Showing posts with label pirates. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pirates. Show all posts

March 8 - Happy Birthday, Anne Bonny? (Maybe)

   Posted on March 8, 2022


This is an update of my post published on March 8, 2011:



Anne Bonny and Mary Read


Anne Bonny is one of the most famous pirates in history!

She didn't own her own ship, and she wasn't active as a pirate for all that long. The main reason she is famous is because she was a woman. She and another female pirate, Mary Read, along with “Calico Jack” Rackham, stole a ship called Revenge and captured many ships—and a lot of treasure—in the Caribbean Sea around 1720.



Many people have said that Bonny disguised herself as a man and that the other pirates didn't know that she and Read were women. Apparently that wasn't true—certainly Rackham knew they were women, and there is evidence that the rest of the pirate crew knew, too. I bet that men's clothing was more practical for fighting and capturing treasure than was the women's clothing of the time, and that Bonny and Read wore the clothing that was better “on the job,” and that's how the rumor that they pretended to be men got started.

Why did I say that it was maybe Anne Bonny's birthday? Although some sources give March 8, 1702, as her birthday, most sources admit that we aren't terribly sure what year Bonny was born (let alone what month and day!). We do know that she was a child born in Ireland to unwed parents, and we know that she came with her parents to the Carolinas, in the New World, before she was a teenager. (Her mother died shortly after this move.)


When the Revenge was captured by a “King's ship,” in October 1720, Rackham, Read and Bonny were sentenced to be executed. However, the two women claimed to be pregnant and won a “stay of execution.” In other words, the hanging was put off until they delivered their babies. Read died in prison. As for Bonny, there is no historical record of Bonny's release or of her execution. Some historians believe that her father was able to bail her out of prison and that Bonny lived to be 80 years old!




Note: Although it is fun to learn about pirates, and even dress up and play-act as pirates, actual pirates were pretty much just thieves and murderers. A fiction book that talks about the excitement of life at sea - but then the reality that piracy is just a lot of crimes that are not at all romantic or glorious - is Jade, by Sally Watson.
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September 19 - Talk Like a Pirate Day

Posted on September 19, 2021


This is an update of my post published on September 19, 2010:





Ahoy, matey!

Get in touch with your inner pirate and celebrate the international holiday Talk Like a Pirate Day. 'Tis easy: just growl “Arr” and “Yarr” a lot, and throw in an occasional “Shiver me timbers!”

This day be started by some Yanks (aye, these original buccaneers are from the U.S.!) long ago in a decade almost lost in th' mists o' time (the 1990s). 'Twas started as a rare joke b'tween friends, but a man name o' Dave Barry, who be writin' a humor column for the landlubbers, wrote about the day and smartly spread the day 'round th' globe.

Shiver me timbers!

  • Fer all you landlubbers out there, here be a pirate glossary!


  • Ye might like t' take a peep at the picaroons who started this whole entire parley. Their site be here.




  • One group who be glad to gettin' in this holiday spirit is th' Church of the Flyin' Spaghetti Monster, because pirates are an important part of the faith.




According to the founder of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Bobby Henderson, “...[I]t is disrespectful to teach [FSM] beliefs without wearing His chosen outfit, which of course is full pirate regalia.... You may be interested to know that global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s.” Henderson has created a graph showing that there is a “statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature.” 




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October 25 – Edelweiss Pirates Face a Crackdown

Posted October 25, 2018

While writing these posts, I'm always looking at "On this date..." lists.
And on this date in 1944, I read, the powerful Nazi Heinrich Himmler ordered a crackdown on the Edelweiss Pirates.

 And I instantly wondered, "Wow! Who are the Edelweiss Pirates?"

 It turns out that they were a sort of a group of Nazi-resisters within Nazi Germany - a movement made up of young people, mostly ages 14 to 17!


They had evaded becoming part of the Hitler Youth by dropping out of school at age 14 - and they were not yet old enough to be conscripted into the military (which was mandatory from age 17 on).

 The Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organization and was strictly male; the Nazi organization for teenage girls was called the League of German Girls.

Of course, I am using the English names for all of these organizations. The Edelweiss Pirates were called Edelweißpiraten in German, and the German names for the Nazi youth organizations were Hitler-Jugend and Bund Deutscher Mädel.

 The Edelweiss Pirates had a lot of freedom, compared to the strictly controlled Hitler Youth - including having freedom to hang out with the opposite sex. The "Pirates" used some of the symbols of the German Youth Movement, which had been a force in society since the very late 1800s: the movement had hyped outdoor activities and scouting, so symbols included the tent and shorts and scarves. The German Youth Movement was outlawed by the Nazis...but the Edelweiss Pirates continued to hike and camp and listen to and sing jazz music - and that was dangerous in a nation that had become a totalitarian regime with restrictions on free movement and policies banning jazz.



The "Pirates" wore edelweiss badges - I am guessing some sort of embroidered badge, not sprigs of actual edelweiss flowers!

 Edelweiss is a sort of mountain flower that grows in the Alps. It has become famous in the English-speaking world from a song written by Rodgers and Hammerstein for the musical The Sound of Music - and in that musical, the song "Edelweiss" is sung as a way of showing patriotism to Austria and a subtle form of resistance to the Nazi takeover of Austria. I wonder if Rodgers and Hammerstein knew about the Edelweiss Pirates, who really WERE resisters!

The Edelweiss Pirates were very loosely organized. Here are some things that some of them did to resist the Nazis:

 In addition to evading being part of the Hitler Youth, some of the Pirates actually ambushed Hitler Youth patrols and beat them up.

 Some assisted young men who deserted the German army, helping them to hide or escape. 

 Some collected leaflets dropped by Allied aircraft and then got them into the hands of ordinary Germans by putting them into letterboxes or mail slots.

 Some tagged walls with anti-Nazi slogans.

 Some found other ways to actively help the Allies. Some raided military bases and derailed trains. They threw bricks at Nazi officials' cars, they beat up Nazi officials, they even killed a Gestapo chief.
At first, the Edelweiss Pirates were mostly ignored by the Nazis. Even though there are some reports that there were more of the "Pirates" than there were in the Hitler Youth groups, they were mostly dismissed. However, after the crackdown on this date in 1944, some were imprisoned, a few were sent to concentration camps, at least one was tortured, and a few were even hanged!

 Only recently have the Edelweiss Pirates been recognized as anything other than criminal gangs - they have been given some props for resisting fascism and fighting the Nazis.






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