THE CROSSED SWORDS STYLE SOCIETY

Style isn't something you follow. Its something you create. Established By Wilkinson Sword

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The Hezekiah Frith guide to making your boring office job a little bit more adventurous

Let’s face it, working in an office sucks. Staring at spreadsheets all day in a badly lit room, awkward lift conversations with that guy from accounting about Game Of Thrones, meetings that last for hours about problems that could have been solved in a minute.

Don’t you wish you could make your life a little bit more adventurous? Not ‘quit your job and move to a shack in Alaska’ adventurous, but something a tad more exciting than going to a different coffee shop for your afternoon pick-me-up.

Don’t fear, we’ve got you covered.

Meet Hezekiah Frith. He turned work boredom into adventurousness so awesome that at times it may border on the insane. We’ve turned his insanity in to five tips that you can use to make your work life just a little bit more exciting.

1. Moonlight as something awesome
 You don’t need to quit your boring job to make life more exciting. Batman didn’t stop being Bruce Wayne to run around beating up criminals in the middle of the night full time. How would he have been able to afford the Batmobile? The trick is finding something to do on the side. Hezekiah was born in Bermuda in 1763, one of seven children born to Captain William Frith and Sarah Lee. He ran his Dad’s shipping business and though it made him incredibly rich, it clearly made him incredibly bored too. His answer to this was to get a job on the side, in secret. 
What Hezekiah did that Bruce Wayne didn’t was to choose a job that’s way more exciting than what he was already doing, but still close enough to it that he was well qualified for it. Given his extensive CV in shipping, Hezekiah went for ‘Pirate’. 
Since you work in an office, piracy might not be the right choice for you. However, there’s probably a Super Villain or two out there looking for someone with a background in data entry and an intimate knowledge of Excel. Give LinkedIn a go; even Super Villains don’t like paying recruiting fees.
 Remember, keep doing the office job you’re already doing so no-one suspects anything. You may have to nip out early a couple of evenings a week and take some ominous phone calls during the day, but that’s OK. Probably best not to post it on your LinkedIn profile though.

2. Come up with an alter ego 
 So now you’ve found the right job, you’re halfway there. Well done.  What you really need now is an epic alter ego or nickname that your co-workers will talk about around the water cooler. 
Hezekiah Frith was known as ‘The Gentleman Pirate’. That might not sound intimidating now but in the 18th century, that was a pretty badass alter ego. Also, it tells you everything you need to know about the guy; he was a pirate, sure, but also a gentleman. Like he’d attack your ship but do it wearing a really nice suit. Or hold the door open for you with his hook hand.

3. Steal office supplies to help you out. The genius part of Hezekiah’s plan was that he could borrow the resources of his job as a shipping magnate to be a pirate. Namely, he had a lot of ships. These are really useful if you’re trying to be a pirate captain. 
Hezekiah turned his Dad’s shipping empire into one of the biggest and most successful piracy networks of the late 18th Century and made an absolute fortune. Charlie Chaplin would later own the house he built in Bermuda with the proceeds. It had secret passages and places to keep buried treasure. 
In your case, you’re going to need to borrow some office supplies and use them for your more nefarious purposes. Look around your desk; what could be used in your new job? Does that stapler look slightly more menacing than a normal stapler? Return it in the morning, your boss will never know. However, if he catches you…

4. Get your boss in on the ruse 
Hezekiah wasn’t very good at keeping his mouth shut. If you were a pirate in your spare time, wouldn’t you want to tell people about it too? Eventually, the British caught up with him. Did this faze him? Of course not. He promised to only steal from the French, mortal enemies of the British. Not only did they let him carry on, they paid him for his trouble. 
If your boss catches you with that stapler outside of office hours, tell him that it’s to help him bring down the rival office across the street. He’ll think you’re taking your work seriously and give you a pay rise. 

5. Use your newfound skills to get dates
 Hezekiah Frith rescued a Frenchwoman from her evil French husband and brought her to stay at his house in Bermuda. Well, we say ‘rescued’… Some might say ‘kidnapped’. Probably best to avoid this sort of controversy and just obliquely reference the fact that you work for a Super Villain in your Tinder profile. It works, trust us.

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Hezekiah Frith was a pirate.

Need we say more? An adventurer and a gent, quite the legend by our standards. Head back here on Friday for more about his conquests and exploits...

[wsstylesociety]

Five reasons why John Perkins was the ballsiest guy ever.

‘I guess I was just in the right place at the right time’.

I really hate that saying. I hear it a lot from people who have seen and done amazing things and have great stories to tell, as though an adventure turned up on their doorstep one day whilst they were in their pyjamas eating cereal straight from the box.

Screw those guys. Sure, their stories are good. But the best stories, the stories that send your jaw crashing to the floor in amazement, come from people who got up off the sofa, put down the Sugar Puffs and wrote their story for themselves. The best stories don’t find you, you find them.

By this logic, John Perkins has one of the best stories ever told. 18th Century Naval captain, spy and all-round badass. He lived one of those lives that when you tell people what he got up to, they look at you like you’re making it up. Nothing at all was handed to him though, he had to go out and fight for every chapter of it.

And yet, you probably have no idea who John Perkins is. We didn’t, until we started researching Wilkinson Sword.

For the last 243 years, Wilkinson Sword has been making awesome things for the British Navy.

If you’ve played Bioshock Infinite you’ll have used the Volley Gun - we invented that for the Navy back in the 1780’s. The Volley Gun was invented by our founder, Henry Nock, and was basically a massive musket with seven barrels. After all, if there’s one thing we know, it's that five blades seven barrels are way more awesome than just one.

During the Napoleonic war though, the thing we did better than everybody else was swords. If you were an officer during that time, you probably used a Wilkinson Sword. Our swords were completely unsurpassed by any other bladesmith at the time and if you were awesome, rich or royalty, you almost certainly had one.

John Perkins was at least as awesome as anyone else alive at the time. Like, Hollywood awesome.

In fact, if you’re reading this and you have a spare million dollars or two to fund the next movie blockbuster, here are five reasons why your film should be about him.

1.    His origin is shrouded in mystery.

Hollywood loves a good origin story. Bruce Wayne wouldn’t be Batman without a mugging gone wrong, Bruce Banner wouldn’t be The Hulk without some very questionable laboratory practices and Bruce Willis wouldn’t be, well, Bruce Willis without having been a terrible private investigator before turning to acting.

 John Perkins doesn’t really have an origin story. He was probably born in Kingston Jamaica at some point during the 18th Century but honestly, we don’t really know. He kind of just appears in the British Navy around 1775; the first record we have of him is as a pilot on a ship serving in the Caribbean.

 What we do know is that he was really, really good at his job. His knowledge of the waters around Jamaica, Haiti and Cuba were considered unsurpassed, and so he rose quickly through the ranks and in 1790…

 2.    ...he became the first black captain in the British Navy.

Oh yeah, didn’t we mention that? John Perkins was black, a full 43 years before slavery was outlawed in the British Empire, and 70 years before the Emancipation Proclamation in the USA.

This is kind of a big deal. To put this into context, a black guy couldn’t rise above the rank of Messman in the US Navy in World War Two. The first black captain in the US Navy wasn’t until 1961, a full 171 years after Johnny Boy was terrorising the Carribean in his own ship.

 Think about that for a second. 150 years after John Perkins was made a captain, the only thing black people were trusted to do in the US Navy was bring white people their food.

If that doesn’t blow your mind, take a moment to read it again. Go ahead, we’ll wait.

 He commanded a total of eight vessels in his career, from a 10-gun schooner to a 35-gun frigate called the HMS Tartar. How did he manage this? Because…

 3.    ...‘brave’ doesn’t begin to describe this guy.

Making it to captain in the 18th Century British Navy was probably pretty easy, if you were white anyway. And male. And had the right family name, a few quid in the bank and your dad happened to be friends with an Admiral or two.

 None of these things? Things get slightly harder. Being really good at your job probably helped, but ideally you want to be really good at your job and have balls the size of watermelons knocking around in your navy-issue trousers.

 Perkins was nicknamed ‘Jack Punch’ by his crew. There were some pretty good reasons for this. In a period of about two years, whilst in command of a tiny 10-gun schooner, Captain Perkins captured 315 enemy ships, at a rate of about three per week. We’re not talking about fishing boats here; in a later battle (commanding a different ship) he attacked a 74-gun French ship of the line with a frigate barely half the size. Until they surrendered.

 There are reports of him capturing more than 3,000 french prisoners of war in one go, not to mention the dozens of very senior french admirals, captains and officers that he caught, apparently just by his sheer force of will. You know that scene in Star Wars where Han Solo runs wildly at a hundred storm troopers, and they’re all so shocked they run away? Perkins did that, basically. But three times a week, in a little boat, against one of the biggest and most ferocious navies in the world lead by a tiny Frenchman set on world domination.

 That would be enough adventure for most people - after all that activity you’d be totally justified in having a quick rest. Not Perkins, though. Oh no…

 4.    ...he was a spy in his spare time.

Let's face it, being black in the early 1800’s probably didn’t have too many advantages. There was one though; if you were to wander around French-occupied Haiti or Cuba, you were less likely to stick out than a posh white British guy. This made him a pretty good spy. He had spent a lot of time in the islands anyway and had a network of friends dotted about the place, and there are a number of instances of him being used as a covert operative in French-occupied places when he wasn’t being a captain.

 Unfortunately, this is also probably how he managed to get captured.

In 1792, during one of his brief periods of not being a captain, a British Frigate in the area heard reports of a captured British officer about to be executed in Saint Domingue. At this point, the British and the French weren’t officially at war, but there were some obvious tensions between the two empires. Haiti was in the grip of a slave revolt that had started a year earlier; it turns out that Perkins had been supplying them weapons and helping to train them. He had been caught by the French, which had the potential to be a bit of an embarrassment for the British since this sort of behavior just 'wasn’t cricket'. Still, he was rescued in the nick of time, but promptly vanished soon after.

 5.    He was also (probably) a pirate for a bit.

We’re missing quite a few years for Captain Perkins. The time around the Haitian Slave Revolt is a big hole in the life of the man, but there are a number of British and French sources that say he became a pirate. As if he wasn’t already awesome enough.

 When he died, his obituary in an obscure naval newspaper simply said this:

 ‘He annoyed the enemy more than any other officer, by his repeated feats of gallantry, and the immense number of prizes he took.’

CREDIT: Wikipedia.

[wsstylesociety]

Ewart Grogan

Boys do stupid stuff to try to impress girls.

It’s the oldest story in the world.

Whether it’s getting a terrible tattoo or turning up at her place in the middle of the night with an 80’s boom box ‘sixteen candles’ style, every single one of us has done something idiotic to impress a girl (or a guy) in one way or another. Yeah, you included. You’re cringing at the memory of some seriously embarrassing moves right now, we can tell. Right there with you buddy.

Ewart Grogan is the Godfather of this move. Trust me, everything we’re collectively cringing at right now is nothing compared to what this guy did.

Born in England in 1874, his life up until his very early 20’s was pretty average. He managed to get himself expelled from school. College too, after he drove a herd of goats through his teacher’s office. They didn’t really ‘get’ pranks back then, clearly.

At some point around the goat incident, he met a girl. This girl’s name was Gertrude Watt and was the sister of one of his college classmates. By today’s standards this would be considered a dick move, but we’re assuming that back then the bro-code was less enforced and dating your mate’s sister was considered basically ok. Either way, things clearly got serious because Ewart asked her Father for her hand in marriage.

He laughed in his face. Probably. he definitely said no, anyway. He pointed out the fact that Ewart had done pretty much nothing with his life so far and whilst I’m not sure if he said it or not, he was definitely thinking about the goat incident.

A sensible person would give up at this point. Actually, that’s probably not true. A sensible person would probably just ignore the old man, write off the casual sexism of the Victorian era as nonsense and get married anyway.

Either way, Ewart Grogan was not a sensible person.

I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall for the conversation that happened next.

Ewart, for some reason, asks her father if walking the entire length of Africa would be a suitable way to prove how serious he was about Gertrude. At this point remember, the only notable thing he has done involved goats and that was in Cambridge, not Cairo. He was studying art.  Don’t get me wrong, I know some pretty adventurous artists, but the vast majority of my friends who went to art school only wore walking boots as a fashion statement and wouldn’t even sleep in a tent at a festival. I think it’s pretty safe to say that Grogan ‘the goatherd’ wasn’t cut out for this journey. Especially considering no one had ever done it before. Not even close, in fact.

The father’s response must have been amazing. No doubt wearing his most condescending, ‘sure thing buddy’ smile, he agreed. Why wouldn’t he? There is no way that this utter reprobate was walking the four and a half thousand miles from Cape Town to Cairo, dodging feral animals, angry locals and a desert or two in the process. His daughter was safe.

This is where Wilkinson Sword comes in. As you may or may not know, we’ve not always just made razors. Back when Ewart was trying to get his head around this trip, pretty much everyone else in Britain had caught the adventure bug. Our little store in Pall Mall was the place to go if you needed kitting out for a big adventure. We made pistols and rifles for adventurers and duellists alike, swords (of course) and sold everything you could possibly need for a trip of this magnitude. You could walk in having never been further afield than Scotland and walk out more badass than Allan Quartermain.

If you’ve ever seen Bear Grylls, you’ll know that the most important thing in a survival situation is your knife. If you’re going to be in some of the most extreme situations in the world, you need a knife good enough to do everything from whittling a branch down for kindling to skinning an antelope and impressing the angry locals with some amazing tricks.

Wilkinson were really good at making knives. 

We’d been making them for almost a century before Ewart started his trip and were the cutler of note for royalty and the armed forces. Our knives have been all over the world and used by everyone from big game hunters and explorers, to rakish captains serving in the deepest and most remote areas of the British Empire. We actually designed the most popular knife of the 1800’s with one of these captains, a total badass called Henry Shakespear who was famous for living in the jungles of Bengal and once killed a tiger with his bare hands. We’ll tell his story another time, don’t worry.

http://www.wilkinsonfscollection.com/wilkinsonfscollection.com/The_Shakespear_Knife_files/shapeimage_7.png

The Shakespear Knife was the ‘must have’ piece of kit for any explorer looking to do something as crazy as walk the entire length of Africa. In fact, it was the model for the knives Wilkinson made for commandos during the second world war and was used by people as diverse as Ernest Hemingway and Ian Fleming.

Ewart started his insane trip when he was 24 years old. His route was pretty roundabout; It followed the western branch of the Great Rift Valley that curved through central Africa, a curving progression of great lakes, volcanoes and rivers. Unlike other European explorers, Grogan made it a policy never to take supplies by force from Africans, but instead to pay or trade for everything. As a result, the locals usually let him pass through without conflict. In the Ruwenzori mountains, he found a tribe of pygmies’  with an amazing communication network, writing, “These people must have a wonderful code of signs and signals, as, despite their isolated and nomadic existence, they always know exactly what is happening everywhere.” Despite Grogan’s best efforts, he still managed to get himself into some insane situations. He got attacked by Warriors in Rwanda and southern Sudan, and during a detour into eastern Congo he had to flee for their lives for days from a party of cannibals. Yeah, you read that right.

He was so badass that the Kikuyu people gave him the nickname "Bwana Chui” which means ‘The Leopard.’

My absolute favourite part of the Ewart Grogan story is the very, very end and features easily the most British conversation of all time.

Half-starved and fever-ridden after two and a half years of walking through the bush and jungle, Grogan finally emerged to meet a guy called Captain Dunn of a British exploratory expedition, who was obviously a bit freaked out about shaking hands with a white man anywhere near the Upper Nile.

The conversation started with Dunn saying "How do you do?" "Oh, very fit thanks; how are you?" answered Grogan. "Had any sport?" "Oh, pretty fair," said Dunn, "but there's nothing much here. Have a drink? You must be hungry; I'll hurry on lunch.”

He came back to London a national hero. He met with Queen Victoria and became the youngest man to ever address the Royal Geographic Society. And Gertrude? He married her when he got back, spending the entire ceremony with the most condescending grin on his face after proving her father so wrong. Probably.

He was 26 years old.

“We all have our allotted portions of black and white paint; how we lay it on is a question of temperament.” - Ewart Grogan, From the Cape to Cairo: The First Traverse of Africa from South to North.

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Bravery.

You’ve obviously heard of Socrates, one of the greatest philosophers in the history of, well, ever. Accused of disrespecting the gods, he was sentenced to the death penalty, but rather than buckle and apologise he stuck to his guns - right to the end. Now THAT’S brave.

What about Nathan Hale, the first American spy to ever be executed? For the sake of his country, he went behind enemy lines to report back on the goings-on (undercover, of course) but was caught and ultimately executed. His final words? “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” If that’s not the bravest, most badass thing that’s ever been said then we don’t know what is quite frankly. But bravery has many different forms.

Rewind quite a few years now, and the first time I ever asked a girl out. Palms sweating, stuttering – it was a disaster but, amazingly, she said yes. We went for pizza, it was obviously ok because I still remember it, but wow I really had to pluck up the courage to do that and when you’re 15, that’s pretty brave. Not Socrates-level brave, admittedly but something to be proud of.

If you’ve been following this little mini-series of articles we’ve been publishing, you’re probably wondering – why are these guys sharing these stories? Well, Wilkinson Sword has been helping brave folk write their own stories since 1772. Over the past month, we’ve been subconsciously stimulating your creative juices with stories to encourage you to think up your own. Now it’s time for you to tell us your stories.

Tales at the ready, all will be revealed on Facebook.

Photo credit: Nancy Rose, Flickr

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Adventure through the eyes of a younger you

When we were small and travelling with our parents, our armory was pretty straight forward – food and books. Lots of books full of unforgettable stories.

There is nothing better than the feeling of getting totally lost in a book. Whether it was Lord of the Rings, The Famous Five or even Peter Pan (depending on just how small we’re talking here), the ability to get so engrossed in a story whilst our parents listened to the radio crackle in and out of each station region is something we really look back on fondly.

Photo credit: lungstruck

In particular, we loved The Famous Five. We still think it’s amazing, too. The idea of my mates and I being able to go out and have adventures with our dog, and find treasure, and solve mysteries – well there’s just too much to cover here. We loved it. The one where they found the shipwreck – can you imagine finding a shipwreck when you were small? There was gold and everything. We know this isn’t real btw, well now at least. When we were younger we totally thought it was doable to find a shipwreck at any given opportunity. We'd head out to the woods near where we lived and act out such exciting scenes, a discarded crisp packet would actually become part of a treasure map that we were missing, and if we came across a carrier bag – YES! We can sail back to shore! We totally miss those days.

Which stories from your childhood still stick out in your mind today?

Photo credit: Katharine Hodgson

[wsstylesociety]

Shakespeare, and the epic love stories he told

Where love is concerned, there's always a story.

Photo credit Marcel “Mad Jo” de Jong

Ah, Shakespeare. You probably haven’t seen much of his work since school whilst you were lusting over your English teacher. But if there’s one thing he knew how to do, it was tell stories of love in a way that only he could – dramatic, encapsulating, victorious. Over the next couple of months we’ll be featuring some of our favourite tales of love, adventure and bravery, and we thought that Shakespeare was a good place to start.

Take Othello, for example. If you’re unfamiliar with the story, it doesn’t make for light reading. The modern day equivalent would probably be suspecting your other half is having it away with someone else, and you drive yourself totally insane by picking up on the smallest things you see whilst stalking their Facebook profile.* Othello thought his lady was having it away with another guy, and so deployed all kinds of passive aggressive (and at times full-on aggressive tactics) to try and essentially catch them out. Unsurprisingly, given this is Shakespeare we’re talking about, there are some fisticuffs and a whole bunch of dying at the end. Hmm, maybe not the best one to start with.

Ok, Romeo and Juliet – everyone knows this one, and a safer choice. Whether you studied it at GCSE or harbor a secret love for the Leonardo Di Caprio slush-fest, you know the story – star-crossed lovers, et cetera. The quotes that come out of this one are enough to warrant a few heart-eye emojis from the recipient: “When I saw you I fell in love and you smiled because you knew”. Pretty gorgeous, right? Sadly Juliet’s parents totally wouldn’t have it, and set her up with this guy called Paris who, quite frankly, just didn’t float her boat. Also, she definitely eloped and married Romeo already, but her parents didn’t know that. So she decided to fake her own death without telling anyone, and poor Romeo thought she was actually dead, and so killed himself. And then so did she. Jeez, this one’s not so nice either – sorry about that.

Photo credit aurelient 

A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This one is a bit bonkers, but the best bit is probably when the King and Queen fell in love all over again after trying (and failing) to make each other incredibly jealous with some of their minions. Ol’ Shakespeare had quite a vivid imagination it seems, as this one also features a donkey, but essentially it’s a discovery of love through intrigue and jealousy. Quite nice, that.

So, in summary, Shakespeare is still so big today because he was incredible at telling love stories in ways that weren’t just lovey-dovey – the drama, the passion. We think Shakespeare is a total dude. Which of his tales are your favourite?

- The Wilkinson Sword Crossed Swords Style Society

* Come on now, we know you’ve done it.

[bryanstokely]

Into the Void

bstoke on instagram

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Toronto, Canada, North America, 2015

by bryanstokely

[trapluxury]

[cabinporn]

[endlessme]

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Roadtrippin’

[paris2london]

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Jump.

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Awestruck.

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Human Nature. 20"x16" acrylic on canvas

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landscape-photo-graphy:

Portraits of People Astonished by Nature’s Beauty Part II

We have compiled a set of photographs displaying unknown strangers taking in the beauty of nature, where the human existence becomes explicitly small. The solitary quality of nature is both calming and healing.

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