Mobile Home Sales in Privateer, SC

The cries of swashbuckling pirates erupt with a certain jauntiness in “The Privateer” as wily combatants battle for supremacy on the high seas. Their full-contact sword fights, done with invisible weapons and rendered credible by the cast’s visceral performances, are fairly entertaining in this new work by Transatlantic Love Affair that premiered Friday at the Illusion Theater in Minneapolis.

Conceived by director Derek Lee Miller and created by an eight-member ensemble led by actors Heather Bunch, Allison Witham and Eric Marinus, “Privateer” unfolds like a live-action adventure, with a story heightened by the dramatic percussion of Dustin Tessier. The 90-minute production, fetching and a touch repetitive, relies more than most on a conspiracy of imagination with the audience. There are no sets to speak of. The actors use their bodies to convey doors, furniture and other props on a ship deck, a house and a tavern. The locales vary from South Carolina and New York to the Caribbean. But the troupe’s evocations are clear, and help to explain why the young, Ivey Award-winning company is so respected.

Since its founding in 2010, Transatlantic Love Affair has built an impressive body of “devised” works set in various worlds. It has explored myths (“Emilie/Eurydice”), immigration (“Promise Land”) and a love story between a fisherman and his seal wife (“The Ballad of the Pale Fisherman”).

Set in 1717, “Privateer” is inspired in part by two of history’s most notorious pirates, Sir Francis Drake and Blackbeard (played by Bunch and Witham).

The story cleaves to the romantic image of piracy that we see most often, including eyepatch-wearing seamen with quippy parrots on their shoulders (think the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise).

But as occasional news reports from the Horn of Africa remind us, the centuries-old practice of commandeering ships for booty remains a disturbing thing, not easily glossed over by cartoonish takes.

The Privateer

Who: Conceived and directed by Derek Lee Miller for Transatlantic Love Affair.

When: Illusion Theater, 528 Hennepin Av. S., Mpls.

Where: 7:30 p.m. Thu.-Sat.; 7 p.m. Sun. Ends Nov. 18.

Tickets: $25. 612-339-4944, illusiontheater.org.

The show also is lacking in a deeper history. The booty plundered by pirates was not just precious metals and rum. Human cargo was an essential part of that trade.

That said, the ensemble, dressed stylishly by Mandi Johnson and lit with texture and rich emotion by Michael Wangen, does solid work. Bunch is commanding as the stomping sea captain, a figure of daring and charisma, even if it’s mostly bluff. Witham’s Blackbeard is equally clear to us, and vexing, too, as she funnels charm into a character with no moral compass.

The newcomers also stand out. John Stephens does nice work as a stolid, deadpan ship’s mate. China Brickey’s well-sketched characters include a somewhat clueless left-behind spouse and a no-nonsense bartender. Nora Montañez is powerful, too, as an authority figure who brooks no fools.

“Privateer,” which includes energetic sea shanties, also offers subtle commentary on today’s political news. In the show, the opposing pirate leaders are ill-suited for their positions. One is a faker who believes that he can pretend to know how to sail simply because he owns a ship. Another, committed only to plunder, has no core values. They take the people in their care on disastrous journeys.

At the end of it all, all we can say is that it was fun to watch.

rpreston@startribune.com

612-673-4390 Twitter: @rohanpreston

SCHEDULE NEW ORLEANS - The 2023 New Orleans Privateers volleyball schedule has been released and it features 11 matches across four weekends before getting into the 18-match Southland slate that begins on Sept. 21.

All home matches will be at the Human Performance Center and tickets will be on sale for home matches this season. More information will be available at a later date.

The Privateers under head coach, Ashley Preston had the fifth largest win differential among all Division I schools between 2021 and 2022. Last season, the Privateers won 15 matches, a 14-win turnaround from the '21 season.

12 of the 29 matches are at home for the Privateers who broke the program record for the best home start in history after winning their first nine home matches last season.

New Orleans opens the season with a trip to Atlanta in a tournament hosted by Georgia State. There, the Privateers will face South Carolina State and Chattanooga along with the host Panthers. New Orleans opens against the hosts on Aug. 25.

From there, New Orleans will travel to Louisville. The Privateers will again open with the host of the tournament when they face the Bellarmine Knights on Sept. 1. The Privateers will also face Murray State and Southern Indiana. The Southern Indiana program recently made the jump to Division I and the Ohio Valley Conference in 2022.

The Privateers return home when they host the New Orleans Invitational. After going 3-0 in their home tournament last season, New Orleans will look to repeat that feat against the likes of Alcorn State, ULM and Southern. The tournament runs between Sept. 8-9.

In their last non-conference tests, the Privateers will head down I-10 to Lafayette where they will face the Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns and the Prairie View A&M Panthers.

Southland play opens when the Privateers face Northwestern State at home. The first three matches of the conference slate are against in-state schools.

Three of the last four matches for the Privateers are at home against UIW, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and Lamar. The only road match in that stretch is on Nov. 9 against Nicholls.

SOCIAL MEDIA Fans are encouraged to follow @PrivateersVB on Twitter, @PrivateersVB on Instagram, like /PrivateersVB on Facebook and subscribe to the PrivateerAthletics YouTube channel.

The battle between ship and shore on the coast of Confederate Georgia was a pivotal part of the Union strategy to subdue the state during the Civil War (1861-65).

U.S. president Abraham Lincoln’s call at the start of the war for a naval blockade of the entire Southern coastline took time to materialize, but by early 1862, under Union general Winfield Scott’s “Anaconda Plan,” the Union navy had positioned a serviceable fleet off the coast of the South’s most prominent Confederate ports. In Georgia, Union strategy centered on Savannah, the state’s most significant port city. Beyond Savannah, Union forces generally focused on securing bases of operation on outlying coastal islands to counter Confederate privateers.

Confederate defensive strategy, in turn, evolved with the Union blockade. After the fall of Port Royal, South Carolina, in November 1861, Confederate president Jefferson Davis appointed General Robert E. Lee to reorganize Confederate coastal defenses. Lee quickly realized the impossibility of defending the entire coastline and decided to consolidate limited Confederate forces and materiel at key strategic points. He countered Union naval superiority by ensuring easy reinforcement of Confederate coastal positions along railroad lines. In this way, Lee minimized reliance upon the fledgling Confederate navy and maximized the use of Confederate military forces in coastal areas, including both Georgia’s Sea Islands and mainland ports with railroad connections.

On the night of November 11, 1861, a daring Confederate blockade-runner, Edward C. Anderson, escaped under Union eyes and piloted his ship, the Fingal, into the port of Savannah. A native of Savannah, Anderson was the first of many who attempted to assist the Confederate cause by breaking through the Union’s extensive coastal blockade, which stretched from Virginia to Florida. However, in Georgia none would match Anderson’s success. The landing of Enfield rifles and cannons, as well as sabers and military uniforms, at the state’s major port marked the high tide of the South’s ability to penetrate the North’s naval forces stationed along the Georgia shore.

But Anderson’s remarkable feat also signaled to the Union that it needed to bolster its blockade and close off access to Savannah, which, like Charleston, South Carolina, to the north, offered an access point readily able to provide Confederate armies with necessary war materiel. If the Union hoped to wear the South down by cutting it off from the outside world, then it had to put a stop to incidents like the Fingal’s arrival at Savannah.

While smaller vessels than the Fingal sometimes did evade Northern capture, their modest hauls made for paltry victories. Because Union forces took control of the seas around Brunswick and St. Simons Island in the war’s beginning stages, the virtual closing of Savannah’s port to privateers like Anderson greatly contributed to eventual Union success in Georgia.

Confederate leadership and the people of Savannah came to pin their hopes of resisting Union occupation and breaking the blockade on a handful of gunboats. While built as a British merchant ship, the blockade-running Fingal was converted to an ironclad in 1862 and renamed the Atlanta. This ship, as well as the Georgia and later the Savannah, were ironclads patterned after the CSS Virginia, famous for its battle against the USS Monitor at Hampton Roads, Virginia, in 1862. The Macon, the Sampson, the Resolute, and the Isondiga, wooden gunboats of varying designs, constituted the remainder of the Confederate fleet in Savannah. In addition, Georgia’s coastal defenses included innovative torpedoes, developed by Commodore Matthew Maury, which caused the Union navy periodic concern. Despite these innovations, the Confederate naval forces paled in comparison to Union naval strength. Despite fleeting successes by Southern naval forces, the increasingly potent Union navy ultimately enabled complete Union control of the Georgia coastline.

General Lee’s decision to consolidate forces in 1862 began with the withdrawal of Confederate troops from St. Simons and Jekyll islands on the southeastern Georgia coast. On March 9, 1862, two Union gunboats arrived to find abandoned the earthwork batteries overlooking the channel between the islands. Sailing farther inland to the town of Brunswick, the ships found the town deserted and the wharf and depot ablaze.

Union naval forces took other Sea Islands with similar lack of resistance. Tybee, the northernmost of Georgia’s islands and within easy range of Fort Pulaski, fell to Union forces without a fight. Along with Union gunboats, batteries erected on Tybee initiated the first major engagement in Savannah on April 10, 1862. Union forces under the command of Major General David Hunter and Captain Quincy A. Gillmore bombarded Fort Pulaski, which was commanded by Confederate colonel Charles H. Olmstead, overnight. The rifled cannons of the Union gunboat Norwich, as well as those from the land batteries, made short work of the masonry walls of Fort Pulaski. Fearing a complete breach in the walls and explosion of the fort’s powder magazine, Olmstead surrendered. Union troops occupied Fort Pulaski for the remainder of the war.

Early in the war, 1,500 Confederate troops were ordered to St. Simons Island to defend it against the Union blockade. By the end of 1862 Lee had ordered those troops to move north to help defend Savannah, leaving St. Simons open to Union occupation. In June 1863 the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts regiment, one of the Union’s first African American regiments, under commander Robert Gould Shaw, spent several weeks on the island and made an expedition up the Altamaha River. On June 11 they were ordered to attack the nearby port of Darien, which was thought to be a base for blockade-running activity. Despite objections from Shaw, his troops, along with the Second South Carolina Infantry, burned and looted the town, causing the greatest wartime destruction to civilian property along the Georgia coast. The film Glory (1989) recreates this incident, along with the Fifth-fourth’s suicidal assualt on Fort Wagner, South Carolina, on July 18, 1863.

Two years passed before Union troops moved on Savannah itself, and contrary to Confederate expectations, the assault came from the west, not the east. Savannah’s other protective bastion, Fort McAllister, to the city’s south on the Ogeechee River, became its last remaining hope and a primary obstacle to Union forces.

Several naval sorties engaged Fort McAllister throughout 1862 and 1863. On July 29, 1862, four Union gunboats bombarded the fort for several hours, accomplishing little. Again, on November 19, three ships assailed the fort to little avail. On January 27, 1863, the Union ironclad Montauk and several wooden gunboats pounded the fort for several hours, again with little result. Similar engagements occurred on February 1, 27, and 28. In the last engagement, Union forces failed to drastically affect Fort McAllister but destroyed the Confederate privateer Nashville, which had grounded near the fort in seeking protection from Union ships. Another bombardment of the fort three days later again produced minimal results. These repeated repulsions of the Union navy by Confederate troops in Fort McAllister accomplished little for the Northern cause but heartened the Confederate troops, as well as the citizens of Savannah.

Drawing on this confidence, Confederate flag officer Josiah Tattnall sought to employ his ironclads to break through the Union blockade in Savannah’s harbor. However, several ill-fated attempts to engage Union forces ultimately resulted in the loss of the ironclad Atlanta at the hands of the Union ironclad Weehawken on June 17, 1863. Though a new ironclad, the Savannah, became operational in July, along with two wooden gunboats, the Macon and Sampson, Confederate leadership in Savannah generally spurned offensive operations for the remainder of the war.

Nevertheless, in June 1864 Confederate naval troops managed a minor victory with the capture of the USS Water Witch. While anchored near Savannah, the Water Witch was captured by officers and crew members of the Georgia, Savannah, and Sampson. Ultimately, however, that small conquest did not improve the Confederacy’s fortunes.

This increasingly defensive stance culminated in facing Union general William T. Sherman’s troops on their 1864 march to the sea. Fort McAllister formed the backbone of Savannah’s remaining defensive line. Late in the afternoon of December 13, 1864, a Union division under Brigadier General William B. Hazen, part of Sherman’s Fifteenth Corps, assaulted McAllister. Though slowed by obstacles and minefields, in addition to Confederate artillery fire, the Union troops overwhelmed the fort and forced its surrender.

With McAllister occupied, Sherman effectively linked with the Union navy, sounding the death knell for Confederate Savannah. The Confederate leadership realized the hopelessness of the situation following McAllister’s capture and withdrew their remaining forces across the Savannah River into South Carolina. In retreat, the Confederates set fire to their surviving naval squadron, including the ironclad Savannah, effectively ending any resistance to Sherman’s capture of the city. In a telegram dated December 22, 1864, General Sherman presented the city of Savannah as a Christmas gift to President Lincoln, ending both the March to the Sea and major military engagement on the Georgia coast.

Avast ye special effects! Without them, the Robin Hoods of the sea charmed the masses of olde.

Bath, N.C.

I don't know about you, but I came away from seeing "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" feeling that Disney and director Gore Verbinski had squandered an opportunity.

The strength of the series' first film – apart from Johnny Depp's enjoyably cracked performance as Capt. Jack Sparrow – was that it was about early 18th century pirates, as intriguing an inspiration as a fantasy-monger could ask for. It was a classic swashbuckler's tale, spiced up with just enough supernatural hocus-pocus to make it refreshing, and give the special effects guys something to do.

My gripe with the movies that followed, particularly the latest, was that they largely dispensed with the pirates and their real-world nemeses in favor of computer-generated underworlds, villains, and goddesses. I say, let well enough alone: What better material to draw inspiration from than the real pirates of the Caribbean?

Of course, I'm biased, having just published a book detailing the exploits of the latter, "The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down." Two years poring through microfilm and faded parchment on both sides of the Atlantic revealed a story I find every bit as compelling as any pirate fiction – Mr. Verbinski's included.

Virtually all of our pirate imagery comes from a single circle of pirates who knew one another, shared a common base in the Bahamas, and operated for a very brief period: 1715 to 1725. This gang – including Blackbeard, Sam Bellamy of Whydah fame, the female pirates Mary Read and Anne Bonny, and the gentleman pirate Stede Bonnet – provided the inspiration for the great pirates of fiction, from Long John Silver and Captain Hook to Captain Blood and Jack Sparrow.

Pirates have been around since ancient times, and remain today, attacking container ships off Indonesia and cruise liners off East Africa. But the Bahamian pirate gang was different from the rest in motivation and degree of success.

At their zenith, Blackbeard and his colleagues had not only disrupted the commerce of three empires, they'd graduated to terrorizing warships and the colonies themselves. Britain's Royal Navy went from not being able to catch the pirates (who initially favored swift, agile sloops) to being afraid to encounter them at all (after they captured large, heavily armed vessels capable of overpowering any frigate stationed in the Americas at the time). In May 1717, the captain of the 22-gun HMS Seaford reported having abandoned a patrol of the British Leeward Islands because he was "in danger of being overpowered by the pirates."

By then, even the harbors were unsafe. While the Seaford cowered in Antigua, Sam Bellamy's men occupied Virgin Gorda, seat of the deputy governor of the Leeward Islands, where they caroused, repaired their vessels, and kept the authorities in a state of fear. Later that year, Blackbeard burned Guadeloupe's main settlement to the ground and destroyed much of the shipping at St. Kitts even in range of the guns of the king's fort. The pirates repeatedly blockaded Charleston, S.C. and the approaches to Philadelphia and the Chesapeake Bay.

They were motivated by more than simple banditry. Indeed, many were former sailors who saw themselves in a social revolt against shipowners and captains who'd made their lives miserable. Bellamy's crew referred to themselves as Robin Hood's men. "They vilify us, the scoundrels do, when there is only this difference: They plunder the poor under the cover of law ... and we plunder the rich under the cover of our own courage," Bellamy told a captive.

On seizing a vessel, they turned its government upside down. Instead of using whips and other violence to enforce a rigid, top-down hierarchy, the pirates elected and deposed their captains by popular vote. They shared their treasure almost equally, at a time when captains aboard privateers (private, legally sanctioned warships) typically got 14 times more than a crewman, according to surviving ship contracts. Many pirate crews didn't allow the captain his own cabin – he had to share it with the crew.

"This is a time when the distribution of income, land, and power is becoming increasingly concentrated, yet the pirates organized themselves very democratically," notes Ken Kinkor of the Expedition Whydah Museum in Provincetown, Mass.

Most surprising: Popular opinion was on the pirates' side. Authorities regularly complained to their superiors in London that many of their subjects regarded the pirates as heroes. Virginia Gov. Alexander Spotswood fumed that his citizens had "an unaccountable inclination to favor pirates," while his counterpart in South Carolina weathered a pro-pirate riot in which Charleston narrowly avoided being burned to the ground.

"They were figures of popular folklore while they were still alive," says Marcus Rediker a University of Pittsburgh maritime historian. "They were breaking the law, and yet they were not seen as criminals by a majority of the population."

Their allies sometimes included the authorities themselves. In 1718, Blackbeard came ashore here in Bath, North Carolina's sleepy village capital at the time. In an effort to suppress piracy, King George I had offered a pardon for pirates who turned themselves in. Blackbeard – a former British privateer also known as Edward Thatch or Teach – took the pardon from Gov. Charles Eden and then appears to have set himself up as a sort-of Tony Soprano figure, directing an underground piracy operation under the governor's protection.

When Royal Navy officers eventually came to apprehend the arch-pirate, they reported that Governor Eden's administration was distinctly uncooperative. The reason became clear when, during a search of the Collector of Customs' barn, a large parcel of pirated goods was discovered under a pile of hay.

Not all pirates were impoverished sailors. Indeed, some were quite respectable, including Paulsgrave Williams, son of Rhode Island's attorney general, and Stede Bonnet, scion of an influential Barbados family. There's considerable evidence that these pirates had a secret motivation of their own: to depose George I and restore the House of Stuart to the British throne. Some pirates from the Bahamas even sent a letter to the court of the would-be Stuart King in exile in France offering their services.

A remarkable number of pirates were of African or native American origin, according to accounts of captives and pirates brought to trial. The pirate vessels were among the few places in European America where they could be free. There were more than 30 Africans in Bellamy's crew, and as many as 60 in Blackbeard's, which would have made them the majority. These crewmen – all probably born in the Americas – appear to have been treated as equals. (Not so those Africans found in the holds of inbound slave vessels, who the pirates appear to have generally regarded as cargo, rather than potential recruits.)

The Disney series draws on these influences, from their inclusion of Africans in the pirate's crew to the cross-dressing antics of Elizabeth Swann.

If a fourth movie is made, perhaps its writers will dig deeper and find they won't need quite so much of the supernatural to carry the plot along.

Hesketh Racing, a team in the true vein of “gentlemen racers”, ran from 1972 to 1978, and gave James Hunt his start in Formula 3. In 1978, when the team folded, Lord Hesketh decided that the market needed was a true English motorcycle, in the vein of the Vincent Black Shadow.

This led to the production of the Hesketh V1000, back in 1982, then a reformed Hesleydon Limited with the Vampire just a year later. Which didn’t last long. As is the case with many boutique manufacturers, finances were always an issue, and production stopped shortly after.

The Hesketh name endured under Broom Development Engineering – Mike Broom was development engineer and test rider for the original Hesketh Motorcycles – and today produces a series of V-twin naked sports machines. Under the current stewardship of Paul Sleeman, Hesketh Motorcycles manufactures limited edition hand-built motorcycles at its works in Kingswood, Surrey, UK.

With the issue of the limited edition Hesketh 24 – named after James Hunt’s racing number, with only 24 examples made – Hesketh has now come up with a concept machine dubbed the Valiant SC. Based on the current model Hesketh Valiant, the SC adds a supercharger that bumps the power figure up to 210 hp.

Power comes from an S&S “X-wedge” 2,100 cc V-twin, coupled with S&S closed-loop engine management and a Rotrex supercharger. Developed in conjunction with UK engine wizards TTS Performance, power is claimed by Hesketh to be 210 hp at 5,500 rpm, with torque rated at 295 Nm at 3,000 rpm.

The S&S V-twin drives a Baker six-speed gearbox, with a King Kong hydraulic clutch. and final drive is by chain. As can be presumed with a hand-built motorcycle, billet machined components abound, including the Hesketh three-piece Astralite-style 17-nch wheels.

Wet weight for the Hesketh Valiant SC is claimed to 239 kg, due in part to the twin-cradle chrome-moly steel frame, while oil is carried in the aluminium extruded box section swing arm with integral 4.5-litre oil tank. Rizoma supplies some of the fit-out kit, along with various other components by Magura, Smiths, Domino and Moto Gadget.

Delivery for the Valiant SC is expected to be in the summer of 2018, and orders are being taken now. The Hesketh Valiant SC is priced at around 50,000 pounds sterling (RM272,000), ex-works.

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