Shiver me timbers! (part two!)
May 24 2023
Please ensure that your timbers are shivered, and if necessary, find a friend to help you splice your main brace. I have assumed your hatches are already battened down. If not, take care of this immediately. Those of you who are of a nervous disposition may also want to visit the poop deck before reading any further.
In the second part of our blog on pirates we will (eventually) be examining the topic of ghost pirates! Pirates are scary enough as it is, but when you give them the ability to float through walls, rattle chains and say ‘BOO!’ in a particularly chilling voice, they become positively terrifying.
However, as they are ghosts, there isn’t really much they can do to actually harm you. Ghosts need to use huge amounts of energy to perform simple actions such as hiding your TV remote, throwing clothes on the floor or leaving the fridge door open. If you have a teenager in your house, you will find they are much more efficient at performing these tasks than a 400 year old pirate.
​
Their inability to cause physical mayhem is very annoying to pirate ghosts. Remember, when they were alive, these were individuals with a very low tolerance threshold. In fact, many pirate underlings would find themselves walking the plank for such crimes as losing the TV remote and leaving the fridge door open.
​
Unfortunately, it is difficult to tell if a pirate is truly frustrated, as their go-to catchphrase is ‘ARGH!’ They would say this in response to a surprise birthday party, a bunch of flowers on Valentine’s Day, or a musket ball in the kneecap.
QUICK QUIZ!
Study the images below. Which of these situations would a pirate respond to with a firm 'ARGH'?
The answer is, of course, all of them, with the possible exception of the last one, which may have required a thoughtful 'Yo ho ho'.
Many people are fascinated by ghost pirates. They mistakenly believe they will lead you to a huge chest full of buried treasure on some deserted island. This is a common error. Remember, ghosts will not be very different from the people they were in real life. If they were lovely, kind elementary school teachers when they were alive, they might lead you to their own version of hidden treasure. Unfortunately this will probably be an old pack of times tables flashcards and a stack of moldy grammar worksheets.
Ghost pirates have absolutely no interest in sharing their treasure. Indeed, you may remember from our first pirate blog that they did not bury valuables in dirty great holes. Instead, any treasure they plundered was spent immediately on food, adult beverages and replacement TV remotes. Even Blackbeard, the ultra famous celebrity influencer pirate, was mostly useless at capturing treasure.
In 1718 he blockaded the port of Charleston, South Carolina and held a number of sailors hostage. What did the fearsome Blackbeard demand as a ransom? His own weight in gold coins? A diamond covered tiara and sequined prom dress? A pair of ruby slippers? A Sony Playstation (with four controllers)? No. It is an indication of the sad state of Blackbeard and his crew that he asked for a medicine chest!
The romantic image of rascally pirates is dented somewhat by the list of fearsome ailments they routinely contracted:
-
Dysentery
-
Scurvy
-
Gangrene
-
Yellow fever
-
Malaria
This does not include a whole bunch of others which are too gross to mention in a wholesome family blog such as this.
As well as suffering from a lengthy list of ghastly maladies, pirates were constantly putting themselves in needlessly dangerous situations. Take a look at these scenes from pirate history:
So you can see, not only was a pirate ship not filled with priceless treasures, it was also an incredibly unsafe work environment. This causes problems for professional ghost hunters when it comes to identifying certain types of ghosts.
All scientists have a burning desire to sort things into little groups. Brainbox scientists who study animals love to organize creatures into different classes:
​
-
Birds- feathery flying things, also bats and pterodactyls
-
Mammals- furry things, including cats, dogs, bears and plush, cuddly toys
-
Fish- swimmy things, including sharks, octopuses and Olympic swimmers
-
Reptiles- scaly crawly things, including lizards, frogs and injured pterodactyls
-
Everything else- bugs, slugs, spiders… in fact, anything you can squash with a rolled up newspaper (this is the only reason I still get a physical newspaper delivered)
Ghost hunters have a number of similarly precise classifications. They include poltergeists, doppelgängers, banshees and full body apparitions. It is in this last class where ghost pirates can cause problems. A full body apparition is defined as a ghost you can see from top to bottom. There is no hiding behind curtains, throwing a teapot and then gliding away with a faint chuckle before anyone realizes what is going on. These ghosts will sit in full sight on the end of your bed and pull faces at you. They will stand in your backyard at midnight and point vaguely to a spot in the corner where their murdered corpse is buried (or perhaps where you missed a bit when you mowed the lawn).
The point is, with full body apparitions, you can see all of the ghost.
Keep this in mind as you look at this pictures:
The missing eye here is easily explained by the rather silly long-stemmed pipes they used to smoke.
When pirate ghosts make an appearance before professional spook chasers, they are often missing an eye, a leg or a hand. You may think this disqualifies them from being included in the full body apparition class. Luckily, clever paranormal experts have come up with a solution to this, borrowed from smarty pants math professors. They round up to the nearest whole ghost. Brilliant!
This does create a problem for some pirate ghosts, however. If they were involved in a lot of serious accidents before they passed into the Great Beyond, they are in danger of being rounded down. If you are on a ghost hunt and you hear a faint ‘ARGH’, and then silence, you may have encountered a pirate ghost who has suffered this fate.
Ambitious ghost hunting groups who happen to have a math professor in their ranks, have come up with a unique solution to this problem. They save any bits and pieces of ghost pirates they may encounter and later on, add the fractions together to create a whole new ghost!
​
For example: one pirate leg, one pirate head, one pirate torso and a couple of eyeballs would give you this equation:
¼ +½ + â…™ + â…’ =
Well, I don't know any math professors but I'm pretty sure it's close to one whole.
One can only imagine what type of personality this pirate ghost Frankenstein's Monster would have. Not a very pleasant one, I would guess. It would serve you right for being good at math.
​
I will leave you now as I am inspired to write the script for a new movie called 'Teenagers vs The Pirate Ghost Frankenstein's Monster'. Although it will be an action packed thrill ride, I intend to include a serious message about safety on board ships.
I would like to offer special cost enrolment into my Robert Newton school of Pirate acting. So, if you can't locate a pirate ghost or you do not have a pirate hidden amongst your family members - yer can be one yerself Jam lid .......eee be smart as paint arrrrgggh...!!