Why Pirates

Why are people so fascinated by pirates?

As a kid, one of my favorite rides at Disneyland was "The Pirates of the Caribbean. I loved Peter Pan, Treasure Island, and any other pirate story I found. The Pirates of the Caribbean movie made millions with fans divided between Captain Jack Sparrow and Will, who pretty much turned pirate to save Elizabeth. When my husband and I were in Las Vegas, we went to the (then) new Treasure Island Hotel which used to (maybe still does) put on a great show outside with a reenactment of the navy battling pirates. When the pirates defeated the navy, everybody cheered.

Are we all a bunch of sociopaths?

Nah. I think it goes back to the bad boy allure. They are non-conformists. They have the courage to buck the system. They wore blousy white shirts instead of those stuffy coats and ugly hats and white powdered wigs. They were totally free to go where ever they pleased and do anything they wanted. And they had the money to do it, thanks to the plunder they took. And in the case of Las Vegas, the pirate captain was hunky and drop dead gorgeous, which never hurts.

We think of pirates as swashbuckling hunks who carried big curved swords, although having an eye patch and a parrot on the shoulder never hurts. Not to mention a certain allure in a map with an X that marks the spot to buried booty.

Maybe we all secretly wish we could steal from the rich, throw social norms out the window and make our enemies walk the plank.

It's really just a fantasy. Real pirates are nothing like the men in the stories,as I discovered when I researched them for my Regency pirate romance novel, The Guise of a Gentleman. In my novel, the hero gets orders from the government to pose as a pirate to help discover the head of a pirate ring. Although I showed a lot of what real pirates were like, most of his men are just sailors. He, of course, is super hunky and wonderful. But I think pirates will always capture our imagination and be the stuff of fantasy.

So enjoy the fantasy. And "Argh, matey! Don' forgit yer sword!"