"Goodbye Old Buddy" -- Pirate Freedom murder mystery, take two

Dave Tallman · 02 Dec 2008, 17:38 · from 2008-December.txt.gz

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From: davetallman at msn.com (Dave Tallman)
Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2008 10:38:38 -0700
Subject: (urth) "Goodbye Old Buddy" -- Pirate Freedom murder mystery,
	take two
Message-ID: <1bf4dd40812020938s48162cf3vf3d36dd30a92176 at mail.gmail.com>

   1. Captain Burt is marked as a time traveler by his anachronistic use of
   the racial slur "Dago" (p. 39). According to the Online Etymology
   Dictionary <http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=dago> it dates from
   1823, and was used of Spanish or Portugese sailors on English or American
   ships. But Mark Millman on the urth
list<http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/2008-December/010781.html>says
the O.E.D. cites the word as appearing in print before 1725. I checked
   the O.E.D. online, and the only early reference it cites is the diary of
   Jeremiah Bumstead
(1723)<http://www.mayflowerfamilies.com/diaries/jeremiah_bumstead_diary_1723.htm>,
   which says "Ye negro Dago hanged for fiering Mr. Powell's house..." which is
   ambiguous since it could be the man's name. The next reference they give is
   dated 1832. I stand by my theory that this is a genuine anachronism. (The
   age of pirates that Chris visits is circa 1680).
   2. To refine the date further, we know Drake sailed around the world in
   the *Golden Hind* "almost a hundred years ago" (p .139). That should mean
   less than 100 years, and Drake's voyage was from 1577 to 1580. Thalassocrat
   on the Urth list<http://lists.urth.net/htdig.cgi/urth-urth.net/2007-December/008418.html>suggested
a date of 1675 based on this.
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