On April 4th, the LOL (Learning Out Loud) program that meets on Thursdays dressed in pirate garb to welcome a visit by Seaspray and Dangerous Dan, who spent time interviewing new recruits to join their ship "The Black Wing". Students offered their thoughts on who a pirate was and what they did. They heard stories of
Black Beard the Pirate,
Sir Francis Drake,
Captain Henry Every, and
William Kidd. Seaspray told tales of some female pirates like
Anne Bonny and Mary Read,
Grace O'Malley, and
Cheng I Sao. And they learned what privateers and
Letter of Marques were - basically pirates with authority to be pirates though only against the enemy via a Letter of Marque.
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| Dangerous Dan looking over the new recruits. |
When recruits asked a question or gave a wise answer, they were given payment to join the crew. This meant they had to honor
the Pirate Code of Conduct.
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| Seaspray and Gordon (the parrot) evaluate the future crew, getting ready to make payment. |
Dangerous Dan demonstrated the types of weapons a pirate used.
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| Dangerous Dan demonstrates dual weapons. |
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| Future recruits ponder what they are signing up for. |
And when the recruiting session... er... class was over, students could sign up and join the crew in exchange for a share of the treasure.
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| Recruits sign the pirate pledge and receive their fair share of treasure. |
After recruiting a slew of scallywags, Seaspray and Dangerous Dan met the next batch of recruits... er... class, many of whom had made astrolabes beforehand. With the sun out, student learned how to use them to determine where they were.
How to make 2 types of astrolabes:
http://cse.ssl.berkeley.edu/AtHomeAstronomy/activity_07.html or
http://www.thepirateking.com/historical/astrolabe_lesson.htm
For more information on
how to calculate the sun's position and
information on navigation, click the links in this sentence.
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| Seaspray and Gordon (the parrot) show students how to use their astrolabes. |
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| Students using an astrolabe. |
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| And what good pirate doesn't show recruits how to sword fight? |
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| A great day of fun and knowledge was had by all. |
Thank you Dangerous Dan and Seaspray for sharing your stories and navigational knowledge with us! (And giving us the excuse the dress like pirates for the day!)
And thank YOU to our hostess "Devilish Dani" and all the kids at LOL - you were a great audience!
ReplyDeleteI wish we had had a bit more time to wrap up the navigation presentation. I am surprised that there was such a range of latitudes measured. Maybe some of the ones with the round astrolabes weren't letting them hang or swing freely from the top so they were absolutely vertical?
If we had asked everyone in the class what they had measured, I bet it would have come out something like this:
30
40 40 40
45 45 45 45
50 50 50 50 50 50 50
55 55 55 55 55
60 60
Then if we took the average it would have been 90 degrees, minus your measurement (say, 50 or 55) and plus 5 degrees 35 minutes because the sun is north of the equator at noon on April 4. 305 Songbird Lane is located at about 39 degrees 30 minutes north latitude, so the formula does work! If you are being careful, you would also add 6 degrees because we took our measurements at 2:30 PM instead of noon and the sun was already sliding down in the west just a little bit.
The other thing I wish we'd had more time to follow up on, was when I described the Gulf Stream and said the Spanish knew about it, the English didn't, and that extra speed traveling across the ocean helped the Spanish maintain some of their naval empire during this period. I said they two countries had the same technology and the Gulf Stream current was the only difference. One student pointed out that the two nations did in fact have somewhat different strategies in their navy fleets. By "same technology" I meant that they both used sailboats, neither had engines for example, or paddled canoes. The student who made the comment was correct that the two nations used different types of sailboats. I wish he'd had more opportunity to talk about this.
All in all though, a great weekend - even Gordon the Parrot had fun!