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I am going to do something I don't do much and take a bit of time here to post a few of my thoughts. I know reading isn't that popular anymore, the fact that most of the people on the Pirates Ahoy forums hardly ever read the front page has brought that fact home loud and clear to me over the past few years. Yet still I continue to write articles and look up pirate news to post here, even though relatively few are actually reading it. One of the reasons I continue to do it is because occasionally I run across things that I would never find if I hadn't spent the time actually looking, things like this excerpt from the following Reuters article :
Pirate novelist avoids romance, magic and monsters
"They're dirtier, grittier, harder, with quite easy morals. They're violent because they lived in violent times. There's also a lot drink involved, because there was a lot of drink around," Keating said. Keating, who jokes that he took up writing to persuade his wife to buy a computer, also wanted to steer clear of the dancing skeletons and vampire goddesses which feature in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" films. "All kudos to the films for putting pirates center-stage. They're very popular characters, but that filters it down too much," he said. "I always say, there's no romance, no monsters and no romantic monsters." FREEDOM Agents agreed with Keating's approach and he soon had a deal to publish "The Pirate Devlin" in 2010. It is about an Irish boy sold into servitude who grows up to become a pirate and challenge his former master. "We have less and less personal freedom, it gets eroded every year, so I wanted the pirates to be a metaphor for freedom and personal democracy," he said. Keating recalls that 7,000 pirates once roamed the Caribbean. They handled one third of the trade between Britain and its American possessions by capturing cargoes and helping colonists avoid the stiff import duties levied on official commerce. "The image of a pirate swinging across a ship and cannons broadsiding is a bit of myth. Often there wasn't a shot fired. The ships were insured," he said.
Not only have a found a new series of books that I am shortly going to buy, I have also found confirmation that we are not alone in what most of us around the forums believe. There are a lot of people out there just like us! Finally somebody else gets it! It was never about the booty, or the wenches, or the fame, it was always about the freedom! Mr Keating is correct, more and more every day I feel my freedoms slowly slipping away one by one. But here I am free, and that is what has kept me coming back year after year. I felt that same freedom when I first picked up Sea Dogs all those years ago, and I have been hooked on it ever since. Anyway, before I ramble on and forget why I am writing this, you can read the full Reuters article HERE!
