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Why Are Pirates Romanticised?

I thought it was because of the frilly shirts!
 
JamesWhitehead said:
They may have been wasting their time! I seem to recall that a number of studies concluded that pirates were a gay old lot.

Those cries of "Arghhh!" may have been the punctuation to many a jolly rogering.
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It has often occurred to me that sex for gay men in the time before lube existed must have been very trying indeed.
 
Carse said:
It has often occurred to me that sex for gay men in the time before lube existed must have been very trying indeed.
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Lard. Butter. Goose fat.
I could go on.
 
Frideswide said:
I was only a Moll... and you are right, you don't leave :) Do I count as an aspirational figure? (say yes, say yes, pretty please with jam and brass knobs on say yes!)
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I had a mate who would only go out with tiny girls who fitted in the wind pocket behind him. He wasn't a biker in the normal sense - he was a speed loon who drag raced a highly tweaked Kawa Z-1. He used to sit on Southend sea front outside the Liberty Bell (we're talking a long time ago, right?) and wait for someone to go by showing off - popping wheelies or whatever - and then try to beat them to the Kursaal roundabout from a standing start.

The fun we had. 'Course, quite a lot of us died. The BBC (I think) made a doc about the Southend bike scene in about 1983 ish.

Incidentally Southend in those days was a patch free zone - some sort of agreement between clubs at a level I never aspired to.
 
Cochise said:
I had a mate who would only go out with tiny girls who fitted in the wind pocket behind him. He wasn't a biker in the normal sense - he was a speed loon who drag raced a highly tweaked Kawa Z-1. He used to sit on Southend sea front outside the Liberty Bell (we're talking a long time ago, right?) and wait for someone to go by showing off - popping wheelies or whatever - and then try to beat them to the Kursaal roundabout from a standing start.

The fun we had. 'Course, quite a lot of us died. The BBC (I think) made a doc about the Southend bike scene in about 1983 ish.

Incidentally Southend in those days was a patch free zone - some sort of agreement between clubs at a level I never aspired to.
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You've got me thinking now about reading 'Freewheelin Frank' as a teenager and the associated; Ken Kesey, the Merry Pranksters, acid tests, Hunter S. Thompson, Altamont, Laurel Canyon, Woodstock....all a far cry from England, but nevertheless...
 
Carse said:
'Carse' (alternately 'kerse') is an old Scots word for a low lying, flat, fertile alluvial plain next to a river. I live on one.
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Interesting. I spent a bit of time looking up the etymology.

It now generally means low lying flat and fertile land next to a river.

Earlier, it meant low lying boggy or overgrown land near to a river without the favourable connotations of fertility. The meaning has more or less turned round from "unusable as farmland" to "excellent farmland".

Carse is inked to old English carr meaning bog or fen and is possibly derived from the plural, carrs. Before that, there is a link to the old Norse kjarr, meaning marsh, but it is also similar to the Welsh cars meaning bog or fen.

The same etymology may be behind the common Scottish surname, Kerr — roughly equivalent to the English surname, Marsh — perhaps associating a person with the area where they lived.

However, Carr, as a surname, rather than Kerr, may come from Irish gearr meaning "short in height" or — the opposite — from Welsh cawr meaning giant.

But the rabbit hole of the internet then took me to the Germanic legendary hero, Kjárr, said to be modelled on the Roman emperors, and possibly (tenuously suggested to be) derived from Caesar, although other explanations are available.
 
Carse said:
It has often occurred to me that sex for gay men in the time before lube existed must have been very trying indeed.
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I write as a straight man, but my understanding based on a little cautious Googling before writing this, and occasional conversations with gay male friends and some straight female friends, is that anal sex is considerably less common among gay men than many straight people assume, and is a lot more common among heterosexual couples than you might imagine.

Lubrication must have been easy enough to find if needed, but as I understand it, many or most gay men prefer other methods of mutual stimulation: by hand, mouth, between the thighs, and so on.

I should imagine that many gay men are tired of anal sex related comments and jokes and wonder why so many straight people go on about it.
 
As pirates go, I have to assume that it's the intersection of "attack people and take their stuff, potentially with someone's legal approval", "living outside the rule of the people you're up against/having the power to run away when consequences come", and "self-reliance (or, taking what you need) and the use of force are fun and adventurous!"
Put those together with things like "working the <country> coast against the <other country's boats>" or "well, at least they weren't slave traders" or mysterious treasure or just plain "wow, that took guts", and you have a lot of leeway for romanticizing.

Not all of which have to be super kind or pleasant ideas when you think too hard about them (or the weevils in the bread), but people enjoy them all the same. I suppose the idea of a seagoing nation in China (Ching Shih's fleet? Zheng Yi Sao? I am unsure which is appropriate) is pretty dramatic too, and generally epic adventure story stuff
 
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Mikefule said:
I should imagine that many gay men are tired of anal sex related comments and jokes and wonder why so many straight people go on about it.
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I know that the relevant potion of people I know most certainly are! It's a bit like what seems to be a belief amongst (some) men that lesbians are exhibitionists and would just love to be observed by a hettie male while they get it on. I mean, WTAF?

Excellent post @Mikefule
 
My tutor back in Cornwall said there were no pirates back there.

(Except the Sallee Reavers who were a problem all of their own)

Looking at the Cornish history books I would say there was a heck of a lot of Crime at Sea that did not involve smuggling (an activity so common in all classes of society as not to be commented upon)
 
I've been watching the dramatised documentary The Lost Pirate Kingdom on Netflix. It's about the Caribbean pirates, and paints most of them as a fairly honourable lot most of the time. I don't know how accurate any of it is, but I found it highly enjoyable. Strange that it's called The Lost Pirate Kingdom when it centres on the Nassau Republic.
 
PeteByrdie said:
I've been watching the dramatised documentary The Lost Pirate Kingdom on Netflix. It's about the Caribbean pirates, and paints most of them as a fairly honourable lot most of the time. I don't know how accurate any of it is, but I found it highly enjoyable. Strange that it's called The Lost Pirate Kingdom when it centres on the Nassau Republic.
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Aaaarrrr, it be good stuff. I give it pieces of eight out of ten.
 
JamesWhitehead said:
They may have been wasting their time! I seem to recall that a number of studies concluded that pirates were a gay old lot.

Those cries of "Arghhh!" may have been the punctuation to many a jolly rogering.

"Let me guess . . . Long John?" o_O
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You beat me to it, although your humour is without the delightful vulgarity mine would have had...
 
Some Pirate Good News.


Georgie, Lukas and Owen Knott

Image caption, Lukas Knott, lost the sight in his right eye after an accident in his garden

A boy who pretends to be a pirate after losing his sight in one eye is being helped by a community that heard his dream was to have his own ship.

Lukas Knott, aged three, wears an eye patch over his right eye after colliding with a safety latch on a garden gate. His parents appealed for help in building his own pirate ship at their home in Malvern. Donations have now poured in to turn his dreams into reality.

As well as helping to raise nearly £1,000 towards the cause, members of the public have been bringing piles of wood to the Worcestershire family.

"I wasn't expecting the response, I'm shocked by it," father Owen Knott told BBC Hereford and Worcester.

Local businesses have also donated pirate-themed outfits and a plaque for the ship which Lukas has named Lightyear, in homage to his favourite film, Toy Story.

Volunteers, including a local teacher and children, have pledged to help Mr Knott build the vessel.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-hereford-worcester-65019014
 
I think a key reason that pirates are romanticised is they are often conflated with corsairs and freebooters.
These guys were either licensed or endorsed disruptors of trade on behalf of a government, such as France or England.

They were there to plunder for a purpose, and gained a certain reputation as daredevils and swashbucklers as a result.

Pirates are just murderous thieves and raiders.
 
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catseye said:
People want to read about Bad Boys being reformed by the love of A Good Woman.
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Reading this, I wonder if I would count as a Bad Girl being reformed by the love of A Good Man?

edit in the interests of transparency: more than one man and more than one woman! :rollingw:
 
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Ascalon said:
They were there to plunder for a purpose, and gained a certain reputation as daredevils and swashbucklers as a result.

Pirates are just murderous thieves and raiders.
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See also: Vikings.

I'm sure there's a lot of cultural stuff going on too, but the modern perception of Vikings as seen on TV is very similar to that of pirates. It's supposedly 'sexy'.
 
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