Any port in a storm

The inclement weather worsened as we voyaged home, forcing us to drop anchor in no man’s land. Normally naught but a ghost town, the settlement was abnormally populous on account of the tempest, and we bumped into a gang of coves, whiling away the hours with grog, dice and cussing.

"No Teeth" Wangford was the most senior – in seadog years at least. Despite his long stretch in the trade, Wangford had never progressed from the must junior rung. But what he lacked in ambition, he made up for in vice. He had been given the boot from numerous vessels for (among other things) tapping the barrel, smoking the hemp ropes, and lechery with the captain’s daughter.

As well as losing numerous commissions, he had also lost all his teeth, on account of his weakness for sugar. His daily routine would begin with a cup of treacle (milk, two sugars) and a bowl of shredded beet. Throughout the day he’d chow straight from the lassy keg, and last thing at night he’d snort a line of demerara (“for sweet dreams”). As for personal hygiene, each Christmas he would bathe in golden syrup, whether he needed to or not.

Cabin boy
"No Teeth" Wangford

Likes: suckin'

Dislikes: chewin'

Baby I got your money

Under the strict direction of Madam O’Nine Tails came her light-fingered beau, Bad Paddy Trickpurse. Brought up in the bohemian quartiers of Europe – Vienna, Prague, Swindon, etc, he had been educated well in the visual arts and his family had high hopes for him as a designer of tactile plastics. Bad Paddy, however, had other ideas. He had found a greater love: lucre.

A felon extraordinaire, ol’ Trickpurse started out by dipping his fingers into his elders’ pockets to steal their tobacco, as, at eight years of age, the local store was still declining his requests for Marlboro. By fourteen he was smuggling Gitanes from Paris, and by seventeen ran a complex bootlegging empire spanning from Upper Silesia to Dubrovnik.

He was also a master of cons both long and short, most recently having clinched the sale of Versailles by throwing in Montmartre as a sweetener.

Taking one look at our crew, Bad Paddy identified our lack of chief financial officer as a key oversight, and – with no small amount of snarling menace – directly volunteered for the role. The sole proviso was that he’d also get to look after the parrot.


Bursar
Bad Paddy Trickpurse
Likes: spiral perms
Dislikes: cruelty to animals

A change of tack

Christmas in Yorkshire was to yield little more than a mixed-nut selection, which I was under strict orders to keep out of Mad-eye’s line of sight, “on account of almonds sending him crazy.” I locked them away with my private stash of booty, just in case our next business needs analysis called for a nut-fuelled berserker in the forecastle.

For now then, this festering berg had exhausted its potential, and so we left for pastures more genteel. I knew a governess at Althorp whose nefarious cv would serve as an excellent foundation for attending to the professional development of our burgeoning crew.

No common pirate she – Nat O’Nine Tails had been among the landed gentry since she could first wield a chimney brush. Haughty, proud and chic, she was every bit the lady pirate of popular lore.

Many a cur had she licked into shape and helped to fulfil their potential. Thanks to her careful instruction, the courts of Europe were bustling with princes she had indoctrinated in wrongdoing at sea and misuse use of tax havens, while the Palace of Westminster was full of politicians who could now operate cutlery.


Senior Vice President, Knowledge Management
Nat O'Nine Tails
Likes: pieces of eight
Dislikes: After Eights

Grim up north

Peg-Leg Lynn bade me welcome to her office, a smart little cubicle much like any corporate office, but with posters of parrots and swarthy mariners, most of whom were amputees.

Assuring me that she had the skinny on all the local buccaneers plying their trade from this town of iniquity, she proudly showed me her bulging dossier of Doncaster’s most wanted. It wasn’t easy reading – not least because the resumés had all been filed under ‘P’ for pirate.

So what did the dregs of the dregs have to offer? Actually very little – Christmas is not the ideal time for looking for fresh labour, given as most old tars are catatonic with rum and steamed pudding. The only man whose availability she could guarantee was her husband: Mad-eye Pete.

Mad-eye had never been the same since his fight with electricity (for the record, electricity lost). He was prone to arguing with all and sundry (including himself) and was very wary of copper. He was also most keen to stress how he had recently “got into” Olivia Newton-John.

“He may be a loose cannon but he’s great with gunpowder”, his wife promised me.

What could possibly go wrong?


Powder monkey
Mad-eye Pete, Scourge of the North
Likes: booty
Dislikes: bifocals