International Talk Like a Pirate Day? We've been doing it all wrong

The West Country accent has become synonymous with the pirates of the so-called ‘Golden Age’ but how did they actually talk? Ian Johnston goes in search of the truth

Ooh argh, Jim lad! Today is International Talk like a Pirate Day but, shiver me timbers, it seems we’ve been doing it all wrong. Ye might think the scurvy dogs who sailed the Seven Seas in search of treasure during the so-called Golden Age of Piracy all talked with West Country accents.

However, according to Strathclyde University historian Dr David Wilson, this is a modern misconception. Instead, a whole range of accents would have been heard among the multinational crews of the typical pirate ships of the day.

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We have a long history of fascination with piracy as this illustration for Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera The Pirates of Penzance showsWe have a long history of fascination with piracy as this illustration for Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera The Pirates of Penzance shows
We have a long history of fascination with piracy as this illustration for Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera The Pirates of Penzance shows | Bridgeman via Getty Images

“You might have heard a West Country accent... maybe one or two onboard, but not overwhelmingly West Country,” Dr Wilson told The Scotsman. “Particularly in this period, the 17th and 18th century, there was a majority of pirates who were mostly Anglo-American so you would have heard lots of different English dialects and Scottish dialects, Welsh and Irish as well, but really there was no typical language.

“Although they would have shared a seafaring language, that wasn’t quite unique to piracy, they would just share a seafaring language being sailors.”

There were also pirates who spoke different European languages, others from West Africa and indigenous Americans.

Cold-blooded killers

Apparently, the 1950 film of Robert Louis Stevenson’s book Treasure Island, partly set around Bristol, helped to create the myth, with Robert Newton playing up his native Dorset accent to great effect as Long John Silver – and making the West Country synonymous with piracy in the minds of many today.

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However, it could have been very different because, as Dr Wilson pointed out, “there were lots of Scots”. So the stereotypical pirate accent could just as easily have become an Aberdeenshire or Glaswegian one, if Stevenson had made a different plot choice.

But would we have wanted that? Scotland may have dodged a bullet or, more aptly, a hangman’s noose. The modern-day image of roguish, happy-go-lucky 18th-century pirates cannot hide the fact that, in reality, these were people who murdered for money.

An unexpected meeting with a pirate ship at sea would have been a source of genuine terror with nothing remotely funny about it. Yet today, all over the world, we will merrily celebrate these ruthless, cold-blooded killers.

How to be historically accurate

Then again, we all know the difference between cartoon violence and the real thing. A humourless assessment of the serious injuries that stack up in the average episode of Tom and Jerry misses the point.

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Their actual crimes don’t bear thinking about, but pirates have essentially been turned into cartoon characters, which is perhaps no bad thing. And, certainly, as the success of the Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise shows, it provides a whole lot of entertainment for millions of people.

So, how should we really speak like a pirate? To be historically accurate, it seems we could just use our own accents, as almost any would do.

But, avast there matey, where be the fun in thaaat?! It is, after all, speak like ‘a pirate’ day. And there’s no greater pirate in all of made-up history to try to imitate than Stevenson’s Long John Silver.

Now I’m off to practice after a frankly abysmal performance which may be worthy of the dreaded ‘black spot’, but can be watched in a Scotsman vlog on piracy with Dr Wilson and Scotsman columnist Susan Morrison.

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