Prepare to be boarded, ye sea dogs and scallywags! The legendary Brethren of the Coast put in t' port at Salem Harbor this weekend past, making good use o' the cursed waters lying within and forcing any lily-bellied landlubbers foolhardy enough to venture among 'em to keep an extra watchful eye on their purses and doubloons.
Adventure was abound in Salem as the town played host to its first ever Pirate Faire, which took place Sept. 18 and 19 near the city's harbor. Buccaneers and brigands, turncoats and traitors, pirates and privateers all cast anchor and ventured up the coast for the two-day event, which was put on by a spirited cast of those that have sailed under a pirate flag, in or beyond the Spanish Main.
Festival goers ranged from the ordinary, decorated with only an eye patch or a bandana, to the piratical extreme. Colorful cloaks, jingling sashes, leather tricorns and elaborately decorated knee-length boots dotted the fields where the Faire took place, with some guests and cast members sporting full 17th century seafarer regalia.
While brigands and buccaneers aren't exactly the first colorful group that comes to mind when one thinks of Salem, pirates have been a fixture in New England for centuries, dating back to the days of Stede Bonnett and William Kidd. Pirate ships may not have pillaged the coast, but buccaneers from the northern colonies did their fair share of disrupting trade and ravaging unprotected ships.
The Pirate Faire took advantage of the area's rich history, using colorful characters from New England maritime history to stage a series of ongoing skits over the two days. Edward Teach, Ned Low, Black Sam Bellamy and Mary Read all butted heads with pirate hunters and privateers, in a story that ended with our heroes triumphing just as the festival drew to a close on Sunday evening.
Pirate music, puppet shows, and impromptu skirmishes kept the fairground lively all weekend long. In addition, all kinds of piratical vendors were present, presumably to take advantage of faire-goers' newly weighted money purses, heavy from their adventures of plundering at sea.
The faire itself was set over extended fields in Salem's Winter Island Park. Visiting marauders could explore the backwoods trails that connected the various areas of the festival. Alternatively, raiders could hike up to a watchtower stationed on the hill to interact with members of the British Navy and to try to capture period cannons from the pirates that guarded them.
The celebration was scheduled to coincide with this year's "Talk Like a Pirate Day" on Sept. 19. The impromptu holiday has been celebrated annually since 2002, when Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Dave Barry of the Miami Herald wrote about it in his weekly piece, and it has since become popular with pirate fans across the seven seas.
The premise behind the unofficial holiday is simple: anything, be it an everyday conversation or a State of the Union address, can be made a thousand times better when you parlay the tongue of a buccaneer. According to the official Web site, a preacher in Scotland was even preparing a sermon in pirate talk that he was planning to give for this year's celebration.
Unfortunately, since this year's piratical frenzy fell on a Sunday, many self-styled buccaneers were foiled from displaying the pirate vernacular in front of colleagues or classmates at work and school. Faire-goers expressed their enthusiasm for the celebration, with some swearing a black-hearted oath to extend the holiday into "Talk Like a Pirate Week" in order to get their full shilling's worth out of the event.
The Salem Pirate Faire was organized by Pastimes Interactive, a historical recreation group which also puts on Massachusetts' King Arthur Festival and Robin Hood Faire in the spring and summer. They supplied the actors and much of the historical flavor, but it was the buccaneer fans of Boston, Salem and beyond that captured the spirit of sea adventures long past.
In the end, after the day had been saved and the heroic pirates had sailed off into the sunset (although not before blowing a hole in the side of the marauding Francois L'Ollanais's ship), the Pirate Faire proved what the piratical at heart have always known all along: any adventure, no matter how well staged, becomes a whole lot more exciting when you add in a healthy "ARRR!"
