I hope you had a wonderful St. Patrick's Day (and night!). I've been fortunate to participate in IBC's Lucky Days Free Par-Tay with some terrific western romance authors:
Amber Scott (Wanted),
Tammie Clarke Gibbs (The Counterfeit), and
Taylor Lee (Aces Wild).
These books, along with Much Ado About Madams, have been free on Amazon, (March 14-18) so hurry to get your copies!
I find it interesting that while we are fascinated with the life and times of the Old West, people who lived then looked even farther back. here's an article on old ship printed in the March 16, 1872, issue of The Owyhee Avalanche in the landlocked southwest corner of Idaho Territory:
OLD SHIPS: There is a ship now sailing from Holland built in 1568, when the Prince of Orange was fighting Philip II of Spain, then at the zenith of his power, She was sailing to the Indies when the Hollanders organized themselves into the "Beggars of teh Sea," and as privateersmen earned a reputation which astonished the world. This Dutch ship is called the "Commissaries des Koning von der Heine." She passed the Cape of Good Hope, October 1868, from Batavia for Holland, then two hundred and ninety four years old.
A few numbers back in the Boston Daily Advertiser is a notice that the whale ship Rousseau (another of Stephan Giranrad's ships, built at Philadelphia, in 1801) was then undergoing repairs at New Bedford. Her planking is being removed, the first time for seventy years. The live oak timbers underneath are reported to be as sound as they were the day they were first put together.Who knew that a bunch of miners and ranchers would be call this news? But then, as now, newspapers had to sell copies, and to do that, they had to print stories their subscribers wanted to read.
Jeff Smith hunted down the model for Johnny Depp's Tonto. Check it out: Crow-Head, A Chipewyan Story.
Next week on RTW...uh, I don't know. Pot luck. :)
