Pirate Talk And Other Falsehoods About Pirates

It doesn't mean that it is not a lot of fun to throw that lingo around. But if you've ever wondered about the origins of Talk Like a Pirate Day, you actually don't have to look back very far into the past at all, just to the mid ninety nineties.

Back then, friends John Bower and Mark Summers, who also used the more piratical monikers Captain Slappy and Old Chum Bucket, according to their own account, started talking to each other like pirates one day while they were playing racquetball, of all things, not a very piratey kind of endeavor, and so they just started doing it as friends do, to

make themselves laugh. I think we have all fallen into that thing where suddenly everyone at your table while you're out for drinks or a snack starts using a horrible page accent or pretending their French for a moment. We've all done it. They were just doing it to make

each other laugh. And then in two thousand two, after they had done this for a few years as a little joke and picked out the date of September nineteen as Talk Like a Pirate Day for themselves, they decided that they would email Humorous Dave Barry to tell him about their fun idea of a pirate talking holiday. And Barry loved it, and he wrote a column about it, and soon Talk Like a Pirate Day took off. So that is where this whole thing comes from, if you've

been celebrating for the last twenty years or so. But keep in mind, this is all pretend end, and as we're going to talk about today, sometimes so are the pirates. Pirates probably had a way of speaking, you know. Grog, for instance, was a real drink drunk by pirates as

well as the British Royal Navy. But it's not possible to go back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries during the Golden Age of piracy, to listen to any voice recordings of pirate language or their accent from around the world. We just don't know for sure. Nobody was interviewed by Oprah at that time. How could we know? But Ahoimi, hardyse and shiver me timbers, though I'm sorry to say they're considered by historians not to have been uttered by

any real pirates. So where did talking like a pirate in the fictional sense really come from? Uh? Where did

we get all of these silly phrases? Historian Colin Woodard, while studying examples of writing by real pirates during the Golden Age of piracy, found that those individuals were not writing with words and phrases such as Ahoian eighties and nowhere could he find a scribbled are And these were writings by literate, educated people who had chosen a life of piracy, not out of desperation, as many members of the crew might have. This is it to say that

every pirate sailing the high seas was like this. In fact, many of them probably were illiterate and had never learned to read or write. But what are discovered many were actually more educated than we might all have guessed, and certainly more than modern media gives most pirates credit for. You know, how a person talks their language, their accent, their cadence, that sort of thing usually depends upon where

that person is from, or maybe where they live. It's no different for pirates who came from countries including Spain, England, France, the Netherlands, and the America's scholars agree that most pirates, at least those around the British Empire, sounded pretty similar to how an underclass British sailor would have spoken at the time, and that means that their English would probably

have been pretty good it. They're English, though would have included a dash or two of French, Italian, Spanish and Dutch slang picked up around the trade roots and from fellow pirates, and they're most certainly would have been way more profanity in the mix. I'm presuming they're not comparing it to the way I normally. I believe this was during the golden age of piracy. Ors has come along

centuries after being much stronger game than their's. And really, here's what we're really talking about when we say that we're just pretending to talk like a pirate on Talk Like a Pirate Day, we already mentioned that things like are and maybe as well as that stereotypical pirate accent, those were not introduced or part of the legacy of people like an Bonnie or Blackbeard or any pirate. Actually, you can thank Hollywood for that. You can also give

a little credit to Robert Louis Stevenson. Specifically, it is that well loved nineteen fifty Disney film adaptation of Stevenson's book Treasure Island that you can blame. That film became the go to source for pirates speak for both Hollywood and the rest of us. And now for the last nineteen years we've been celebrating that manner of speaking on Talk Like a Pirate Day. It's not just the language though, just like our isn't really part of a pirate's vocabulary.

Some of fam as pirates themselves also are just fake, although many of us may think they're actually real. By real pirates, we mean those whose scholars have confirmed as real pirates, you know, actual humans who lived and engaged in some sort of life that we would categorize as piracy. Some of those real pirates have stories in their lore that may or may not be true or they're exaggerated, and that can also bring fictional elements to the legend of that real pirate. You see how this all gets

real confusing in a hurry. The pirate is real, for example, but did they really do all those things that are credited to them? Maybe, but maybe not. And sometimes real life characteristics and even some real history becomes part of the stories that some of our most well known fictional pirates, such as Captain Jack Sparrow or the dread Pirate Roberts

or Long John Silver may characterize. So we're gonna go on to them in a minute, but first we're going to take a break for a word from our sponsor, and when we're back, we're going to talk about those characters, Captain Jack Sparrow, the dread Pirate Roberts, and Long Dan Silver.

Welcome back to Criminalia. We are in the middle of talking about how fictional pirates may not always be fiction and how some allegedly real pirates are When it comes to fictional pirates, some weren't actually one works at fiction, some were inspired by real pirates. So let's talk about a few. Of course, we have to talk about Captain Jack Sparrow, everyone knows from the Pirates of the Caribbean films.

We also know who he is the because that character is at the center of an entire series of films which have been hugely successful. So he's fictional, well, yes and no. Jack is an example of a fictional character who is not a complete work of fiction. He was inspired by a man named John Ward, a pirate known for pillaging and plundering in the Mediterranean, as well as for his complete lack of morals. John Ward's nickname was Sparrow, and it said that he had a swashbuckling, flamboyant style

that all probably sounds familiar. We are unsure about whether or not he used eyeliner like Jack Sparrow, though, although certainly we've heard that it would help with the sunlight in your eyes. We should also mention that a minority of people consider the inspiration for Jack Sparrow to have been Captain Calico Jack. It does seem more likely to have been John Ward. It's not out of the realm of possibility that there was a little combination of the

two in the mix. While we're talking about pirates and Jargean, we have to mention the character of Hector Barbosa, who first appears in all of these movies, like every single one, he's in them. He said to have been a character inspired by the Barbarossa brothers. His character became so popular it's been included in these movies the Ride at Disneyland and at Disney World, along with Jack Sparrow. And then we're going to move on to talking about another film favorite,

and that is the dread Pirate Roberts. Good night, Wesley, good work, sleepwell, I'll most likely kill you in the morning. The dread Pirate Roberts, known for that quote, is a well known pirate from both the novel The Princess Bride written by William Goldman and its film adaptation, which was directed by Rob Reiner. We know he never leaves captives alive,

and we know that he isn't just one man. There's a succession of individuals who go on to take the name and reputation when the previous dread Pirate Roberts is ready to retire from piracy, although they do not all necessarily retired to Pedagonia. And the dread Pirate Roberts is and is not a work of fiction. His identity was created from a handful of other fictional characters, but the inspiration for the character came from a famous and real pirate,

Black Bart. Black Bart, a nickname which is believed to actually never have been used during his lifetime, was a Welsh pirate named Bartholomew Roberts. The real Roberts attacked and looted vessels around the America's in West Africa and is considered to be the most successful pirate of the Golden

Age of piracy. The Caribbean and the North American coasts were very active during this time, and it's a time which is associated with the colonization of the America's as well as the Atlantic slave trade, and that's where the real Roberts rated ships. He was also known as a side note for adopting an early version of the skull and crossbones flag. And then there is the famous and unforgettable launch on Silver. It's also the name of an American chain of fast food restaurants. Yes, if you haven't

thought about that. However, Long John Silver is actually, at least in original form, a character from the book Treasure Island, and he is really the ultimate stereotype of a pirate, right. He's got the wooden peg leg. He's got a chatty parrot on his shoulder. The book's author, Robert Louis Stevenson, has been quoted saying that Long John Silver had been based on one of his best friends, the poet William Ernest Henley, who he found to be quote astoundingly clever.

Stevenson went on to describe the character Silver as quote tall and strong. He was missing a leg all the way up to his hip. And it's Henley who inspired that idea of the amputated leg. He himself had lost a leg from foot to hip to an extensive tuberculosis infection. It's Silver's character that gave us a lot of those pirate stereotypes, like Holly was talking about. If you would

list them, most people would associate them with pirates. And this includes that shoulder parrot, the treasure map, the treasure map, the peg leg, the chest of buried treasure. These are things that no one can prove we're real, or if they were real, were related to real pirates. I'm sad

about the treasure map. Although Stevenson himself has talked about William Ernest Henley as his inspiration for Long John Silver, a few actually consider the character to be based on two brothers who were pirates in the West Indies, and in that interpretation, the parrot and peg Leg are considered entirely fictional. It's no wonder, though, that this version that Stevenson and the movie created has cemented an inaccurate image

of piracy in modern public consciousness. There have been more than fifty versions of Treasure Island made for film and television, the first appearing in nineteen eighteen, and if you haven't seen them up at version, you really should remedy that immediately. It came out in around the same time that topic of pirate Day was in its very early stage. Yeah. I always think of Treasure Island is like the film or story that tracks right along with the history of

film because it started right there at the beginning. With that in mind, we're going to take a break for a word from our sponsor, and when we come back, we're going to talk about real pirates who turned out to be fictional. Welcome back to Criminalia. Finally, we're talking about pirates who were real until we learned that they weren't real. So we know that some of our most well loved and well known pirates, like Jack Sparrow and the dread pirate Roberts and long John Silver often are

based at least a little bit in reality. But there are also pirates that we all thought were real, at least many people that were real, and then those were proven to in fact be fake, for instance Charlotte DeBerry, Jaccotte de la Haye, and Maria Lindsay, who all fit into this cat gregory. So let's get to talking about when real pirates turn out to be fictional and where they're very real seeming stories come from. If you believe

the pirate lore. Charlotte was a female pirate who was supposedly born in sixteen thirty six, which was her right in the Golden Age of piracy, as she was old enough to practice that career, But modern scholars haven't confirmed any stories about her existence. Not one single story has been considered to be valid. Most of the tales about her are second hand news right no primary source accounts, and many historians don't believe that those second hand accounts

are accurate or even true. Her history is allegedly that she went to see after she fell in love with a sailor disguised in men's clothing. She eventually climbed the ranks within the crew to become captain of the ship. You're wondering about the details of that story. Those details changed depending on who tells it. Some versions of her legend suggests that her crew at one point had to

resort to cannibalism. Other versions suggests that when she was wounded during a fight and fell overboard, her crew blew up their own ship rather than be captured by another pirate crew. It was believed, we've talked about this before, that a woman on board a pirate vessel was inherently bad luck. And if that's a life aboard Charlotte's ship was like, she sure seems like she upholds that superstition, with all of the bad things that are supposed to

have happened when she was at sea. That there are no known records of her until the first mentions of her in popular culture, which surfaced in eighteen thirty six, and that's two hundred years after her supposed birth. The earliest known reference to Charlotte, though it can be found in Edward Lloyd's Penny Dreadful called History of the Pirates. There's no evidence from her birth up until today that she ever existed as a real pirate though, or even

just a real person. Her story sticks with us, probably because it's been passed along at least elements of it and other literature written at the same time as Lloyd was writing about pirates. Ultimately, it really does seem like he just made her up. You can also get into the weird headspace of that. Shure sounds a lot like the Elizabeth Swan story from Prior to the Caribbean, which makes a fictional pirate based on a pirate we thought was real fictional. I thund and around. We don't want

to we don't want to break your brain. We are next going to move on to Jacott de la Haye, who, like Charlotte, is now considered to be a fictional pirate. Allegedly born the daughter of a Frenchman and a Haitian woman in the seventeenth century, it is said that her mother died in childbirth and her father was murdered. Some stories even at in the detail that she had a

brother with some sort of intellectual disability so orphaned. This is when she turned to piracy, and the stories that mentioned her brother often suggests that she turned to this life at sea to make money to pay for his cave her. One of the most popular parts of her legend is that she faked her own death to escape those pesky government ships trying to capture and hang pirates. Allegedly, that's when she began using a male alias, and she may have lived disguised as a man for several years

as well. Once she wasn't so high on the wanted list, she resurfaced and she became known as Back from the Dead Red and yes, that is because she had red hair. It's also said Back from the Dead Red lad a gang of hundreds of pirates and the crew took over a small Caribbean island, and that she died during a shootout several years later while she was defending that island, but again made up m h. And then we get

to Maria lindsay. I do think it's interesting that all of our pirates we thought were real but turned out to be made up, were ladies, and there were more ladies that we could have talked about as well. There's clearly I have a theory to talk about at the end. So yeah, this story has the added bonus of managing to combine this exciting life of piracy with a romantic story of a passionate marriage that probably helps account for its popularity. So according to the legend, Maria was born

in eighteenth century in Plymouth, England. She was the wife of a pirate captain named Eric Cobbam and Maria had been so captivated by Eric and his piracy when she met him that the pair married the day after they met, and then she joined his pirate crew, and then together they sailed to the America's what a honeymoon. Sometimes, according to some stories about her, when she and Eric captured another ship, Maria would tie the captain and some of the crew of that ship to her ships wind lass

and then use them for target practice. Eric and Maria's crew are said to have followed a policy of leaving no survivors. Eventually, Maria and Eric retired to France with their looted money. There they settled down and started a family. Eric was asked to replace the late local magistrate, which made him a former pirate a judicial officer administering the law. But Maria couldn't shake her love of piracy, which led to her taking her life by drinking poison and throwing

herself into the sea. But if you read other stories. It may have been Eric who poisoned her and through into the sea and then wrote a letter confessing to it. It really does depend on the version of the story that you're here to read, though, exactly who did what. So with all of this myth and exaggeration, just as the Golden Age was coming to an end, a man named Captain Charles Johnson published a very famous collection of

the biographies of famous pirates. Johnson, which is a pseudonym that no one has actually figured out yet who the original writer truly was, wrote a general history of the robberies and murders of the most notorious pirates. He wrote that in sevent and it was full of the piraty details we all want. In fact, it secured the legends of several real pirates, including black Beard and black Bart. Pamphlets and other marketing strategies detailed the crimes and punishments

that turned that book into a bestseller. Pirate popularity sored. Author Daniel Defoe too, wrote and published several pamphlets about pirates right around the time he completed his famous story of a shipwreck and that's Robinson Crusoe. That's just about the same time that Treasure Island came out, so in the Crusoe story, he is captured by North African pirates and later defends his island from English pirates, and that

story too became a hit. This is where we're getting on why I think so many of these made up pirates are ladies. I think clearly some of the audience here was really eager to see women in those positions of adventure, and that's probably what led to so many of them kind of blossoming out of the creative minds of so many people, and all in the same period

as well. So when it comes down to it, what do we really know about historical pirates, at least as a general group, turns out not a whole lot more than the stereotypes it might seem. You've got to kind of go case by case. Both pirate novels and Hollywood films would have you believe that pirates were swashbucklers, living this life of pleasure and freedom on the seas, collecting gold and only fighting when they had to or even

if they just felt like it. But remember, as you celebrate talk like a Pirate Day, that real pirates could be violent and murderous. They definitely did not sing it's a pirate's life for me. So enjoy the holiday, but keep it light. Maybe don't engage in some of those activities. Maybe just stick to the Muppet version of piracy, which is pretty fun in my opinion. Maria, would you like to step into the groggery with me? I am coming

into the girl. I'm pulling up my stool. I hear that there's a drink available today that I don't know anything about. Well, there are two, because I'm continuing my efforts to make sure we have both an alcoholic and nonalcoholic version. It okay, So a drink that comes up a lot if you do even cursory research on pirates is bumbo, absolutely right, and it's often associated with pirates largely because of that rum connection. Pirates may have drunk it.

It actually has in terms of historical stories way more juicy stuff related to early elections in the United States and people applying murders with bumbo to get them a little bit wasted so they would vote with them. But there there is a standard version of bumbo, which is not what we're doing. But I want to give it to you so you understand where we're starting. Bumbo has like some spices like nutmeg, right or am I mistaken? Okay?

That's why that drink stands out to me, because you know I can't pass that up some please, I'm sorry, go ahead, we're gonna talk about it's okay. So if you look it up online, like this standard that you'll see a lot of the time is two ounces of rum, one ounce of water, a spoonful or two cubes of sugar, slightly different variations of measures of nutmeg and cinnamon. So often us many versions of this are served up so no ice, or it's warm so that that sugar dissolves

and then it's served still kind of warm. No, thanks, doesn't. It doesn't appeal to me in a warm state at all. I was trying to imagine if it would be a good winter time. Does it turn into a good winter time? See? To me, like a yummy winter time punch has to involve a fruit, not just watered down rum. That's why it just is not very appealing to me. I'm like, it's hot rum with nutmeg on top, which some people might love, and no, no shade do you if that's

your jam? But I thought it would be more fun to do a version that you could just throw together in your kitchen and it's coal, but also still because it does I keep the nutmeg and cinnamon. Mine is not very different, but I keep those because they're a good fault transition. Then I have some thoughts on them as well. So here is my version. You're gonna start with that two ounces of rum and a half ounce of simple syrup instead of doing granulated sugar or cubes.

Because we're doing cold, so you want to be able to integrate it quickly. Throw in that nutmeg and cinnamon. I did a couple of shakes of my shaker for each one, and then I put those in a shaker and I shake without ice again, because you're trying to incorporate it in the cold will keep those things from coming together. I am not the biggest fan of spices floating in a drink unless it's something creamy like a dairy, which is why I'm like, shake the dickens out of

this business incorporated as much as you can. They still won't break down. You'll still have some spice floating in there. But for me, if I give it a really nice shake to the point where it almost becomes a little frothy on its own, then it's a little better. And then I pour that over ice and I top it with club soda. You can certainly throw a garnish on there. You can throw a clove on a stick, or a little bit of lemon, whatever you wish. But that to

me is a little yummier because the bubbles help. I just I don't like just a watered down liquor and to call it a dream some people love that, it's not for me, and that was pretty yummy. I will say this, keep in mind that's still a lot of rum, and it is a heavy hitter. Like I, I usually work on these before, like in the around lunch time before we come in and record in the afternoon, and I was like, I cannot finish this or I am going to be a sloppy, incapable mess when the actually

recording this episode. I will tell you this, this is another one where the non alcoholic version was even yummier to me and which I will make again. And so this is exactly the same. The only thing that we're doing is instead of the rum, which we had two ounces of originally, I did one point five ounces of unsweetened apple juice. And half an ounce of almond syrup. I actually mixed those together before I mixed anything else. I don't know that you have to, just that's how

I did it. I'd still kept the simple syrup so it does get sweeter, and the nutmeg and cinnamon. But I did the same thing, shaky, shake, shake or it over ice, put some club soda on top. That was a nice little refresher because I think the fruit helps make it better than just water. That's my thing, right, everything brings flavor to the table. Yes, yeah, yeah, So that was my take on bumbo, which was a fun experiment.

I'm not sure this one would go into regular rotation, but I am glad I tried it, and should anyone want it? While at my house, I can throw together my version without too much concern. Here we are Pirate day. Let's drink bumbo. Everybody, give me your keys, because you're not leaving after a couple of these after take them away from me after one, safety first, or make the non alcoholic version and we can just move over to

that accurate for start with it. Yes, that is my fictionalized version of Bumbo to go along with our fiction slash nonfiction Pirate discussion. Thank you so much for hanging out with us. We hope if you celebrate talk like a Pirate day, you have an absolute lass. If you dress the part, tag us on social media with hashtag Criminalia will see it and probably be delighted by it. Absolutely But be safe if you go out and you have a stay in and have any kind of party.

If you have bumbo, be very careful. Don't drink and drive. Drink responsibly. Thank you again so much for spending this time with us and hanging out. We will be right back next week with a story of a real pirates and more libations here on Criminalia. Criminalia is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, please visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H