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Ok, I'm up for the moment while the painkillers do their job and then I'm going back to bed, but I just wanted to post this article from today's newspaper, because I've loved pirate stories since I had Peter Pan read to me when I was little. And I still need to get Treasure Island again sometime. I've lost the two copies of the book that I had. ^^;;
Walk the Plank? Yo ho ho
By Dr Karl S. Kruszelnicki
Pirates have been causing trouble for more than 3000 years. Along with plundering, they're renowned for wearing eye patches and making people walk the plank. Sure, a patch is handy for keeping dirt out of an empty eye socket, but what about "walking the plank?" Regardless of all the pirate movies you may have seen, up to and including Keira Knightley taking a stroll in Pirates of the Caribbean, it hasn't really been a big part of piracy.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica defines "piracy" as "robbery or other violent action, for private ends, and without authorisation by public authority, committed on the seas or in the air." The first documentation of piracy is a clay tablet dating back to the pharaoh Akhenaten in 1350BC. It describes piracy in the Mediterranean. In 75BC, Julius Caesar was captured by pirates. His ransom was paid, and he was released, but he then returned for revenge and killed his pirate captors.
One special type of pirate was the privateer. These were "legal" pirates, commissioned by one country to attack the ships of another. The commissioning country liked not having to pay for the permanent upkeep of a large navy, and hired the privateers as needed. Surprisingly, England did not have a large naval fleet for a long time, and mostly made do with privateers, starting with King Henry III in 1243, when he engaged three ships to attack French shipping. Privateering, which successfully combined profit and patriotism, had a long history, with famous exponents including Sir Francis Drake, William Dampier and Jean Lafitte. Spain was the last country to hire privateers, in 1906.
Today, piracy at sea happens mainly in the South China Sea, and off the African coast. Modern sea pirates tend to use small, fast motorboats and small, powerful arms such as mortars, machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades.
The phrase "walking the plank" evokes wonderfully graphic images (think Peter Pan and Wendy). It is described several times in Robert Louis Stevenson's 1881 classic Treasure Island, but got its first published mention in Charles Ellms's 1837 boys' book The Pirates Own Book, in which Ellms claimed that the American amateur pirate Stede Bonnet (1688?-1718) made his enemies walk the plank. This claim was elsewhere made about Black Bart (Bartholomew Roberts, 1682-1722). But in fact, the history books can only come up with, at most, five documented cases.
(From "Mythconceptions," in Good Weekend. July 31, 2004. p. 13.)
Walk the Plank? Yo ho ho
By Dr Karl S. Kruszelnicki
Pirates have been causing trouble for more than 3000 years. Along with plundering, they're renowned for wearing eye patches and making people walk the plank. Sure, a patch is handy for keeping dirt out of an empty eye socket, but what about "walking the plank?" Regardless of all the pirate movies you may have seen, up to and including Keira Knightley taking a stroll in Pirates of the Caribbean, it hasn't really been a big part of piracy.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica defines "piracy" as "robbery or other violent action, for private ends, and without authorisation by public authority, committed on the seas or in the air." The first documentation of piracy is a clay tablet dating back to the pharaoh Akhenaten in 1350BC. It describes piracy in the Mediterranean. In 75BC, Julius Caesar was captured by pirates. His ransom was paid, and he was released, but he then returned for revenge and killed his pirate captors.
One special type of pirate was the privateer. These were "legal" pirates, commissioned by one country to attack the ships of another. The commissioning country liked not having to pay for the permanent upkeep of a large navy, and hired the privateers as needed. Surprisingly, England did not have a large naval fleet for a long time, and mostly made do with privateers, starting with King Henry III in 1243, when he engaged three ships to attack French shipping. Privateering, which successfully combined profit and patriotism, had a long history, with famous exponents including Sir Francis Drake, William Dampier and Jean Lafitte. Spain was the last country to hire privateers, in 1906.
Today, piracy at sea happens mainly in the South China Sea, and off the African coast. Modern sea pirates tend to use small, fast motorboats and small, powerful arms such as mortars, machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades.
The phrase "walking the plank" evokes wonderfully graphic images (think Peter Pan and Wendy). It is described several times in Robert Louis Stevenson's 1881 classic Treasure Island, but got its first published mention in Charles Ellms's 1837 boys' book The Pirates Own Book, in which Ellms claimed that the American amateur pirate Stede Bonnet (1688?-1718) made his enemies walk the plank. This claim was elsewhere made about Black Bart (Bartholomew Roberts, 1682-1722). But in fact, the history books can only come up with, at most, five documented cases.
(From "Mythconceptions," in Good Weekend. July 31, 2004. p. 13.)
