h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Or trimmed with a nice wriggley ferret

Ah, well, you'd need the H.A.T. (Headgear of Authoritative Talking) for that... but I doubt I could persuade Cap'n Frapples to let me have it.

Well I'll leave it under the usual seat on the No 6 anyway

For the ultimate in pirate lunacy:
http://freebooter.freezope.org - But be warned, this site contains some very salty language.

by the way.. lookin at that site. freebooter
this word comes from a dutch word (forgive my spelling)
vreibuter? which was corrupted into the english word freebooter.

and. mister d

monday is international TALK like a pirate day, not dress like a pirate.. i'd be wary if someone comes in a pirate hat.. it might mean summat else.

eskimo's use fridges to keep food from freezing

That's pure weapon!

when dead sailors pass in the night they are sometimes scared shipless

Dead Sailors Pass is a very beutiful part of the New England coast.

whats the crack with that? pureeee weaponnnnn

It's wicked!

a nearly fatal misjudgement marked pablo picassos birth a midwife thinking him stillborn abandoned him on a table but pablos uncle a cigar smoking physician revived him with a blast of much needed albeit smoke filled air into the baba's lungs

Seeing as everyone's turning into a pirate (must be the water), here's a little mystery that I personally think was a pirate ship wreck on the southern Australian coast. An old Portugese galleon, long before the English had any idea the Great South Land existed ... must have been a pirate

http://www.swtafe.vic.edu.au/lrc/collections/mahoganyship/1910sep26.htm

St F

In the heyday of sailing ships, all war ships and many freighters carried iron cannons. Those cannon fired round iron cannon balls. It was necessary to keep a good supply near the cannon. But how to prevent them from rolling about the deck?

The best storage method devised was a square based pyramid with one ball on top, resting on four resting on nine which rested on sixteen. Thus, a supply of thirty cannon balls could be stacked in a small area right next to the cannon. There was only one problem -- how to prevent the bottom layer from sliding/rolling from under the others. The solution was a metal plate called a "Monkey" with sixteen round indentations. But, if this plate was made of iron, the iron balls would quickly rust to it. The solution to the rusting problem was to make "Brass Monkeys."

Few landlubbers realize that brass contracts much more and much faster than iron when chilled. Consequently, when the temperature dropped too far, the brass indentations would shrink so much that the iron cannon
balls would come right off the monkey. Thus, it was quite literally, "Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey!"

(And all this time, you thought that was a dirty expression, didn't you?)

Dons ex seafarer's http://www.snopes.com/language/stories/brass.htm

Shiver me timbers!!!

Well ....that's why it's useless

<>

Actually pirates rarely strayed that far from the coast, the common image of lengthy pirate voyages is a bit of a myth.

Ummm. Well, where did it come from then??

There were pirates in the Indian ocean (they had a base on the north coast of Madagascar), preying on the Dutch and Portugese shipping coming from Asia ... they were particularly inerested in the annual trading ship from Japan, the Black Ship, which carried most of the silk, bullion, tea etc. from Nagasaki. That part of the world - the Cape of Good Hope - is (what's the word???) winded, aired??? by the roaring 40's, which did carry a number of ships across the Indian ocean to be wrecked on the coast of Western Australia. There are a number of interesting wrecks off the coast, some of which have been excavated and documented.

It's not inconceivable that a Portugese ship, blown well off course, could have survived the voyage and eventually wrecked on the Victorian coast ... I guess. Bass Strait is an extremely wild body of water, taking the odd Prime Minister and sometimes creating havoc in the Sydney to Hobart yacht race.

I dont know ... it's just an old bit of Aussie folklore.

There were pirates of one kidney or another all over the world, but just because it's a shipwreck doesn't automatically make it a pirate. 'Sides the vast majority of pirate ships were small and fast, because they needed to be able to outrun the Navy *and* get into any convenient nooks and crannies that a galleon or man o' war couldn't.

Where did Pugwash come from