Shiver Me Timbers,

I missed it by a day! 

that’s right yesterday the 19th of September was InternationalTalk Like a Pirate Day, celebrated every year since 2002, the holiday is an invention of Chumbucket and Cap’n Slappy (John Baur and Mark Summers), who dreamed it up in 1995, the gruff voice punctuated with “arrrs” came from the 1950 Disney film Treasure Island, starring Robert Newton as Long John Silver,

born in Dorset and educated in Cornwall, Newton based his pirate talk on his own native British West Country dialect, His accent might not have been far off—the south west of England has long been associated with pirates because of its strong maritime heritage; notorious pirate Blackbeard was even said to have come from Bristol, in the heart of that area,

Newton’s iconic role as Long John Silver was so influential that a variation his West Country English became the standard for portrayals of pirates on stage and in the cinema, as historian Colin Woodard told the National Geographic in 2011, “Newton’s performance—full of ‘arrs,’ ‘shiver me timbers,’ and references to landlubbers—not only stole the show, it permanently shaped pop culture’s vision of how pirates looked, acted, and spoke.” in reality, pirates of the period came from many countries with a wide variety of speech patterns, you can read more about the origins of pirate speech at Time, meanwhile for me tonight it will be yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

and in case you do not know The Derelict here it is,

Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest

Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum

Drink and the devil had done for the rest

Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum

The mate was fixed by the bosun’s pike

The bosun brained with a marlin spike

And cookey’s throat was marked belike

It had been gripped by fingers ten

And there they lay, all good dead men

Like break o’day in a boozin’ ken

Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum

Fifteen men of the whole ship’s list

Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum

Dead ’n’ be damned and the rest gone whist

Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum

The skipper lay with his nob in gore

Where the scullion’s axe his cheek had shore

And the scullion, he was stabbed times four

And there they lay, while soggy skies

Dripped all day long in up-staring eyes

At murk sunset and that foul sunrise

Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum

Fifteen men of ’em stiff and stark

Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum

Ten of the crew had the murder mark!

Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum

Twas a cutlass swipe, or an ounce of lead

Or a yawing hole in a battered head

And the scuppers’ glut with a rotting red

And there they lay, aye, damn me eyes

All lookouts clapped on paradise

All souls bound just contrary-wise

Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum

Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest

Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum

Drink and the devil had done for the rest

Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum

We wrapped ’em all in a mains’l tight

With twice ten turns of a hawser’s bight

Then we heaved ’em o’er and out of sight

With a Yo-Heave-Ho! and a fare-the-well

And a sudden plunge in a sullen swell

Ten fathoms deep on the road to hell…

Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum!