2 True Pirate Stories

Two True Pirate Stories

I was once visiting the docks at Prince Rupert and ran into a chap and his wife who were circumnavigating the globe. I invited them inland to my home in Terrace for a visit to which they responded.

He was a retired pilot who had been hurt in a crash but recovered and wanted to do something novel and different. He bore a long scar across his face. His wife joined him in his dream of circumnavigation. As I recall, they were from South Africa. They had left teen aged children at home to fend for themselves so it was a huge issue for her to take this trip. But, they were having a marvelous adventure.

Dinner was a potluck so hiking club members joined us and we had wine and a chin wag and their accounts were spell binding. I asked about pirates. They had two stories from their own journey and a warning.

They told of a husband and wife who were anchored off the French Riviera I think at Monaco when a small dinghy approached with a man on board. Her husband told him to stand off whereupon he produced a pistol and shot her husband dead. She dived into the water and swam under water as fast and far as she could and made good her escape. He was shooting at her too. Robbery was the motive. When my friends came upon her, she was trying to sort out her life without a husband and all their valuables. I don't recall if the perpetrator was caught or not.

After leaving the Riviera and making a fast bumpy very uncomfortable sickening ride on 16 foot choppy seas across the Atlantic to the Caribbean, they heard the other story from Yachtees.

The other couples story occurs near Belize as I recall. They had anchored for the night in a quiet cove off a small island for shelter for the night. Their master bedroom was aft on the yacht. They both felt the yacht shift in the middle of the night as if someone had come aboard and the husband took a shotgun and went to investigate.

He discovered two or three men on board armed with iron bars. He had a shotgun but was reluctant to shoot. He ordered them to leave but one of the men got behind him and struck him over the head and they seized the shotgun. Then they beat him savagely until he was unconscious.

In response to the commotion, the wife came out armed with a pistol but she too was reluctant to use it and was seized. They tried to kill her with the pistol but couldn't figure out how to use it with its triple safety. They then proceeded to beat her over the head with the pistol near to death. They then ransacked the boat and made off with all their possessions and the couple were only discovered sometime later and taken to hospital. Robbery was again the motive.

They spent over a year recovering from their injuries and when asked by the local police chief why they did not shoot the men, they said that they simply didn't have it in them to do so. They were too nice. The Chief said that they had been trying to catch these pirates for some time and that they should have shot them.

Friends had advised them to strongly avoid approaching any small rowboats drifting at sea or to allow any vessels to approach them at sea. A favorite ploy used by pirates is to have a woman with a child waving for help and then when you approach, a man armed with an AK47 springs off the floorboards from under a tarp and shoots everyone dead.

Those are two true pirate stories I heard as related to me by globe travelers and pass on here to the world.

Jormawankenobe

Copyright 2008 J. Jyrkkanen