Why I Hate Fake Pirates |
HISTORY MATTERS
In my taxonomy of Halloween monsters there are three categories. First are the imaginary monsters like vampires, trolls, devils, dragons, ghosts, and zombies. I like these monsters a lot. They are not real; although I’m afraid we’ll get a letter from someone who believes otherwise. If that person shows up with one of the above in a box, I’ll happily eat this article. (Continued below)
The second category includes monsters that are scary in the movies, but benign in real life. People have been legally branded as witches in
The third category includes historical monsters like pirates, evil dictators, child molesters, hit men, gangsters, some carnivorous dinosaurs, and murderers. I don’t like these guys at all because, with the exception of dinosaurs, they are really out there and they are very dangerous.
Call me a prude, but the more realistic the monster, the less I enjoy them as Halloween costumes. I prefer not to honor evil. Give me a good imaginary Wolf Man or Frankenstein’s monster any time. But when I see a witch with her stereotypical pointed hat and broom, as an historian, my mind goes to the 17th century victims in the Salem Witch Trials. I think of poor Goodwife Cole who was starved and jailed and spat upon by the citizens of
I love the gory temporary Halloween superstores that pop up each year, but not the sicker costumes that tend to mirror the headlines. We could do without Chester the Molester, Lizzie Borden, Jason, Freddy Kreuger, pimps, Adolph Hitler, Bin Laden, Jack the Ripper – and oh yes – pirates.
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Little piratical activity
My issue with pirates is partly personal. I have wasted too much of my brief life debating whether pirates roamed these shores. I’m sure they passed by en route from
I spent a very long unpaid day with a film crew from the History Channel searching for Blackbeard’s treasure on
Maritime historian Jeremy D’Entremont agrees, and he should know. Jeremy edited the works of New England author Edward Rowe Snow, including his book Pirates and Buccaneers of the
“Like you,” Jeremy told me, “I believe there was very little piratical activity in this neck of the woods…I've also seen no evidence that Blackbeard or any of his crew spent time in the Isles, legends to the contrary.”
In his book Ocean-Born Mary: The Truth behind a
Celia appears to have exaggerated her story of “Bloody Babb the Butcher” from her father Thomas Laighton, who built his Appledore Hotel on top of an ancient grave site in 1847. Thomas joked to his children that he might have disturbed the bones of Phillip Babb who was an actual butcher and a constable at the Shoals in the 17th century. The ghost stories that Thomas Laighton told his children still reverberate today in false history and pirate tales.
Jeremy suggests that the real captain in the Ocean-Born Mary story was Bartholomew Roberts, the most successful pirate of them all, and that the attack took place off
“But Roberts certainly wasn’t averse to violence,” Jeremy writes in his book. He also murdered and tortured people, Jeremy notes. Roberts, who sailed under the Jolly Roger, may have torched a ship with 80 slaves aboard. Pirates were rarely, if ever, the swashbuckling, romantic, anti-heroes of popular fiction. Pirates were, like their modern counterparts off the African coast, merely murderers and thieves with boats.
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Teach your children well
Today we are awash with pirate fiction that grows more fantastic every year. Any child can tell you that a typical pirate wore a long coat and cocked hat, accessorized by a black eye patch, a hook instead of a hand, and a matching shoulder parrot. Some could walk underwater and their beards were made of live writhing snakes. Many were also zombies.
These images have great power. Endlessly recycled in our popular culture, the romantic myths of piracy, like those of dueling cowboys facing off at high noon in the Wild West, can seduce us into thinking we are looking at history in action. But we are not. This imagery was crafted by novelists and forged in the dream factories of
The American movie pirate is a fake. He is a cheap cardboard character for lazy scriptwriters, as overused and oversimplified as the pious Pilgrim, the murderous foreigner, the dumb blonde, the shuffling slave, the savage Indian, the brilliant detective, and the hooker with a heart of gold.
The Jack Sparrow character played by actor Johnny Depp in the four-film series Pirates of the Caribbean teaches us little, if anything, about historical pirates. But he does offer a rich lesson for our children about piracy. By 2011 the Disney Corporation’s income from the franchise -- including theme park rides, films, and licensing had already reached an estimated four billion dollars. Your pocket, most likely, is among those picked.
Blame
I have actually heard costumed characters dressed like Johnny Depp proudly refer to their outfits as “authentic” pirate garb. Authentic to what? Revolutionary and Civil War re-enactors work extra hard to duplicate their uniforms and equipment to the strictest historical standards. That’s authentic. At least with the fictional Frankenstein’s monster, we have the “original” 1931 Boris Karloff film to judge by. In response Kenneth Branagh directed an even more “authentic” Frankenstein film based on Mary Shelley’s original 1818 novel. But that monster is still imaginary.
Much of what passes for piracy in literature and film these days is romantic claptrap. But before we blame Walt Disney, let’s blame the nursemaid who read sea adventure stories to a sickly Scottish child named Robert Louis Stevenson. His 1881 novel
We should also blame Scottish playwright James M. Barrie for his wildly successful Peter Pan: or the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up.
Illustrator Howard Pyle deserves his share of blame for crafting the American view of what he called “those cruel but picturesque sea wolves.” Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates (1921) codified the stylish pirate portrait and became the bible of costume designers and casting directors as the film industry spawned a shipload of piratical characters. His “classic” drawings of pirates burying great chests of stolen riches or urging enemies to walk the plank are often taken as fact rather than fiction.
Piscataqua pirates
Not only do the fake pirates murder history and turn monsters into heroes, but they have smothered the reputation of authentic
But don’t despair pirate freaks. While
The only other authentic local pirate instance I’ve found is also unfit for a
Copyright © 2012 by J. Dennis Robinson, all rights reserved. Robinson’s history column appears in the