[BACKGROUND] When you think of pirates,
this is probably what comes to mind,
swashbuckling attitude, treasure chests and maps with a bloody X on it,
and an eye-patch or a peg leg or a hook for a hand.
Why is it that they're always missing something?
But they also might be saying things like, "Ahoy,
matey," " Aye, aye,
cap'n," "Arrrgh," "Walk the plank."
Clearly my pirate is very good.
But did you know that pirates never actually talked like that?
Despite stories like Treasure Island,
Peter Pan, and the Pirates of the Caribbean,
the stories and movies that really helped
cement in our minds what pirates really looks like,
it turns out that not even pirates spoke pirate,
and it's because of one man.
Pirates have been plaguing seafarers for centuries, nay millenniums,
but the pirates we know and love lived in the Golden Age of Piracy from
1650 to the late 1720s when thousands of pirates were out at sea.
During this time we saw the likes of Captain Blackbeard,
William Kidd and Anne Bonny.
They were some of the most notorious pirates out at sea even when they were alive.
And In 1724, the book the General History of Pyrates,
yes, it's spelled like that,
was published by an anonymous sea captain.
[NOISE] It helped illustrate pirates the exact way we see them now,
that they had missing legs and eyes sought out buried treasure
and that their ships had the famous Jolly Roger pirate flag at mast.
But one glaring thing that was different from
how we picture pirates today is the way that they talked.
In this book, there were no mentions of "Arrgh" or "Walk the plank."
So when did the story change?
The first step in creating pirate talk,
pirate speak, pirate language,
was this book, Treasure Island.
It's the most famous pirate novel by Robert Louis Stevenson published in 1883.
From page one, it gave popularity to
some of the most famous phrases we think pirates said,
''Yo-ho yo-ho," "walk the plank," "matey," and all that good stuff.
But it was the adaptation from book to screen that
really cemented the faux language of pirates in our minds.
Robert Newton was famous for bringing Long John Silver to
life in the Disney adaptation of Treasure Island in 1950.
Here's how he sounded.
You will get [inaudible] cotton rip when the time comes.
But until I gives a signal they too.
You can actually think Newton's upbringing for the popularization of that accent.
Robert Newton based his pirate accent on Dorset,
the rural countryside in Southwest England where he grew up,
and the regional accent he had from there included the rolled
r. His performance permanently shaped pop culture's vision of how pirates spoke.
From their, pirate films started popping up left and right with Newton-esque pirates.
But there might have been some truth to Newton's accent.
Dorset has a strong maritime history,
and even Blackbeard was said to have come from Bristol,
less than 80 miles away.
But that alone doesn't mean pirates were out there saying ''Arrgh''.
So how did they actually speak?
There might have been a typical accent for British outlaws who became pirates.
Their speech would have been that of
an underclass British sailor but with an extra dose of
curse words amplified with a mix of
slang that they picked up on trade routes from French,
Italian, Spanish, and Dutch sailors.
But the largest number of pirates came from
London and many British regions changed my to me.
So that wasn't exactly exclusive to pirates.
There's obviously no audio recordings of pirates talking,
and when there were written records,
they were written by educated people who knew how to read and write.
Here's an excerpt from
the only written record ever recovered from Blackbeard's ship, The Adventure.
''Such a day, rum all out.
Our company somewhat sober,
a damned confusion amongst us.
Rogues a- plotting, great talk of separation.
So I looked sharp for a prize.
Such a day found one with a great deal of liquor on board.
So kept the company hot, damned hot.
Then things went well again."
Nothing too out of the ordinary to me,
and the phrase ''walk the plank'' popularized by Peter Pan,
mostly myth as well.
The practice was extremely rare.
If they were to kill someone,
it would have been by marooning them, being hanged,
or keel-hauled AKA being
dragged by a rope under a sharp barnacle covered keel of the ship.
And if they really wanted to drown someone,
they'd usually just throw him overboard.
A passage from a general history of pirates describes an event just like that one.
''They hauled him into the steerage and forced him upon deck where one of the hell hounds
asked if he had rather take a leap like
a brave fellow or to be tossed over like a sneaking rascal.
The captain still cried for mercy and begged an hour's respite only.
But all in vain,
he was seized by the villains and thrown overboard'."
So ''walk the plank'' was not really said that
much if at all like Hollywood told us it was done.
So when you're off saying ''walk the plank," "shiver me timbers" or "arrgh'',
just know that unfortunately thanks to Hollywood and pop culture,
pirates never really spoke like that.
And if they were saying phrases like that,
then everybody else at sea was too.
[MUSIC]. Thank you for watching.
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