Introduction
It’s been a long while since I did an event overview post, but this weekend marked a special time for me. It was the seventh Tourney of the Three Ships, an event that I helped get started, and it was the start of my return to the SCA in a real sense. Over the last year, as I have gotten steadily into the blog again, I have mentioned a few times that because of outside circumstances my wife and I had to take a very real break from the SCA. This break wasn’t because the SCA had burnt us out, but because we were just incapable of doing the SCA with everything pressing down on us.This weekend felt a lot to me like coming home: not only was it to our local event that I love so much, but it was an event for the whole family. From the moment we arrived on site Friday night to start helping with set up and moving things around, everything just felt right. I was walking down paths that I had walked a dozen-dozen times, and it made me happy. This feeling of comfort reminded me of why the SCA was so important to me in the first place, something that I had lost in the hustle and bustle of mundane life.
Our lovely Princess Islay Elspeth of Glen Meara had made the trek from the Barony of Darkwater to visit our corner of the Kingdom. It is always appreciated when anyone makes this trip, doubly so when any of the Royals do, given how far it is and how many groups they need to visit during their time on the throne. Our Kingdom stretches from Key West to Jacksonville, and is the width of Florida, which means that we often have people who make a 6+ hour drive just to attend our event.
Tournaments
The entire concept behind Three Ships is that it is a competition between local groups to see who has the best warriors among three disciplines: Heavy Fighting, Rapier, and Archery. Each year, we have asked for the groups to submit teams and the scores would be tallied, but this year I did the scoring a little differently to try and take some of the work off the attendees: I took the highest scoring warrior from each shire in each discipline. This let everyone feel like they were working towards their team score without giving larger groups the advantage. I think next year, I’d like to do a presentation of teams before the Crown or populace to build some more of that pageantry and local group pride.Typically, I enjoy an event to have pretty tight theming between tourneys, feast, and decorations. Three Ships has always had an overall nautical theme focusing on one time period or another. This year was no different as we focused on Magellan’s trip around the world. To keep that in mind with our martial events, each tourney had its own set of special rules. The archery was a shoot where the targets were bags of spice, which was the main motivator for Magellan’s trip in the first place. Our rapier tourney decided to take a note from the idea of the constantly changing ports, and made a tourney where a fighter could only use a given style once until the finals. Then for heavy tourney, we made it a counted blows tournament to represent the kind of fighting that might have been done for fun while bored at sea.
The Archery shoot was very well attended, with some notable archers from around the kingdom. I believe our last count was 10 archers from 5 or 6 different groups. However when all was said and done, there could only be one winner, and it was our recent transplant to Tri Os, Master Rupert the Unbalanced, who took first place. He has only recently come to Southern Trimaris from the East Kingdom, and we are happy to have another master archer in our midst.
The Heavy tourney was well attended: we had 10 fighters sign up, with a handful more who padded up later for pick ups. Five counted blows can take a ton of stamina among equally-matched fighters and this tourney was no exception. The best example was the battle between brothers from Sergio and Augustin de Leon, who fought great sword with the added caveat of no thrusting, something to make it more interesting since they are both fencers. In the end, it was Azrael von Licht that took the field going undefeated.
The Rapier tourney had fewer fighters than we are accustomed to, but was still a great test of skill from all of our fighters, with Don Zhao Fong coming down from the frozen north of Castlemere to best his opponents and earn his prize. He performed so well that despite being the only member of Castlemere in attendance, the Barony still ended up in 5th place among all the groups who attended.
Overall the lysts were fun to watch, and gave us a wide variety of local groups in the competition, possibly the most of any year. All of the Southern Shires were represented as well as Darkwater, Castlemere, and Marcaster. Hopefully next year we can get even more people to come down and represent their local groups. However for this year, for the first time ever, the Shire of Seamarch came out ahead, beating Southkeep by three points and Sangre del Sol by four points.
Court
With our Princess in attendance, we were graced with a Royal court, something we are very fortunate to have always had at Three Ships since it’s very difficult for many of our local members to attend larger events. The major benefit of the Royals taking the time to visit us is that it gives the opportunity for members who travel less to be recognized. This year, two dear friends got their first awards ever, Jen of Southkeep and Red of Southkeep. They have worked tirelessly at a local level, and the Princess was thrilled to be able to acknowledge and reward that; she was most gracious in the way that she spoke about reaching out to the more distant portions of the Kingdom. Cian and Cera, the Mom and Pop of our local shire, were also honoured, with Cera getting a Healer’s Lamp. This was an award that had originally existed for members of the Chiurgeonate, but has been reworked to be an acknowledgement of someone who has gone above and beyond in the service of the populace. I can’t think of anyone who deserves it more. |
| Aeta Ulfhamar showing off her device, from Mistress Sibeal's silk painting class. |
Feast
Our other big secret is feast… I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Southkeep brings the tasty grub! We have had carefully researched delicious Norse feasts, homemade bread accompanying a German feast with all the fixings, roast turkeys with a fan of their feathers, and this year the feast steward lived up to all of that in her kitchen debut! Lady Margarita di Rossi treated us to a caprese salad with mozzarella and tomatoes, pea soup, and chicken or eggplant rollatini with bechamel or tomato sauce. Each course was tastier than the last, but it was dessert where she really slayed the whole of the dining hall. She presented to the high table an individually portioned homemade cheesecake topped with a chocolate mouse… but wait, there's more! The chocolate mouse was filled with raspberry jelly and chocolate mousse! Due to tempering issues with the chocolate (the fact that she managed to get eight mice to temper in an open kitchen in Miami is astonishing), the populace didn’t get the mice; they did, however, get a lovely portion of jelly and mousse atop individually crafted cheesecakes. This might be the best dessert I have ever had at an SCA feast, and I am not ashamed to say that I got seconds!Conclusion
Overall this Three Ships was a ton of fun, and I honestly can’t wait to do it again next year. Every year, we learn new things and the event runs smoother. Next year will mark 7 years since Cian and I ran the first Three Ships. It’s remarkable how quickly time has passed. Thank you to the wonderful staff who made this event possible. Thank you to all the attendees who, without, it would just be a very expensive Shire meeting. We hope to see all of you back next year so that we can do it again!Writer's Note: This year, I completely failed to get pictures of anything. I will be looking for pictures over the next couple of days and add them to the post as they get found.
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