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Santa Maria Pirate Weekend, September 2011 - Columbus, OH
(Photo: Mission's Collection)
Chapter 3rd: Of what happened on Sunday; looking at the international
flavor of the event and how it interacted with the Patrick Hand Original Planter's hat; some
trained-on-the-fly fill-in surgeons; the Sunday battle and a few other things.
There was a distinctly multi-cultural flavor to the Santa Maria's celebration of Talk Like A Pirate Day this year. This is highly appropriate, given that the event creators have declared the holiday to be international. (Although I have been leaving it off so I don't have to keep typing 'International,' which is a pain in the neck. The actual name of the event, according to recent accounts, is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. It wasn't originally 'International' (and sometimes still isn't, even in the creators' own accounts), but I'm guessing they changed it so that it would have broader appeal. To learn how this all came about, you can check out the event creators' explanation here.
(Photo: Mission's Collection)
But I am off-topic again and we have to return to our subject, which is: the
multicultural nature of this year's even at the Santa Maria. Early
on Sunday, Mark Gist went down the gangplank to address a large group of people who
were congregating in front of the ship. They turned out to be a Russian tour group,
traveling by bus. From what I saw (from on board the ship), each individual person in their wanted to get a keepsake
photo of Actual Pirate Mark with them, as you can see at right.
If you wonder why I only saw it from the ship, let me assure you that I wasn't about to go down there. Being photographed that early in the morning, especially before coffee, is probably not going to serve anyone very well. Besides, I had already had several run-ins of this nature. On Saturday I had given my presentation to a group of deaf folks. (While not international, it is sort of multi-cultural. OK, I am stretching here.) Someone later told me one of the group could read lips and sign to the others, although I was doing my best to explain by showing how the surgical instruments were used rather than stating it.
Michael Bagley had also had a taste of the multicultural flavor as he tried to explain the ship to a French-speaking group. Michael learned French at school (Canadian being a bilingual country and all.) He told me that this enabled him to fumble his way through an explanation, although period ship terms were apparently not in the Canadian school texts.) I had also run into several Indians when parking my car. There was an Indian conference across the river where we had to park on Saturday during the day. On the way back from that, I also met the two guys you see below right on the way back, although I have no idea where they were from. They were very gregarious and wanted me to pose with them as you can see. (They kept making odd signs with their fingers in an effort to look cool. I didn't have the heart to tell them that this reminded me a little of the deaf signers. Somehow I don't think that was what they were going for.)
(Photo: Mission's Collection)
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Photo: Mission's Collection)
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This actually segues very nicely into another favorite topic of mine, the shared-wearing of the Patrick Hand Original Planter's hat, started by the Thatchers so many Santa Maria events ago. This also had a multi-cultural flavor to it, as those same two guys asked if they could try my hat on. I particularly like that first photo where the guy is trying to get used to the idea of wearing such a large dish on his head. "Say, I can hear the ocean with this on my head..." Then the other guy had to get into the picture with more cool signaling. One day I'll bet he'll be looking back through his collection of photographs and find these and wonder why he thought that was cool. Of course, the ultimate cultural-crossover wearing of the Patrick Hand Original Planter's hat can be seen below right.
(Photo: Mission's Collection)
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(Photo: Mission's Collection)
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(Photo: Mission's Collection)
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(Photo: Mission's Collection)
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(Photo: Mission)
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(Photo: Terry Smith)
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(Photo: Mission's Collection)
Pirate events usually attract lots of kids and the Santa Maria pirate weekends
are no exception. It may have just been me, but I noticed that there were a lot
of children around this weekend. A trend that seems to go with kids and
pirates is dressing up, as you can see in the photos here. We had everything from the full
Jack Sparrow costume (starting above left), without
the hat and dreads on (he's holding them behind his back), to brother and sister
duo, to a pink pants pirate, to what I think was a superheroine pirate to Cindy
Lou Who, lighting the cannon. Of course, even a pirate needs his mom's love and
protection, as you can see at left.
I am always torn when it comes to dealing with children. On the one hand, they're great sponges when it comes to learning and they're often interested in what you have to say. On the other hand, almost nothing I have to say is age appropriate for little kids. Or at least that's what I would think. (Yet one of the things they nearly always ask about is the enema syringe.)
(Photo: Mission's Collection)
This concern was particularly acute when a troop of Girl Scouts showed up in the afternoon.
A lot of girls (like Kate Bagley) just don't seem to be all that interesting in
hearing the gory details of how proper 18th century surgery was performed. So
when I heard about the bunch of Girl Scouts that were going to be touring the ship on Sunday
afternoon, I wondered what I could say to them.
Playing it by ear, I began to explain some of the less violent procedures to the first group that appeared at my table. I could immediately sense that this was not going over well by the curled lips and subtle looks of disgust on their faces. Fortunately they knew what they didn't want to know and wandered away before long. Still, even if the pirate surgeon isn't the most appealing topic to every kid, pirates and kids seem to have gone together since Treasure Island was written and some of the photos from this event was just more proof of that.
On Sunday, Dan Needham and Jennie Gist's parents came down to visit the ship. While I was introduced to them, I didn't really get a chance to talk with them. They seemed to enjoy seeing it, despite the fact that they were faced with what you see in the photo below right.
(Photo: Terry Smith)
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Photo: Terry Smith)
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This brings us to the Sunday battle. Still being short-handed for a large-scale battle,
it was going to be a replay of the Saturday battle. We in the Green Black Sheep
were to go back and forth in front of the Santa Maria firing at them, while
those on-board fired back at us. (That's how it works - tit for tat. Whatever that means. It
sounds sort of dirty.)
(Photo: Terry Smith)
Michael & Shannon rolling cartridges in preparation for battle. (I don't know who that other guy is, but he sure looks curious.) |
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Photo: Terry Smith)
The Sunday crew of the (I am the resplendent red-coated gunner in front. ) |
(Photo: Terry Smith)
We paddled off - headed back for the bridge again where we could surprise anyone
who hadn't happened to notice us paddling off toward the bridge. (I don't know who
that might have included because, as you can see at left, Kate Bagley made a great show of watching us
paddle away. In front of Kate, you see Eileen with three young pirate defenders,
some of whom are equipped with scary, rubber-tipped pikes.)
Once we reached the bridge, I again fired the deck gun, which made a heckuva noise. The crew of the Santa Maria responded as you see in the photos below. Last time all the pictures came from my camera on the Sheep. For variety's sake, this time they all come from Terry's camera - so you get a nice defensive eye view of the proceedings this time. See how that works? Great parity, hey?
(Photo: Terry Smith)
Trish firing at the pirates in the |
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Photo: Terry Smith) Shannon preparing to fire. Note - place your cursor on this image!! |
The Santa Maria defenders continued to fire at those of us in the Sheep. Michael pointed this out to us, so we decided to fire back. Although, as you see below right, I appear to have spotted some geese or pesky kayakers off the port bow and fired at that instead of our prey. (I'm a surgeon, not a gunner!)
(Photo: Terry Smith)
The Santa Maria defenders - defending. |
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Photo: Terry Smith)
"Hey, those guys over there are firing at us! We should do something!" |
(Photo: Terry Smith)
Those of us in the Green Black Sheep eventually ran out of ammo again. Because
no one on the Santa Maria had bothered to put a rope ladder over the side so we could climb
aboard as they had in the past, we weren't about to try doing that. We stowed our
weapons and pulled for shore.
Back on the Santa Maria, the defenders were doing whatever the defenders did when they won. I can't tell you what that was because I haven't been on the Santa Maria for this battle in years. I imagine they have a little victory dance or something - probably one developed by Shannon. I do know they had announced that the kids who had been forced to stay on the main deck during the firing were now allowed on deck based on the photo you see at right. Notice the kids running up the stairs to help pick up the remnants of the paper powder cartridges from the deck. It's just more proof that there's a whole level of cool associated with being allowed to pick up paper from the floor of a pirate ship that does not exist at home. (I blame X-Box for this lack of cleanly behavior. Why? Because we have no X-Boxes on the Santa Maria and the kids seem pretty willing to pick up stuff. Well, we don't have any X-Boxes unless someone has painted an cross on a crate somewhere in the steerage.)
(Photo: Terry Smith)
When I returned back to the ship, like so many warriors of times past - weary, covered with the
detritus of gunpowder and grubby , I found myself ...out of a job. Unless this is your first time visiting my web site,
you are probably used to seeing me in my Patrick Hand Original Planter's hat, lovingly holding some
horrific surgical device or another. Often I am attempting to explain what the device was called and
how it was used. By way of example, you'll find a photograph of me holding a fleam and the bleeding
stick that so many of the children were curious about at left. (You did find the bleeding stick on the previous page amongst
the other items on the table, right? If not, you now know what it looked like,
so please go back to the second chapter and find it. We'll just wait here for you to do that.)
(Photo: Terry Smith)
(Good, we got rid of them.) Every time I left my surgeon's table, I'd come back only to find someone had stolen my spot
and was attempting to explain surgical procedures to the unwary visitors. I mentioned several
Santa Maria Journals ago that there is usually some strange activity that everyone feels
compelled to participate in during a given weekend - a sort of
event fad;
this time it was apparently explaining the items on the surgeon's table.
We begin with Eileen, who took over when I walked away to do something or another. I don't know what she was explaining there in the photo at right, but she was clearly doing OK based on the audience's attention. Now her brother George, on the other hand, seemed to be getting dubious looks as you will note below left. This is surprising, given that he has filled in for me several times. The real shock was when I came back on Sunday after the battle to find Kate Bagley explaining, of all things, amputation. Kate claims not to be able to read any of my fine web pages explaining period medicine. She says they gross her out. Yet there she is, below right, holding the amputation knife, the thing used to cut through all the meat of a limb, right to the bone, during the amputation procedure. (And that's the real one which has actually been used on people.) Go figure.
(Photo: Mission's Collection)
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Photo: Mission's Collection)
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This brings us to the end of the standard Santa Maria Talk Like a Pirate Day 2011 Surgeon's Journal. You see the crew photo below (although several people had left by the time anyone thought of taking this, which is unfortunate.) From left, we have Sarah, (back row), Michael Bagley and Shannon, (middle row), swashbucklers Bryan and Trish, Mark Gist, Myself, my assistant Brain and Jennie Gist and (front row) Kate Bagley and George. A smaller crew to be sure, but we had a busy good time of it.
One thing I was able to do on this trip that I have never been able to do before was attend the post-even dinner round up. We went to some hamburger joint I had never heard of called Culver's. There we met: Annoying Boy. You can see him standing at our table in the photo below right. He came from a 'burb of Columbus called Gahanna, which sounds suspiciously like Gehenna. He proceeded to nickname all the guys at the table. First he called Shannon "the smiling pirate" but he eventually changed Shannon's nickname to "the mean one" (based on Shannon's smart-arsed comments to him). AB called Michael "the disturbed one" and me "the normal one." (I take this as an insult.) He didn't call the girls anything as I recall, which shows a modicum of good manners. I think. He then stayed for ten or twelve minutes talking with us. Actually, he was talking at us. He finally did wander away after several subtle and not-so-subtle suggestions that his grandparents were probably missing him. (Maybe next time I should skip the post-event meal.)
(Photo: Trish)
The September 2011 Santa Maria Talk Like a Pirate Day Crew. |
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Photo: Terry Smith)
" Hey, they're firing at us! We should do something!" |