Shiver Me Timbers!

May I just say that I am really glad to see piracy making a comeback? And may I also commend the media for referring to the hijackers off the coast of Somalia actually as 'pirates'? Well, most of them. One outlet (it may have been Sky) started calling them 'hijackers' today and I began to lose enthusiasm for the story and all sympathy for the criminals inolved. 

Other criminals I'd like to see revived are highwaymen and bandits. I don't know, there just seemed to be a style and romance to them our modern criminals lack. Where once we wore black handkerchiefs over our faces we now cover ourselves with hoods. It's a question of taste, and we in Britain used to lead the world in that respect; now we must leave it to the rest of the world to show us the way. 

One of my ancestors, Edgar Bartholomew Seymour, was a pirate. Well, he tried his hand at it. To be honest, we Seymours have never been good sailors. In 1787, Edgar, always on the look out for a money-making scheme to fund his gambling and opium habit, stole a ship from Plymouth harbour with a couple of friends and set out for the Horn of Africa, which he heard was a lucrative market for pirates. Unfortunately, the supplies they stowed aboard consisted of twenty barrels of wine and nothing else. 

They circled the Bay of Biscay for six weeks before drunkenly running ashore, at which point soon after they were arrested for lewd conduct. You had to be pretty lewd to be arrested for that in France in those days! These days, too, now I come to think of it. Representations were made and Edgar and his crew were released and they returned to England where they regaled their fellow London clubmen with tails of grass-skirted savages, Indonesian girls, hundred-foot waves, giant squid and treasure. 

To this day, no Seymour is allowed to set foot in France.