Yo-ho-ho! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Edward Teach

Teach was born in Bristol, England, around 1680, and took to piracy sometime during the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1713). He was a huge man, standing 6'4" in his pirate boots, and was always armed to the teeth with pistols, cutlasses and daggers.

Moreover, he had a penchant for weaving strings of hemp and tapers into his enormous beard, which must have made him even more terrifying to behold - especially when he lit the tapers! Teach made his permanent base in North Carolina and the Governor of North Carolina, Charles Eden, afforded Blackbeard unofficial protection in return for a share of the booty. Teach met his end after a desperate battle with the British Navy on November 22, 1713.

It took five gunshot wounds and 20 stab wounds to do him in.

Answer: Who knows?

Nobody really knows why the skull and crossbones flag came to be known as the Jolly Roger. Some theorists maintain that it is a corruption of Joli Rouge (French for 'Pretty Red') because pirates used to fly a flag red with the blood of their victims. What a nice decorative touch! Another story is that Jolly Roger is a corruption of Al Raja, Arabic for 'King of the Sea', and the pirates, who were convinced that they were kings of the sea, appropriated the name and gave it to their flag. I find that theory a bit far-fetched. Old Roger was certainly a pseudonym for the devil in the 16th/17th centuries, but that's a pretty tenuous connection, too.

Answer: He died in his bed.

Henry Morgan, who was born in Wales in 1635, ended his days as a respectable, wealthy planter in Jamaica. After a seventeen-year career of piracy on the Spanish Main, Morgan was captured and returned to London for trial after he sacked the Spanish city of Panama. (After the raid, Morgan deserted his crew and made off with the booty.) England and Spain had made peace just before this exploit.

However, relations between the two countries deteriorated shortly afterwards, and instead of hanging, drawing and quartering Morgan, King Charles II knighted him, and sent him out to Jamaica as deputy Governor of the British Colony there.

A very colourful and hyperbolic account of Morgan's career in piracy, written by a former crew member (probably one of the men he betrayed) is responsible for Morgan's reputation as a bloodthirsty pirate.

Answer: Pew

The great Scottish actor John Laurie (1897-1980) gave a memorable portrayal of Blind Pew in the film. Laurie was one of those actors who could play anything from Hamlet to the bumbling Private Fraser in the Britcom 'Dad's Army'.

Answer: Anne Bonny and Mary Read

Anne and Mary sailed together. Mary was born in London in the mid-1670s into a family of some means. When Mary's father and infant brother died, her mother conned the family into believing that Mary was a boy, in order to keep the allowance paid by her deceased husband's parents coming in. Unfortunately, when her grandparents died, Mary's uncle inherited the family wealth, and Mary and her mother were unmasked and cut off without a penny. Mary continued her male masquerade, and even served in the British army as an infantryman. When she fell in love with a fellow soldier, they both deserted and became tavern-keepers. When her husband died, Mary resumed her male persona and set off for the West Indies as a crew member on a British sloop.
Anne was born in 1697, in County Cork, Ireland, the daughter of William Cormac and his maid Mary Brennan. William and Mary, to escape from the scandal created by their adulterous affair, decamped with their baby to Charleston, South Carolina, where William bought a plantation. The family prospered, but William cut off his wild daughter Anne without a penny when she married the local bad boy James Bonny. Anne got fed up with her husband, and eventually formed a liaison with Captain Calico Jack Rackham, a pirate. Like Mary, Anne found it more convenient to pass herself off as a man, and with her lover she became the scourge of the shipping lanes around Jamaica. One of the ships they captured was the sloop on which Mary Read was serving, and Mary and Anne soon recognized each other as females, and became fast friends.
In 1720, Calico Jack's ship 'The Curlew' was captured, and both Mary and Anne, along with the surviving members of the crew, were shipped back to London for trial. All were sentenced to be hanged. Then it was discovered that both Mary and Anne were pregnant and they were given stays of execution. Neither one was hanged: Mary died in prison of fever, and Anne was ransomed by her father and disappeared into the mists of history.

Answer: Oak Island

Kidd was born in Scotland in 1645, and emigrated to New York, where he became a wealthy man, trading as a merchant. During a trade trip to England, he was offered a commission by four English lords to attack pirates and enemy French ships. They put up 4/5 of the cost of buying, equipping and manning the ship, while Kidd forked over the remaining 1/5.

His mission was a resounding failure! He couldn't find any pirates, and captured only one French ship. In order to cover his costs, Kidd himself became a pirate, and made the mistake of capturing an English ship. To make a very long story short, Kidd was captured on his return to New York and hauled off to London, where he was tried, sentenced to death, and hanged on May 23, 1701.

He was actually hanged twice - on the first attempt the rope broke! His body was covered in tar and left to hang on the gibbet at dockside for two years, as a dire warning to would-be pirates.

He is also reputed to have left treasure caches on the other three islands cited, but none of them is off the coast of Nova Scotia.

Answer: Sir Francis Drake

Drake was the first Englishman to see the Pacific (by dint of climbing a tall tree in the mountains of the Isthmus of Panama, circa 1573), the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe (1577-1580), and he served as second-in-command of the English fleet that sailed against the Spanish Armada in 1588.

He was an explorer, a navigator, a civil engineer, a politician, and a privateer (which is just a fancy name for a pirate with a sponsor - Drake's sponsor was Queen Elizabeth I). His raids against the Spanish settlements and ships sailing out of them earned him (and the Queen) great wealth, and, for Drake, the eternal hatred of the Spaniards. Naughty Spanish children were threatened with a visit from Draco (which also happens to mean Dragon in Spanish) for centuries after Drake's death.

While Sir Walter Raleigh and John Paul Jones were not above an underhanded trick or two, Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Airlines, apparently has a clean slate.

Answer: Mediterranean coast of North Africa between Morocco and Libya

The Barbary Coast pirates were mostly Arabs, who attacked shipping in the Mediterranean and nearby areas of the North Atlantic. The name 'Barbary' is derived from the nomadic Berbers, who inhabited Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya.

Answer: Captain Flint

Long John named his feathered companion after the dreaded Captain Flint, the bloodthirstiest pirate leader in all fiction.

Answer: Farmer

The Arrogant Worms' ballad is about a farmer who went broke and took to piracy, stealing the cargo of grain ships, sailing out of the Port of Regina (?) on the Saskatchewan River. The Arrogant Worms is a very funny and talented singing group. Among their other great songs are 'I Hear the Vegetables Screaming' (an anti-vegetarian protest song) and 'Jesus' Brother Bob', which is all about the trials of being "the brother of God Junior".