Extraordinary Life: Robert Culliford, Pirate Captain

Shiver mi timbers! It’s Talk Like a Pirate Day!

A couple of years ago I wrote about the special relationships pirates had which could have been made between either gay or straight same-sex couples. The relationship was called a matiloge.

One couple I mentioned was Robert Culliford and John Swann. I thought Culliford in particular deserved further note. So, here is the first part of the Xtraordinary Life of Pirate Captain Robert Culliford.

But first, what’s the difference between a pirate and a privateer? Well, nothing really, except that a privateer has license (called a letter of marque) from a government to attack ships and ports of nations who were their enemies at the time, and hand over to that government most of the plundered booty. Pirates generally attacked any ship which they thought would have a lot of treasure, and share it out amongst their crew. They had no government backing and were, therefore, breaking maritime law. Putting it like that makes it sounds like there was a lot of difference, but if you happened to be on the receiving end of an attack by either pirate or privateer, you wouldn’t know the difference.

Robert Culliford was born in or around the year 1666 in southwest England, a region renowned for its seafaring heritage. Some of the greatest English sailors of the 16th century came from here – Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Francis Drake. It was also where the Mayflower Pilgrims set sail for New England in 1620, and there’s still a large Royal Navy presence there.

Culliford may have been born in Devon (NOT Devonshire – that’s the title of a duke, not an English county) where there was prominent family of that name. His early life was so uneventful that there’s no record of it until he was about 23 years old. That was when we first have record of him going to sea.

Somehow he had made his way to Haiti in the Caribbean and joined the crew of a French privateer ship called the Sante Rose, a former Spanish frigate captured by the French. Joining Culliford on the Sante Rose was a Scotsman, William Kidd, someone who would become one of the most famous pirates in history. Also aboard were four or five other Englishmen in an otherwise all French crew.

Relations between England and France were tense at that time. In fact, it was all-out war, with the Nine Years War beginning the previous year. This pitted France against pretty much the rest of western Europe.

Culliford’s first pirate adventure seems to have been attacking a Dutch ship. The Dutch were allies of the English in the war and an enemy of France, so this might not have been comfortable for Culliford. Then a chain of events began which eventually put him in charge of his own ship.

First, there was a mutiny against the captain while the ship was in New York for a refit. Then another war broke out – King William’s War, which was between France and the English American colonists. King William was a Protestant Dutch prince invited by England to become its monarch in 1688, and take over from the Catholic king (William’s wife was next in line of succession and ruled with him, so he was an obvious choice). It was after this that Culliford and William Kidd led a mutiny against their new captain, with Kidd taking his place. They renamed the ship Blessed William. Kidd didn’t remain in charge for long, because Culliford led another mutiny and Kidd was replaced.

Back in New York, the colonial governor issued Blessed William with a letter of marque which authorised it to attack ships or ports of the nation’s enemy. In other words, France. The nearest enemy territory to New York was French Acadia (Canada), so Blessed William sailed north and plundered a couple of French settlements.

During this attack they captured a French frigate, and the captain of Blessed William gave it to Robert Culliford as his first command. He renamed his ship Horne Frigate.

Two ketches (small sailing boats common along the North American coast at the time) were given the task of transporting most of the loot from the attack back down to New York. Unfortunately, the ketches were captured by French pirates. The Horne Frigate sailed back to New York with virtually nothing. It looked like his life as a pirate captain was a failure.

Undaunted Robert Culliford decided he may have better luck on the other side of Africa. He managed to get a position as quartermaster to his old captain on a captured French ship called the Jacob and sailed all the way down the North American coast, past the Caribbean, down the Brazilian coastline, across the Atlantic to Africa, down and round the Cape of Good Hope and up again on the other side into the Indian Ocean.

The year was now 1692. The Indian Ocean had long been a denizen of pirates. Its shores were home to some of the most important trading routes and ports in the world and easy picking. Europe had used these routes for several centuries, and by the 1600s was looking to expand its control and protection of these routes, and the nations which supplied the goods it transported. Piracy was rife, whether it was by Arab, African, Indian or east Asian pirates. The Indian Ocean was an area that was probably more dangerous to shipping than the Caribbean and, consequently, more heavily policed by the European colonial powers.

This was the environment into which Robert Culliford and the Jacob was sailing. Would they have better luck in the Indian Ocean? Would Culliford ever become a captain again? If that was his hope, he was to have mixed results, including imprisonment in an Indian jail, a not-so-pleasant reunion with Captain Kidd, and a much more pleasant encounter with the man who became his life partner.

But that’s for next time. Hopefully, I can return to recount some more extraordinary events in the life of pirate captain Robert Culliford in November.

Star-Gayzing: Dressed For Space

I’m back. The history exhibition of my home village that I produced with my siblings was a modest success. It’s still creating a buzz on the village history Facebook page. But now I must return to this blog and reveal more hidden or forgotten aspects of lgbt history.

Earlier this year I wrote about lgbt costume designers in the “Star Wars” and “Star Trek” franchises. Today we look at another science fiction television series, one which celebrates its 50th anniversary today. That series is “Space: 1999”.

“Space: 1999” is one of my favourite shows, and I saw that very first episode on 4 September 1975. What appealed to me most, apart from the theme tune and opening credits, were the costumes. In particular, the costumes of the crew of Moonbase Alpha, the protagonists of the series.

But first, I want to give an update on my Time Lord cosplay. I mentioned on May 4th that I was dusting off the costume and doing repairs. Well, one week before I was intending to wear it at EmCon I changed my mind. I was still going to cosplay a Time Lord, but now I wanted to cosplay Ncuti Gatwa as Doctor Who himself. Specifically, in the costume he wore in his final episode that was broadcast exactly a week before the convention. Below is a couple of screenshots I took to help me make the costume. All I had was a white, short-sleeved top, so I had 6 days to come up with something that looked like that.

A black pin-striped waistcoat and black trousers that I already had would be substitutes for the blue, denim ones Ncuti wore. All I needed was to buy enough denim material to make the kilt, and as I own a genuine kilt I knew that it required a LOT of material.

Below in the finished costume. I was very pleased with the end result, even though it wasn’t an exact copy, and I had enough material left over to make a denim waistcoat in the future. Unlike the purple Time Lord robes, I wasn’t embarrassed walking through the busy Saturday morning streets of Nottingham city centre to the convention half a mile away. The success of my endeavours was proven by people recognising the costume, including actor Jemma Redgrave who co-starred with Ncuti Gatwa in the final episode.

You may think all that was irrelevant, but you’ll be surprised just how much it isn’t.

Back to “Space: 1999”. The Moonbase Alpha uniforms were designed by openly gay designer Rudi Gernreich (1922-1985). Rudi was one of the most well-known fashion designers of the 1960s and ‘70s. He was born in Austria and, as a Jew, was forced to flee to the USA with his mother when Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938.

Rudi’s talent in fashion was sparked as a child by visiting his aunt’s dress shop in Vienna. He would spend hours sketching the high society dresses that his aunt sold. These sketches caught the attention of Ladislaus Czettel, a costume designer who had recently returned to Austria after having found it difficult finding work in Germany because he was Jewish. Czettel offered Rudi an apprenticeship in London, but Rudi’s mother though he was too young to travel abroad (Rudi was only 12).

Rudi’s fashion career in the USA started in Hollywood, but he hated it. Likewise, he worked for various fashion designers and disliked the fact that he was required to follow “house design” and current fashion trends. However, during this period he was also designing and selling some of his own designs.

By 1960 he was able to found his own design house, G. R. Designs (later renamed Rudi Gernreich Inc.). Now he was able to let his own ideas about fashion turn him into a leading figure of the 1960s fashion revolution with daring experiments in fashion theory, design and colours. In particular he advocated the wearing of unisex clothing, something that seems quite normal today, but some of his ideas may strike us as being unusual (his monokini still attracts controversy among fashion historians).

It was the unisex look that Rudi came up with for the “Space: 1999” Moonbase Alpha uniforms. It was a simple plain, beige two-piece – trousers and long-sleeved top. The only indications or rank or occupation was in the colour of one sleeve and subtle rank markings (photo below). He also designed a vesion with a skirt. These were worn through the first sries, but another designer altered them for the second.

Rudi became something of a celebrity in the 1960s. He even appeared as himself in an episode of the classic television series “Batman”. A screenshot of that appearance is below.

But, wait. Haven’t I seen that orange and brown plaid combination recently? Actually, yes, I have, and it brings us back to Ncuti Gatwa’s costumes as Doctor Who.

The first costume anyone ever saw Ncuti Gatwa wearing was in the publicity photos released in 2022 to reveal what his Doctor would look like. It consisted of an orange sweater and brown plain coat (pictured below). It’s one of several costumes Ncuti wore it in his first full episode as the Doctor, “The Church on Ruby Road”, broadcast on Christmas Day 2023, and he wore in a later episode called “Dot and Bubble”.

This similarity may have been just a coincidence, except that I don’t believe in coincidence. The costume designer for Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor was Pam Downes. Pam hasn’t admitted in any interview that I’ve read that the orange sweater and brown plain coat combination was inspired by Rudi’s costume in the “Batman” episode, but I’ll leave it up to you to make your own conclusion.

However, Pam has said that she tried to experiment with the Doctor’s costume. One design element she was keen to include, as was the show’s producer, Russell T. Davies, was the use of kilts or skirts for he Doctor. Ncuti’s Doctor wore several kilts throughout his tenure. Pam said she was inspired by the look of the “men in skirts” of 1970s New York. Guess who was the leading advocate for men wearing skirts in the 1970s? Yes, Rudi Gernreich.

There are other lgbt costume designers in science fiction to write about and they will appear next year, where we will encounter the late Queen Elizabeth II and a long lost “Doctor Who” story (not together).