Talk like a pirate

“You dog! You speckled-shirt dog! Why did you not come on board with the boat, you son of a bitch? I will drub you, you dog, within an inch of your life, and that inch too. Ay, you dog, and I will teach you better manners.” – Pirate talk from a real pirate, quoted in The Sea Rover’s Practice: Pirate Tactics and Techniques, 1630-1730

It be a mighty fine read, arrh.

If we’re going to talk like pirates, shouldn’t we be speaking Somali, Malay, or Chinese? Arrh?

Talk Like a Pirate Day gives me a handy excuse for a long-deferred review of a book I vastly enjoyed.

Author Benerson Little is a former Navy SEAL who put his considerable knowledge of seamanship and small-unit naval tactics, along with substantial research skills, to good and mightily entertaining use by writing a history on a a key but seldom seriously discussed area: the actual tactics, as well as weapons and other equipment (such as, say, boats). He even serves up hearty helpings of authentic pirate speech and recipes. Including one for original-style barbecue, which was given to us by the boucaniers - the same people, obviously, who gave us the word buccaneers.

As for pirate tactics, such as finding prey, stalking it, and running it down – not so easy a task, given the wind’s vagaries, and the fact it would allow you to sail only in certain directions – ship-to-ship combat, and boarding actions, we find not so much that Hollywood got it wrong (as of course it often has), but that Hollywood and conventional histories haven’t told us the whole story. One thing, for example, I never knew was the preference of many pirates to attack with one or a number of small craft, such as the piragua, basically a large canoe which could be sailed as well as rowed.

It also fascinated me to learn how popular and prevalent grenades were. Even conventional military histories of the period, primarily the 16^th and 17^th centuries, tend to treat grenades as peripheral curiosities, too unreliable and ineffectual to be of much use.

But judging from the many original sources quoted by Little, they were used enthusiastically and to great effect by pirates, as well as pirate-hunters, and merchants who weren’t ready to turn ships, cargoes, or selves over to the tender mercies of armed robbers of the sea. Grenades took a variety of forms, from firebombs (in everyday quantities, black powder acts a lot like gasoline) to antipersonnel bombs like Claymores, which could be fastened to bulkheads as you dove into cover and locked the hatches behind you, to sweep the decks of boarders with flame, broken glass, shot, and nails.

Take that, Jack Sparrow.

He also presents us, as might be expected, some utterly fascinating characters. Not so much the usual suspects, either, like Blackbeard or Captain Kidd, or even the lesser known but remarkable Bartholomew Roberts. Rather we get the Indiana Jones-esque likes of Captain William Dampier, a naval officer and naturalist as well as privateer and outright pirate, the positively Bondian Jean Doublet, and the frightful L’Ollonois, a SPECTRE-worthy sadistic supervillain who got what he had coming good and hard, courtesy of irate Central American Indians. Then there’s my favorite, Father Jean Baptiste Labat, who was of all things a Dominican priest. Labat, who could only be described as a pirate groupie (or maybe a pirate George Plimpton), not only sailed with freebooters and buccaneers of various nations but on at least one occasion fought alongside them.

And speaking of pirate talk – Labat despaired of the rough language used not just by pirates, but by regular seamen as well. He especially deplored the Spaniards and Portuguese for their favorite blasphemy of swearing on “an entire boatload of hosts.” Which tickled the, um, Hell out of me. (Don’t worry if you don’t get it; it’s a Catholic thing.)

It’s not flawless. In his enthusiasm the author sometimes gets infected by his sources with archaic speech styles that don’t always work. Sometimes that makes him a bit hard to understand. And sometimes he seems to forget to finish paragraphs, leaving us wondering what the Hell he was getting at. (Arrh.)

Also, after quite effectively whetting our appetites, he could have given us fuller biographies of some of his remarkable characters.  And I was surprised not to find more detailed examinations of pirate battles, although the book’s thoroughly strewn with snippets of descriptions of them, by way of illustrating his points.

But those are quibbles. Especially, I admit, the points about the characters and battles: he wrote the book he intended to write, not entirely the book I found I wanted him to write.

That’s one of those fine-line author/reader conflicts. As an author it annoys me when people complain I didn’t write the book they wanted. And I see such reviews all the time on Amazon. At the same time, as a reader, sometimes I’m disappointed in that way. But those cases are usually ones in which I felt the author failed to deliver on promises made. As I said, it’s a tight call, and a subjective one.

It also looks as if Little might just have filled those unsatiated appetites of mine by writing other books he wanted to write, given his 2007 release The Buccaneer’s Realm: Pirate Life on the Spanish Main, 1674-1688, plus the forthcoming Pirate Hunting: The Fight Against Pirates, Privateers, and Sea Raiders from Antiquity to the Present. Both of which I strongly suspect I must have. (Hint†.)

Make no mistake: my criticisms are spits in the Seven Seas. I love this book, and recommend it highly. If you’ve any interest in the subject I give it five bullets out of five. If you have no particular interest in the subject (wait, did you read this? Pirates!) it’s still four bullets out of five. Little may go into a bit more technical detail than suits you; just skip those parts. You will find ample awesomeness here.

Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day, me mateys!

“Mort Dieu, les Espagnols me le payeront!” – L’Ollonois (“God’s death, the Spaniards will pay me for this!”)

*I see that Amazon has made it impossible to download a decent-sized cover image. Thanks for making it harder for me to advertise your site! You do a lot of things right, but this time you appear to have erred on the Stupid, Greedy Bastards side of thing. What do you think you are, Google?

And speaking of greedy – but I hope not stupid – remember, you can support this site, my lovable pets Emma, TJ, and Squeak†, and me by clicking through the linked image and buying the book! Buy some for all your friends. Christmas isn’t that far away…

†Shame? None for me, thanks!

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