of-war returning to England. Not only did Kidd refuse to lower his colors in recognition of the man of war as tradition required, but also his crew turned away from the man-of-war and repeatedly slapped their backsides. In response to these insults, the British boarded the Adventure Galley and made off with many of Kidd’s most skilled seamen. Upon reaching New York he apparently was forced to replenish his diminished crew with some of the most undesirable specimens available in the taverns of the city.” http://www.southportncmagazine.com/pirates_vii.html give a detailed brief description of the pirate Captain Kidd. http://www.nytimes.com/ is a good article about the search for the sunken Adventure Galley. |
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After our white wine (Randal) and a shared bottle of fermented Apple Cider (Singkey and me) we went for a walk to clear our heads and to go home for some food as the pub was just open for drinks. Not even coffee or tea was to be had as the hot water machine wasn’t working for one reason or another.
Fake boar’s head and fake barrels of rum.” But picturesque! A Walk Around Wapping : fake pirate ships, fake boar’s head and fake barrels of rum. http://www.scribd.com/doc/100868862/A-Walk-Around-Wapping |
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Fake pirate ship but real Randal. |
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Just being silly! |
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Duck Swan Swan… |
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*First I went off on a tangent to see if Captain Kidd lived several years in Boston as was mentioned in a framed something at the pub, …but the jury is still out on that one. Then I went off on the tangent of “hanged vs hung”
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A pub just near the Tower of London; so much for the western world being civilized! |
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Would I dare anyone dare argue with Samuel Pepys? |
I found these three answers with three different sources!
‘Beef, sir, is hung, men are hanged.’
“ “Why are people hanged but pictures hung? “
“I like to look informed by quoting the OED Online (Oxford English Dictionary). It says that for Sense 3 (capital punishment by hanging) "Hanged is now the specific form of the past tense and past participle; though hung is used by some . . . ."
Among their citations they quote, from the London Times, "Beef, Sir, is hung, men are hanged".”
http://phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/26/messages/188.html
Shakespeare put it more simply, but incorrectly: ‘Beef, sir, is hung, men are hanged.’
C J Squire, Twickenham.
http://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-1480,00.html
An English judge is reported to have said,
" Beef, Sir, is hung, men are hanged." l Of " hang " in the sense of
" put to death by hanging," both the preterite tense and
the past participle are " hanged " ; in all other senses,
"hung."
Full text of "Beginnings of rhetoric and composition, including practical exercises in English"
PROFESSOR W. H. CLAWSON
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE
http://archive.org/ which I vote for as the most reliable of the sources and the one closest to the time period of the hangings.
“Born in St. John, New Brunswick, on September 19, 1879, William Hall Clawson was educated at St. John Grammar School and from 1896 to 1900 attended the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, where he got a B.A. in Classics and English. Then he travelled to Harvard and received his A.B. and A.M. For the next three years, from 1902 to 1905, he succeeded W. F. Stockley as Chair of English and French at the University of New Brunswick. Returning to Harvard, Clawson completed his doctoral thesis on the Robin Hood ballads and earned his Ph.D. in 1907. William John Alexander invited him to Toronto that Easter, gave the young man a dinner, and introduced him to the Department. Clawson started teaching that fall at University College. His expertise was philology and the history of the language, but shortly he was teaching both first year Pass and first year Honours courses as well as composition, Chaucer, English and Scottish popular ballads, and Elizabethan drama. He was promoted to Assistant Professor in 1918, and to Associate Professor in 1924.