1670, Caribbean Sea. She's the daughter of a legendary pirate. He's a Spanish captain. Their countries are at war. Their fathers killed each other. And they were destined to follow on their steps.
But sometimes destiny isn't written in stone: it's w...
The weapons used back then were way different than their modern versions, so let's take a quick tour to get a hang of those old firearms, cannons and blades.
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FIREARMS
Understanding how firearms worked in the 17th century is key to understand the action parts of any story set in that period.
Nowadays, firearms have clips with a given number of bullets, which include the gunpowder. You load them through the butt of the gun and an inner system ignites the gunpowder and trigers the tiny explosion that propels the bullet.
Back then, firearms used "muzzle-loading", meaning you loaded them by the front, the hole at the end of the barrel. And one bullet at a time, which didn't include the gunpowder.
This means that in order to fire ONE shot, you had to load the gunpowder first —straight into the muzzle from a small bag hanging from your belt. And if your hand wasn't steady, or somebody brushed your arm at the wrong moment, or the wind was too strong, you could end up sprayed in gunpowder. Next you add the bullet —a small iron ball like those in the picture below— into the muzzle, use a special stick to compress them at the bottom and remove the stick. Only then you light the fuss and pull the trigger.
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To add to shooters' hardships, the only way to light the gunpowder was using an external fuss, like a cartoon bomb. So they would go around with a short piece of thick rope wrapped around their wrist, with one end burning slow, to apply to their firearms whenever they needed to shoot. Of course, pray it didn't rain.
Oh, you wanna fire again? Start over, my dear.
However, about 1650 somebody caused a commotion: they deviced a way to add a tiny fragment of flint to the firing pin. When you pulled the trigger, the flint came down, stroking a small piece of metal, which produced the necessary spark. The piece of metal came down too, closing the gap so the spark would touch the gunpowder and light it up. Also, they started using a spun of sorts to measure the amount of gunpowder you needed according to your gun. So you could make candy-like paper wrappings with the right amount of gunpowder beforehand. That way, you dropped them into the muzzle, dropped the ball, compressed it all with the stick and just pulled the trigger. It's evolution, baby!
