International Talk Like a Pirate Day
International Talk Like a Pirate Day is a parodic holiday invented in 1995 by two Americans, John Baur ("Ol' Chum Bucket") and Mark Summers ("Cap'n Slappy"), who proclaimed September 19 each year as the day when everyone in the world should talk like pirates. For example, instead of "hello," an observer of this holiday would greet his mates with "Ahoy, me hearty!" The date was selected because it is the birthday of Summers' ex-wife and would consequently be easy for him to remember.
The two men sent a letter about their invented holiday to Dave Barry, who writes a nationally syndicated humor column, in 2002. Barry liked the idea and promoted the day. The day became "international" that year when people in Australia learned of the holiday from Barry's column. By 2003, with the release of such pirate-themed films as Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, the holiday was established.
Tom Smith has written and recorded the song "Talk Like a Pirate Day," the quasi-official anthem of the holiday.
Actor Robert Newton's portrayal of Long John Silver in the 1950 Disney film Treasure Island is the patron saint of Talk Like A Pirate Day. Peg-legs, parrots and treasure maps were all literary inventions of Robert Louis Stevenson's novel, Treasure Island, a book whose influence on pirate culture can not be overestimated.
Examples of pirate sayings
Patron Saint Robert Newton provides instruction. Seamen in the days of sail spoke a language far apart from the norm. It was so full of technical jargon as to be nearly incomprehensible to a landsman. For example, few could follow these instructions:
- Lift the skin up, and put into the bunt the slack of the clews (not too taut), the leech and foot-rope, and body of the sail; being careful not to let it get forward under or hang down abaft. Then haul your bunt well up on the yard, smoothing the skin and bringing it down well abaft, and make fast the bunt gasket round the mast, and the jigger, if there be one, to the tie.
- --The Seaman's Manual, by R.H.Dana 1844.
Even more baffling are some of the phrases used by sailors in the 17th century:
- If the ship go before the wind, or as they term it, betwixt two sheets, then he who conds uses these terms to him at the helm: Starboard, larboard, the helm admidships... If the ship go by a wind, or a quarter winds, they say aloof, or keep your loof, or fall not off, wear no more, keep her to, touch the wind, have a care of the lee-latch. all these do imply the same in a manner, are are to bid him at the helm to keep her near the wind.
- --former pirate Sir Henry Mainwaring (see Harland (1984) p.177)
Fictional pirate sayings are endless. One of the most influential books was Treasure Island. Some sample quotes include:
- "Bring me one noggin of rum, now, won't you, matey."
- "Avast, there!"
- "Dead men don't bite"
- "Shiver my timbers!" also "shake up your timbers"
- "Fifteen men on the dead man's chest-- Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"
References
- Harland, John (1984). Seamanship in the Age of Sail. Provides a detailed account of the language used by seaman during the age of sail. ISBN 0870219553
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