Some people choose to celebrate today as “Talk Like Pirate Day.”  They may walk around with funny hats, eye patches and/or plastic swords saying “Aargh” or “Shiver me timbers” or some other sort of nonsense. I have never quite understood the appeal of the Disney-fied glorification of 17th century murderers and rapists.

As someone who has spent most of my life involved in shipping, I am also aware that piracy is not an artifact of centuries past. Merchant seamen are still brutalized by pirates to this day. Also, the Disney pirate fetish merely spreads ignorance. Every ship with a traditional appearance is now being called a “pirate ship” by the media and many of the public. Recently, Matt Garand wrote an essay in the Bangor Daily News titled, Why I’m Not a Pirate, which begins:

I may spend almost every waking moment on a boat, and much of my travel has been carried out on the backs of waves and under the influence of the wind, but I am not a pirate. I have no interest in pirates other than to avoid them, and I certainly don’t want to talk or act like one. The mythical pirates of lore, simply stated, have been glorified beyond recognition so that most of the general population now correlates any form of nautical undertaking akin to that of Jack Sparrow.

I enjoyed the Disney films for what they were, which was dramatic and comedic entertainment. An unfortunate side effect of the massive popularity of these films has been the constant barrage of pirate references, costumes, and a Jolly Roger on every manner of craft emerging from the marina on a Saturday afternoon.

If you want to act like a pirate, go ahead. The modern rendition is a harmless reenactment that really doesn’t represent true piracy and often consists of an obnoxious amount of “arrrrghs” and an eye patch. So what’s the big deal? Why do pirates irk me so deeply?

Read the rest of Matt’s essay here.

Thanks to Irwin Bryan for contributing to this post.