Pirate’s Day

..
in the first century BC and capture by pirates might have been described as
‘an occupational hazard for Roman aristocrats* . Among their more celebrated
captives was Julius Caesar who, when the pirates demanded a ransom of twenty
talents, indignantly claimed he was worth fifty. He also told his captors that
that he would capture and crucify them when he was released – a promise
which he duly fulfilled. For a while, the pirates enjoyed a symbiotic relationship
with the Roman Empire in much the same way that the pirates of the Spanish Main
had with the English, French or Dutch. In the early centuries of Rome slaves
were the commodity de jour with up to ten thousand slaves a day being off-loaded
at the port of Delos enriching the merchants of Rome and the pirates. But eventually
the pirates became so emboldened as to throttle the shipping lanes depriving
the Rome of everything, including grain. Rome began to starve. After a number
of defeats that saw Roman corpses swinging from the yardarms, the pirates were
defeated by Pompey, albeit briefly, as they reappeared more than twenty years
later led, ironically, by Pompey’s son. He once again blockaded Rome reducing
it to shuttered shops, closed temples and near starvation. Eventually he too
was defeated, but not the idea of piracy. The arcane internecine politics of
Imperial Rome continued happily.
And for the next one thousand eight hundred years pirates roamed the seven seas,
sometimes as independents, but more often than not as state sponsored freebooters.
The Vikings were essentially a nation of pirates, whose compass enclosed the
known world from Iceland to Russian and the East. But there were many others.
As an example ‘Barbary’ piracy (based around the northern Mediterranean
coast) thrived on the competition among European powers. France encouraged the
corsairs against Spain, and later Britain and Holland supported them against
France.
By the second half of the 17th century, the greater European naval powers were
able to strike back effectively enough to intimidate the Barbary States into
making peace with them. However, those countries’ commercial interests benefited
by the pirates continuing attacks on their competitors.**
The United States was paying twenty per cent of its annual expenditures to the
Barbary pirates in ransom, and not so covert payments in 1800 to maintain peace.
Now we have contemporary pirates, comprising fishermen from the Horn of Africa,
whose livelihood has been destroyed by factory fishing of their coast. It used
to take a fast boat, a pack of desperadoes and a few AK-47s and you used to
have an oil tanker and crew on your hands. The million dollar ransom was good
for a dangerous days work.
Now in the west all we have is the 19th Of September – International ‘Talk
like a Pirate Day’, where everybody goes around trying to sound like Long
John Silver as exemplified by English actor Robert Newton in the film ‘Treasure
Island’. From Robert Louis Stevenson’s book of the same name. The
book is not actually called ‘Of the Same Name’ but rather it’s
called ‘Treasure Island’. The book ‘Of the Same Name’
is actually eponymous being named after the book of the same name but written
by another author. A. N. Other to his friends
‘Talk like a Pirate Day’ is all a bit naff, but amateur thespians
and people with border-line personality disorders like doing accents –
especially easy West country ones. ‘Ah-hah me hearties,’ ‘Splice
the mainbrace’ and “Fetch me another cabin boy’, are salutations
of the day and Pieces of Eight are the new old currency. And, as you knew, a
piece of eight (the eight reales coin, the Spanish Dollar, or real de a ocho)
could be divided into eight pieces and was the most common silver coin of late
sixteenth and seventeenth century Spain. As trade became a global activity it
became the international currency and eventually the basis for the US dollar.
In fact it was legal tender there until 1857. But in the unending trivia that
is the web you also find that it had currency in Australia as it became briefly
the fledgling colony’s first coinage; £10,000 sent to Governor Lachlan
Macquarie being turned into the ‘holy dollar’ in 1812. The same
times as Napoleon was being turned back morosely from Moscow defeated by winter
and a massive ego.
I heard the radio serial of ‘Treasure Island’ when I was quite young
but haven’t managed to find anything on the web that correlates with my
failing memory of a gimpy leg being dragged (thump ….. scraaaaaaaape…..)
down gloomy wooden floored corridors in the middle of the night in an inn ‘The
Admiral Ben Bow’ overlooking the coast. As this doesn’t occur in
the book it is, no doubt, a false memory, a confection from the tap-tapping
of Blind Pew’s cane and the mysterious summons that was the Black Spot
– or the furtiveness of Black Dog, that pale, tallowy creature, wanting two
fingers of the left hand.
Damn good terrifying fun from the great days of radio. VistaVision and Technicolor
for the imagination.
Which leaves us with everyday media piracy. There’s no point in arguing
– it’s simply wrong. You wouldn’t copy Mike’s recordings
would you?
Would you?

* “Rubicon” Tom Holland 2003
** Wikipedia