Talk like a Pirate Day!

[nachtjaeger]

Ahoy! Eight bells! First watch, out o' yer bunks, ye swabs! An' first watch on THIS day means it's officially International Talk like a Pirate Day!

Tonight, second dog watch, I'll be raisin' glasses o' rum an' singin' pirate songs with some o' me old shipmates. Till then, me brisk lads:

A ballad of John Silver, by John Masefield

We were schooner-rigged and rakish, with a long and lissome hull,
And we flew the pretty colours of the cross-bones and the skull;
We'd a big black Jolly Roger flapping grimly at the fore,
And we sailed the Spanish Water in the happy days of yore.

We'd a long brass gun amidships, like a well-conducted ship,
We had each a brace of pistols and a cutlass at the hip;
It's a point which tells against us, and a fact to be deplored,
But we chased the goodly merchant-men and laid their ships aboard.

Then the dead men fouled the scuppers and the wounded filled the chains,
And the paint-work all was spatter-dashed with other people's brains,
She was boarded, she was looted, she was scuttled till she sank,
And the pale survivors left us by the medium of the plank.

O! then it was (while standing by the taffrail on the poop)
We could hear the drowning folk lament the absent chicken-coop;
Then, having washed the blood away, we'd little else to do
Than to dance a quiet hornpipe as the old salts taught us to.

O! the fiddle on the fo'c's'le, and the slapping naked soles,
And the genial "Down the middle, Jake, and curtsey when she rolls!"
With the silver seas around us and the pale moon overhead,
And the look-out not a-looking and his pipe-bowl glowing red.

Ah! the pig-tailed, quidding pirates and the pretty pranks we played,
All have since been put a stop-to by the naughty Board of Trade;
The schooners and the merry crews are laid away to rest,
A little south the sunset in the Islands of the Blest. -

[Boggy Man]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SW8BVarw-k

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!

[BSink42]

Arrh! Matey!

[Mynock]

AAAAARRRRRR!!!!! Grab a pint of grog in one hand, a bawdy wench in the other and sing along me hearty yo ho!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcLpNP8jwRo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Px1rfFz42I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTN3ODSCEuo

[nachtjaeger]

Aye, lads- it's all for me grog!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rd1ASJh_7l0

[Lomax]

Two pieces of trivia from rent-a-nerd.

1) If legend is to be believed Grog, or watered-down rum, was named after Admiral Edward Vernon. Vernon habitually wore a grogram waistcoat, and was known as Old Grog as a result. He insisted that the daily rum ration was "adulterated" with lime-juice (hence Limey) and water.

2) The skull-and-crossbones pirate flag was known as the Jolly Roger - although that name arose somewhat earlier. Before the skull-and-crossbones, pirates flew a plain red flag, known in French (the Caribbean was a polyglot region) as La Jolie Rouge, which might be loosely translated as The Red Fancy. Jolie Rouge >> Jolly Roger.

[Mynock]

Nifty. I guess the lime would be an anti-scurvy thing?
I got inspired. Finally started on "Pirate Latitudes" by the late great Michael Crichton. Picked up a copy years ago but never got around to reading it. So far so awesome.

[nachtjaeger]

Wow! Never heard of that one. Michael Chrichton was an awesome writer. Have to check that out.

Nifty. I guess the lime would be an anti-scurvy thing?
I got inspired. Finally started on "Pirate Latitudes" by the late great Michael Crichton. Picked up a copy years ago but never got around to reading it. So far so awesome.

[Lomax]

Nifty. I guess the lime would be an anti-scurvy thing?

Indeed. It is a moot question as to who exactly realised that fresh food - particularly citrus fruit - was a preventative for scurvy. In the eighteenth century, the RN lost more men to scurvy than to enemy action. Captain Cook fought scurvy with a mixture of sauerkraut and rigidly-enforced cleanliness on board; but lime-juice was settled on for reasons of convenience, and adopted throughout the navy. This, of course, was long before anyone isolated vitamin C.

The story goes that the Jonathans (obsolete English slang for the US navy - probably derived from Brother Jonathan of New England) thought we were mad, and christened us Limeys.

Recently, on another site, I was called a limey by someone who clearly thought it was an insult. I was rather pleased, actually.

[Mynock]

Wow! Never heard of that one. Michael Chrichton was an awesome writer. Have to check that out.

Nifty. I guess the lime would be an anti-scurvy thing?
I got inspired. Finally started on "Pirate Latitudes" by the late great Michael Crichton. Picked up a copy years ago but never got around to reading it. So far so awesome.

Posthumously published, might be why you missed it. His agent found it on one of his computers after he died. Really, really good so far.