talk like a pirate day founder john baur (ol' chumbucket ... · where would you send someone...
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2/24/2015 Talk Like a Pirate Day Founder John Baur (Ol' Chumbucket) Shares His Favorite Buccaneer Hot Spots | MapQuest
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TRAVEL Q&AS
Talk Like a Pirate Day Founder John Baur (Ol'Chumbucket) Shares His Favorite BuccaneerHot SpotsIn New Orleans, St. Augustine and Hampton Beach ye will find adventure and maybe plunder, arrr
by Jenie Skoy | Posted Sep 19th 2014 3:11p.m. Jenie has documented stories for more than twenty years as a journalist, photographer and storyteller. Follow her on Google+ and Twitter.
talklikeapirate.com
Is your co-worker talking like a pirate today and bugging the heck out of you? Unless he does it other daystoo, take heart, today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day.
2/24/2015 Talk Like a Pirate Day Founder John Baur (Ol' Chumbucket) Shares His Favorite Buccaneer Hot Spots | MapQuest
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The holiday (of sorts) has been celebrated by millions of people worldwide, including in the South Pole—and even on the International
Space Station. So even if you don't know a bunghole from a broadside or a mizzenmast from a maidenhead, it’s okay, just sprinkle
"arrrrs" and "ahoys" into your conversations today and see whether the pirate life suits you.
If it does, read on to plan your own epic voyage to spots recommended by John Baur, aka Ol’Chumbucket, who launched Talk Like
Pirate Day, in this lightly edited Q&A.
How did you come up with the idea for Talk Like Pirate Day?
In 1996, my friend Mark Summers and I were playing racquetball at the Albany, Oregon YMCA, not well, mind you, but gamely. As we
flailed away, we kept calling out friendly encouragement to each other, like, “Oh jeez, my hamstring,” while we wildly swung our
rackets. Well, on this day, for reasons we still don’t quite understand, we started encouraging each other in pirate slang, “Arrg." And
then, "That be a fine cannonade," one said, to be followed by "Now watch as I fire a broadside straight into your yardarm!" and other
such helpful phrases.
By the time our hour on the court was over, we realized that using pirate lingo had made the game more fun, and it was then that we
decided the world really needed a new national holiday, Talk Like a Pirate Day. We also decided—right then and there—that the
perfect spokesman for our new holiday was none other than Dave Barry himself, nationally syndicated humor columnist and winner of
the Pulitzer byGod Prize. So we emailed him, clicked the send button, casting our bread upon water, if we may wax biblical. We
figured a famous guy like Dave Barry would have more important things to do than read the email of a couple of louts with a hare
brained idea. But it turns out louts like us are where he gets a lot of his column material.
Later, I got a phone call from the feature editor at the local paper, sounding confused: “John, I was editing this week’s Dave Barry
"If you want to go a little farther afield, try the Caribbean! Noplace has the pirate history of Jamaica. Take a tour of Port Royal,once the pirate capital of the new world which was devastated byan earthquake in 1692."
2/24/2015 Talk Like a Pirate Day Founder John Baur (Ol' Chumbucket) Shares His Favorite Buccaneer Hot Spots | MapQuest
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column and it is all about … is this you?” It was. He had written the column and that’s when all hell broke loose.
Where would you send someone who wants to travel like a pirate?
When you're a pirate, the world's your oyster, and there's plenty of places to explore. So set sail, young adventurer, and go where the
wind blows, or if not, follow my advice:
New Orleans is a great starting point for a pirate getaway. The Crescent City has a rich history of pirates, smugglers and thieves,
pirate legacy to beat the band. And there's a lot of bands there too. The city's pirate story begins with one of the last of the great
pirates, Jean Lafitte.
Lafitte and his brother, Pierre, had a pirate fortress on Barataria, down where the Mississippi River empties into the Gulf of Mexico.
Smuggled and stolen contraband was brought into New Orleans through the swamps. Officials could never catch them. The officials
would send out patrols to apprehend them, but the Baratarians knew the swamps too well and rarely were delayed in arriving with their
cargo. And the citizens of New Orleans looked the other way, buying their goods and winking at the impropriety.
When Gov. Claiborne offered a reward of $500 for Lafitte, the pirate was incensed, and within days, had posted all over town his own
offer of a reward for anyone who captured and brought him the governor. Stop by the blacksmith shop that the Lafitte’s used as their
headquarters in the city. It still exists and is now the home of a popular local tavern, Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop.
Off Jackson Square, next to the cathedral, there's a small path with the name Pirate's Alley. Up at the end there's the Pirate Cafe, one
of my favorite places for a cool one on a hot day.
New Orleans also knows how to show visitors a great time. There lots to offer—jazz, voodoo, Bourbon Street and the French Quarter.
Come during Mardi Gras and you'll see a party like you've never seen. And that includes pirates!
Down south, deeper in the swamp, is the town of Houma. The (Houmians? or Houmaridians?) residents of Houma have built a fine
museum in honor of the Lafittes.
2/24/2015 Talk Like a Pirate Day Founder John Baur (Ol' Chumbucket) Shares His Favorite Buccaneer Hot Spots | MapQuest
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Didn’t you live in Florida? Are there some destinations there that you can recommend to buccaneering travelers?
Many Florida cities have pirate legacies, making them great destinations for the roaming seas rover. If I had to pick one, it'd be St.
Augustine, the oldest European city in North America and also the home of the St. Augustine Pirate & Treasure Museum, a treasure
trove of pirate history. The exhibit includes one of only three Jolly Rogers in the world known to have flown above actual pirate ships of
the Golden Age, and the actual sea chest of pirate captain Thomas Tew. And along with the spectacular exhibits, the museum shares
the unpleasant reality of most pirates' lives—a gallows dock.
Moving north up the Atlantic Coast, the traveler can enjoy the charm of such classic Southern cities as Savannah, Georgia, and
Charleston, South Carolina.
When you get to North Carolina, make your way to Okracoke Inlet, the site where the infamous pirate Blackbeard met his fate. His
ship, Adventure, was caught by Lt. Maynard and the sloop, Swallow, and after a bitter fight, Blackbeard lost his head. The event is
memorialized in a host of tourist sites, including a Blackbeard museum and an historic cemetery. (No, the pirate is not buried there. His
head was taken to Virginia. His body was dumped overboard, where it reportedly swam around Maynard's ship three times before
sinking. Blackbeard was a scary guy, even in death.)
Speaking of Virginia and Blackbeard, Hampton, Virginia, is home each June to the annual Blackbeard Festival, one of the major pirate
festivals that take place all around the country each year. The dedicated pirate tourist could crisscross the country all summer,
attending a different festival each weekend. Hampton is one of the big ones. Some of the others include the Fells Point Privateer
Festival in Baltimore, the Gasparilla Pirate Festival in Tampa, Florida, the Billy Bowlegs Festival in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, and, to
bring it full circle, NOLA Pyrate Week here in New Orleans.
Does the East Coast get all the fun? Are there other states and places where people can find piratelike things to do?
There are pirate festivals in Iowa, Wisconsin, Colorado and all up and down the West Coast. The Northern California Pirate Festival in
Vallejo, California is a major event, drawing some of the biggest crowds of any pirate festival in the world. There's also Seafair in
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Seattle, where the Seafair Pirates are the biggest stars in the city, and Rusty Scuppers Daze in Westport, a small, picturesque coastal
city on the Pacific side of Washington's Olympic Peninsula.
But anywhere you find a Renaissance Fair you're bound to also find plenty of pirates.
Or, if you want to go a little farther afield, try the Caribbean! No place has the pirate history of Jamaica. Take a tour of Port Royal,
once the pirate capital of the new world which was devastated by an earthquake in 1692. But the part of the peninsula that didn't fall
into the sea is now something of a mecca for the pirate pathfinder.
Every island has a little pirate history. St. Croix, where this pirate made his home for four years, was once home base for Black Sam
Bellamy, captain of the illfated Wydah. St. Thomas lays claim to connections with Blackbeard (that man again!) and Sir Francis
Drake, who technically was a privateer, not a pirate, but try convincing the Spanish of that.
The Cayman Islands feature the region's biggest pirate festival every November with scalawags from all over the world showing up.
Freeport, in the Bahamas, was once a pirate enclave that ruled the island. And Tortuga, off Haiti's north shore, was, for a time, the
center of the buccaneer world.
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