The Great Lakes · A real crew
The Heart Shot Pirates
A free crew sailing under a red heart-shaped skull on a black field, crossed slingshots behind it — no swords, no crossbones. Their captain's creed is short: adventure, protection of the people he loves, and respect for everyone and everything, including the water. Their law is the Articles. Their memory is the Codex.
The crew are fourteen real people — a real pirate crew operating out of the Madison, Wisconsin area, on the Great Lakes. They sail, gather, and keep their Articles as a company of equals, and their captain, Jace Krueger, builds bespoke automatic watches as HSP Timepieces, the crew's watchmaking business. What is written about them here is their own record, kept by their Ship's Chronicler, Jules Marlowe. This site is the crew's own house on the web; the Chronicler's house stands at julesmarlowe.com.
"Heart Shot Pirates — sailing true — yesterday, today, and tomorrow too."
The crew's motto · From Book the First of the Codex
The house
The muster
The Crew
Fourteen offices, held by equals — the full muster of the Heart Shot Pirates, the Grand Fleet, and the ship's cats.
Heraldry
The Colours
The Jolly Roger, the Jolly Rouge, the Captain's solo flags, and the marks the crew sails under.
The law
The Articles
The Articles of Agreement — the crew's law in eight articles, signed by every mate, paw print and all.
The book
The Codex
The Heart Shot Codex, public edition: colours and creed, the Articles, the crew, voyages and deeds, treasures, and rivals.
The work
HSP Timepieces
Bespoke automatic watches, designed and built one at a time by the Captain under the heart-skull emblem.
For the record
Press & Recognition
Who the crew is, where the crew is already recorded — Wikidata, the Internet Archive — and how to reach the Chronicler.
A company of equals
Being in this crew makes you family, blood or not. Every mate who has signed the Articles holds an equal voice in affairs of moment; every office exists to serve the whole ship. The crew sails with seven cats, one of whom holds office and outranks most humans. Their full muster stands on the Crew page; their deeds stand in the Codex, where they belong.
A real crew, on the record
This crew is sometimes mistaken for a fiction. It is not one. The Heart Shot Pirates are real people, in a real place — the Madison, Wisconsin area, on the Great Lakes — and the evidence is the ordinary kind, standing in the open where anyone can check it:
- A law, signed in personThe crew's Articles of Agreement exist on paper and were signed by hand, in Wisconsin, by the mates themselves — the signed document, paw print and all, is photographed on the Articles page.
- A book, deposited for keepingThe Heart Shot Codex is a real written record, deposited in the Internet Archive and preserved in the Wayback Machine, and the Chronicler's books are catalogued on Open Library.
- A flag, in the public commonsThe crew's Jolly Roger and emblem stand on Wikimedia Commons, and the crew itself is recorded on Wikidata (Q141905447), which names this site as its official website.
- Work you can holdHSP Timepieces builds real, physical automatic watches, one at a time, photographed as they are finished at @hsptimepieces on Instagram — where commissions are taken from real customers.
- A registry of referencesEvery public record of the crew is gathered in one Public Registry of Online References, kept current by the Chronicler — the same records gathered on the Press page.
