In The Smuggler's Gambit, 17-year-old Adam Fletcher is the son of a young, single mother in a port town in 1765 North Carolina. When he finds himself in trouble with the law, he is forced into an apprenticeship to avoid a harsher criminal punishment. As events unfold in his new life with a local shipping merchant as his master, Adam soon finds himself caught in the middle of a smuggling … [Read more...] about Apprenticeships in Colonial America: Educational opportunity or cheap labor? It all depends…
Colonial American Culture
Coopers in Colonial America – Everything You Wanted to Know
The Smuggler's Gambit is set in 1765 and deals with shipping and smuggling, so one of the key trades in that line of work was coopering. In fact, when Adam Fletcher begins his apprenticeship with a local shipping merchant, the area in which he begins his training is as a cooper. Coopers in Colonial America were standard fixtures on ships, as well as on plantations, breweries, wineries, … [Read more...] about Coopers in Colonial America – Everything You Wanted to Know
Basic Skills 101: Survival, or How Our Colonial Ancestors Were Smarter Than Us
In The Smuggler's Gambit, Adam finds himself in a situation where he needs to turn to some basic skills to survive when he is marooned on an island. It could be said that Adam and his contemporaries probably knew a lot more about basic survival techniques in the wilderness than we do today. These days, modern conveniences have made the need for such knowledge seem superfluous to some. The … [Read more...] about Basic Skills 101: Survival, or How Our Colonial Ancestors Were Smarter Than Us