Impressionism

At a Halloween party, a guest dressed as a 17th century sailor enters the room and yells out, "Arrgh mateys!" The other guests immediately recognize the sailor's speech and contorted facial expression as one belonging to an old English pirate. How did 21st century Americans at a costume party associate the old naval uniform, particular word strand, and animated facial gestures as that belonging to a 17th - century pirate? The majority of Americans get their history lessons through the viewing of Hollywood movies. Robert Newton played the most famous cinematic pirate character in the film Treasure Island (1950). Robert Newton based his mannerisms and nautical jargon on the ficticious character Long John Silver from Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Treasure Island (1883). Robert Newton's performance of Long John Silver captured the imaginations of movie audiences for generations to come. In the most recent pirate genre films, Cutthroat Island (1995) and Pirates of the Caribbean ( 2003), many of the films' characters echoed Robert Newton's interpretation of a salty pirate. The old pirate dialect is unique because it incorporates nautical jargon with British, Scottish, and Irish pronunciation patterns. If our understanding of the old English pirate language comes from Robert Louis Stevenson, what was the source that inspired him to write Treasure Island?
During World War Two, thousands of young American men from all parts of the United States joined the Navy and Coast Guard. The new sailors brought with them their reginal dialects as they began to learn their trade on board the steel warships. Quickly the recruited sailors learned that the floor was called a deck and the bathroom was called the head. While on Greenland patrol in 1942, coastguardsman Thaddeus Novak wrote in his diary;

December 18, Friday at sea.
Normally, climbing a ladder is simple. But with the Nanok climbing mountains, then skidding into deep valleys, climbing becomes a chore. When the Nanok begins a downward plunge, I become weightless on the ladder that drops away from under me. The Nanok ends her downward plunge and begins to climb upward again. Gravity pulls at my body so strongly that ladder climbing is near impossible. I seem to way tons!

Seaman Novak's diary had very little reference to nautical jargon in his writing. If the ship's name were erased from his volcabulary, it would sound as though Thaddeus Novak was riding a fire engine on a mountain road hundreds of miles inland. The use of nautical metaphors is also non-existent in Novak's diary. Ships were no longer made of wood timbers and almost all sailors during World War Two had a High School education. It would have sounded completely stupid for a sailor to come on deck and say, "Shiver my steel beams".
The first naval ships that incorporated metal plating in their construction were called ironclads. In 1862, the naval engineer John Ericsson launched his 172-foot battleship USS Monitor; a completely revolutionary design that was built with iron and wood. Two large Dahlgren guns were mounted in a revolving armored turret located amidships on the Monitor's main deck. The sailors selected to man the Monitor were Navy career men from the decks of wooden sailing frigates. The Monitor was towed down to Hampton Roads, Virginia, to meet the Confederate 12-gun ironclad CSS Virginia. On March 9,1862, the Monitor engaged the 275-foot Virginia in a four-hour battle that ended in a draw. The following day, Monitor's crewman George Geer wrote to his wife Martha;

March 10, 1862
Our ship is crowded with generals and officers of all grades, both Army and Navy. They are wild with joy and say if any of us men come to the fort, we can have all we want free, as we have saved 100 of lives and millions of property to the government.

The only indication that Geer's vocabulary was connected to his naval profession was the inclusion of "Our ship" in the beginning of his letter. If "Our ship" was replaced by another noun phrase such as "Our auditorium", Geer's letter could be interpreted as one written by a landlubber whose feet are firmly attached to the ground. Moving back in time from George Geer's generation were sailors that had very little education in reading and writing. It becomes increasingly difficult to find letters and diaries written by common navy seamen during the American War of Independence. Sea shanties are one way to understand the volcabulary of sailors during the 18th and 17th centuries when piracy was flourishing on the high seas. The sailors who chanted them during ship's work refered to the shanties as capstan, pump, and halyard shanties. The shanties were not sung, but chanted - with the shantyman calling out the words and the men chanting the chorus in rhythym to their work. During the American naval conflict with the Barbary pirates from 1785 to 1815, the most popular American halyard song was called The Coasts of High Barbary (1795). The sailors would haul on the lines while chanting;

Look ahead, look a stern,
Look the weather in the lee.
Blow high! Blow low! And so sailed we.
I see a wreck to the windward,
and a lofty ship to lee.
A sailing down all on
the coasts of High Barbary.

The nautical words used in the halyard shanty reflect the sailors' vocabulary, but the shanty used words for their rhyming qualities and does not give any indication of the sailors' language dialect. The majority of American sailors in the late 1700s spoke English with an American dialect that sounded more guttural than British English. The dialect differences between the British and Americans came about when English colonists interacted with other people from Germany, France, Spain, Africa, and Native America. To understand the British sailors' language during the time of King George II, a study must be made of England's maritime culture.
A popular capstan shanty for British sailors in the mid 18th - century was called All for me Grog (1740). Capstan shanties were used to sustain a rhytym when raising the ship's anchor. Sailors pushed around the capstan bars to haul in the anchor. To keep the rhytym flowing, sailors would stamp on the deck to stress certain words of the chant;

Well it's all for me grog, me jolly jolly grog,
it's all for me beer and tobacco.
For I spent all me tin with the lassies drinking gin,
far across the western ocean I must wander.

Like all shanties, the words are selected for their rhyming qualities. One difference in the lyrics between American and British shanties were the choice of pronouns. Americans said "my" and the British said "me" as the possessive determiner in their lyrics. The pronoun "me" is a characterictic element associated with Scotish, Irish, and Welsh dialects. During the long wars with Spain and France, the Royal Navy went to the streets recruiting men and boys to fill the gun decks of its ships. The navy recruiters avoided the southeastern English fishermen with their r-less dialect because the fishermen's manpower was needed to harvest the sea. Men with r-full dialects from western and northern England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales were the desired targets for the recruiters, because there were an endless stream of destitute men and boys in the United Kingdom's farming districts.
Fifers and drummers accompanied the marines and sailors as they marched down the streets. Like the Pied Piper of Hameln, the high pitched Aires and resonate field drums echoed across the cobble stone alleys luring starving men and boys to the sea. Public education was non-existent during pre-Rousseau Europe so the new recruits were illiterate. The new sailors began to learn their trade and the newly acquired nautical terminology bolstered their volcabulary. When England no longer needed a large navy, huge numbers of seamen became unemployed. Instead of returning to the cobble stone alleys, the desperate sailors became pirates and shipped out to sea with their skills in naval combat and their r-full nautical dialects. The golden age of piracy came about in the early 1700s after England and France signed a peace treaty to end the War of English Secession in 1697. In Angus Konstam's book Pirates, Terror on the High Seas (2001), he writes;

The profits of war encouraged men to become privateers, and subseqquently, when peace returned, this caused massive unemployment among the maritime communities of Europe, the Caribbean, or the Americas. Although execution was the expected punishment and life expectancy was short, piracy was an attractive alternative to dying of starvation or becoming a beggar or thief on land.

Before the golden age of piracy ended in 1730, a book was published in 1724 called A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most Notorious Pirates by Captain Charles Johnson (Danial Defoe). Defoe's pirate book was the main source of information that Robert Louis Stevenson used to design his salty pirate characters. Stevenson learned about pirate culture and adventures through Defoe's book, but Defoe did not give Stevenson any understanding of what the English pirate dialect sounded like. Even if pirates wrote their memoirs, their writing would only reflect their level of eduction and not how they pronounced words. Stevenson had to rely on his creativity and knowledge of English maritime culture to put together the sounds of 18th - century pirate speech. Stevenson's solution was to use phonetic spelling, nautical metaphors, and word strands unique to illiterate Englishmen. An example of Stevenson's technique can be found in his book Treasure Island (1883) at the end of chapter thirty-one;

"Speaking of knives," said another, "why don't we find his'n lying round? Flint warn't the man to pick a seaman's pocket; and the birds, I guess, would leave it be."
"By the powers, and that's true!" cried Silver.
"There ain't a thing left here," said Merry, still feeling round among the bones, "not a copper doit nor a baccy box. It don't look nat'ral to me."
"No, by gum, it don't," agreed Silver, "Not nat'ral, nor not nice, says you. Great guns! Messmates, but if Flint was living, this would be a hot spot for you and me. Six they were, and six we are; and bones is what they are now."
"I saw him dead with these here deadlights," said Morgan. "Billy took me in. There he laid, with penny-pieces in his eyes."
"Dead - aye, sure enough his dead and gone below," said the fellow with the bandage; "but if ever sperrit walked, it would be Flint's. Dear heart, but he died bad, did Flint!"
"Aye, that he did," observed another; "now he raged, and now he hollered for the rum, and now he sang. 'Fifteen Men' were his only song, mates; and I tell you true, I never rightly liked to hear it since. It was main hot, and the windy was open, and I hear that old song comin' out as clear as clear - and the death - haul on the man already."
"Come, come," said Silver; "stow this talk. He's dead, and he don't walk, that I know; leastways, he won't walk by day, and you may lay to that. Care killed a cat. Fetch ahead for the doubloons."

Even though Stevenson's book Treasure Island preserved the old English sailors speech, it took the genius of the British actor Robert Newton to produce the real sounds and mannerisms of an 18th - century pirate. Thus, there are three sources that must take credit for putting the "r" in arrgh. It began with poor illiterate men and boys who were shipped off to sea in the Royal Navy, and then became pirates when the Royal Navy no longer needed them. The second credit is to Robert Louis Stevenson who preserved the pirates' language in his story Treasure Island (1883), and the final credit goes to the British actor Robert Newton who was able to interpret Stevenson's writing into real sounds and behaviors of a pirate in his films Treasure Island (1950), Blackbeard the Pirate (1952), and Long John Silver (1954). So the next time a pirate enters your costume party and yells out, "Arrgh mateys!" You may respond by saying;

"By the powers! Stow ye scurvy tales an' stand fast, for it be time for me grog, says I."

Model Ship Gallery