AVAST!

The pirate cursed and yelled because the anchor was too heavy for his hook. The cabin boy told him he needed better anchor management skills.

What’s so funny about this? So, did pirates really say things like “Arrr” or “Arrrgh?” What about “Avast” and “Shiver me timbers?” These days, it’s very common to hear TV and movie pirates saying all of these things. But are they accurate? Mostly, not. A lot of pirate jargon comes from the English author, Robert Lewis Stevenson, who wrote “Treasure Island” “Kidnapped” and other adventure stories that were very popular with young readers. Trouble is, Stevenson lived about 150 years after the heyday of piracy. There have been a number of film versions of “Treasure Island.” My own favorite was with Wallace Berry as Long John Silver. But the 1950 version had an actor named Robert Newton whose accent was filled with long rolling R’s and became the standard for sounding like pirate speech. But the word “avast” is real enough and dates back to 1602 and