Welcome aboard Washington state’s unladylike Lady. Every day in port during Tall Ships Tacoma 2008, two of the Lady Washington’s doughty crew spend an hour below decks, packing black powder and tinfoil into tubes.

Then gunner Sam Riggs, who has dreadlocks and a nose piercing a pirate queen might envy, brings them up to her guns aft and amidships in a red box covered with “I (heart) black powder” and “I (heart) explosives” bumper stickers.

Sunday, Gunner Sam was an inspiration to another Samantha: Samantha Folk, 6, and a student at Cascade Christian School, was heavily, if only temporarily, tattooed, when she boarded the Lady for a morning battle sail.

The Lady, the Hawaiian Chieftain, the Lynx and the Amazing Grace have been making three battle sails a day since Friday. That’s nine hours a day on Commencement Bay, shooting at each other to the delight of the likes of young Samantha.

But it’s not all fun and explosives.

There are rules to the privateer life, as steward Beth Loudon told the passengers.

Stay clear of the block-and-tackle they call “The Widowmaker” on the foc’sl. If it breaks loose while the crew is hoisting sail, you don’t want it living up to its name on your head.

Don’t put the baby down by the scuppers.

“They’ve been known to swallow bags,” Loudon said of the drainage holes in the hull. “Please keep small children clear of them.”

And stay clear of the gunner and the 3-foot fireball she generates every time she lights a fuse.

‘THEY CALL ME EVIL’

Three years ago, Joe Bartlett, a mild-mannered City of Tacoma Public Safety Division employee took a sail on the wild side. He was impressed, in the traditional sense.

The Lady Washington commandeered his body and stole his soul. She beckoned him back for sail training and brought him on as crew. Now, every vacation, he jumps into funnies and sets sail.

Funnies, he said, are the ship’s vintage costumes and come in two sizes: “Too big and too small,” he said. “I have my own now.”

His daughter, Wendy Bartlett, started out on the Lady, crewed on the X.E. Johnson and the Irving Johnson out of Los Angeles, and chimes in on Tall Ships sites on MySpace. She’s adding to the You Might Be A Tall Ship Sailor definitions there.

Joe’s favorite: “You might be a Tall Ship sailor if you meet a person of the opposite sex and wonder how hot and well-built their shower is.”

Bartlett might have said more, but skipper Evil Ryan Meyer barked an order.

“They call me Evil,” he told the passengers. “Don’t ask why.”

You might embarrass him if you did. He got the name when he lost a game of pick-up sticks.

If you live and work aboard tall ships, and your moniker is Evil Ryan, you’d best have a battle plan.

“You are always trying to maneuver the boat into a position to fire the broadside guns lengthwise down the other vessel,” he said. “The farther the cannonball travels inside a boat, the more damage it is going to do.”

There was a time, he said, when captains would sail alongside one another and fire broadsides.

“That’s when soldiers wore bright uniforms and stood in straight lines,” Evil Ryan said. “They eventually realized that you had a longer life expectancy if you ducked.”

So privateers like the original Lynx, built in Baltimore’s Fells Point, darted up, fired, and sped away while the crew on bulky British warships basically yelled, “That’s cheating!”

‘YOU COULD FEEL THE CONCUSSION’

If you were scoring a cannon fight, which Evil Ryan has not been doing during the festival, you’d get a point for a broadside, two for a bow shot and three if you hit the bow and messed up the steering.

At Tall Ships, you get points for pleasing the crowd with a big noise.

Sunday, the Lady’s first mate, Rob Mizer, fielded a request radioed in from shore. A boat carrying passengers would be coming up the port side. Would he be kind enough to fire on it?

He was.

And when the skipper of the Virginia V sashayed past, just begging for gunpowder, he obliged again. The passengers cheered.

Randy Marquis, a Tacoma Public Utilities employee, was not as pleased. He’s a volunteer fireman on the old Mosquito Fleet ferry.

“I basically keep the engine oiled,” he said.

That’s what he was doing when Gunner Sam let loose.

“Geez,” he said later. “I thought the boiler blew up. You could feel the concussion coming through the hull.”

The Lynx could not let a battle sail pass without sneaking up on her old adversary. Friday evening, her gunner, Billy Gernertt, had lit the fuse and yelled, “Live Free or Die!” as he fired on the Lady.

Sunday morning, Gunner Sam lit the fuse and crew member Preston “Wiggles” Nirattisai shouted, “Live Free or Die Hard!” as they delivered a close broadside to the Lynx.

“You missed!” someone yelled back at him from 10 feet across the water.

The Lady, meanwhile, was a sitting duck for a sneak attack from below.

Amazing Grace crew member Peter Denton had grabbed his wooden sword, jumped ship and boarded the Lady from the water. Within a minute, he was captured, disarmed and held up for ransom from his former shipmates.

“I am hoping for ice cream,” Evil Ryan said. “Maybe a cake.”

It was not to be.

Someone aboard the Lady threw Denton a line. Both captains maneuvered their ships close together, and Denton swung home in fine Johnny Depp style.

The ships motored home together.

Another day. Another battle sail.

Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677