Arr, Me Hearties,
If I tell ‘ee that most chroniclers hold that the Republic be a landlubber economy, you will laugh the joyless, sardonic laugh of the true sea dog. They writes in the ledgers of their counting houses that the citizens is all landlubbers with a pirate rump that exists on the margins. But even with a patch over one eye, true pirates can see better than the landlubbers with their two good ‘uns that the past fifteen years have resulted in a mere pseudo expansion of the landlubber classes.
Aye, the landlubbers claim to ‘ave more treasure. But, mark it well shipmates, they would rather spend their dubloons and pieces of eight on fabergé eggs and the infernal pottery of Josiah Wedgewood than bury it on a sun-kissed Caribbean islet in a good teak chest, 15 paces from the skeleton of a dead shipmate, or fritter it away on rum and wenches in a Barbary tavern. And they calls this “the good times”!? Worst of all, armchair pirates and the landlubbing acolytes of Johnny Depp and the New Piracy have internalised this false analysis. They pander to the delusions of the ‘new landlubbers’ but forget that, in essence, nothing has changed.
Breaking down the population by occupation, we see the following:
PIRATES:
Sea-Dogs – 1,000,000
Ships Cooks – 25,000
Parrots – 1,500,000
Cabin Boys – 10,000
Plank-makers – 80,000
Captains – 10,000
People with Beards – 700,000
Wenches – 1,500,000
Tavern-owners – 20,000
Ships-surgeons – 1,990
Buccaneers – 150,000
Privateers – 65,000
Shanty-singers – 250
Chandlers – 3,000
TOTAL – Way more than the Landlubbers
LANDLUBBERS:
Footmen – 1,450
Innkeepers – 500
Highwaymen – 27
Judges – 136
Horses – 10,000
David McWilliams – 1
The Spanish – 5,000
Farmers – 6,000
Schoolboys – 3,900
Ladies – 357
Potters – 200
TOTAL – Way less than the Pirates.
The analysis of the Irish Pirate Review shows that by any objective yardarm, most of these so-called ‘new landlubbers’ are actually engaged in traditional pirate occupations or in occupations which, though new, align their interests firmly with those of piracy, buccaneering and privateering off the Spanish Main.
While there be talk – y’arr, treacherous talk – of landlubber aspirations, of farming, of sending good lads to school instead of pressing them as cabin boys, ‘tis but a façade of change. P’tooh. True sea dogs know that the tyrant landlubbers will never give up their hold on Spanish gold even as they dupe armchair pirates, Johnny Depp and the so-called ‘new landlubbers’ into slavish obeisance to their land-bound ways.
These so-called ‘new landlubbers’ must ask themselves if, for all their new fangled a-doings and transpirings, they have seen even a single dubloon of Spanish gold! Nay, nay and, thrice, nay! There is only one path to the Spanish Gold and it is through the unabashed embrace of salty piracy.
Our analysis shows that the greater part of this island population is pirates whether they know it or not and whether they like it or not. Soon, we shall be all at sea, and at sea the landlubbers must be made to walk the plank. The ‘new’ landlubbers must choose. Is it to be the plank or women, rum and Spanish Gold on the Barbary Main?!
Shiver me timbers!
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