...And a Bottle of Rum

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 321, 17 August 1945, Page 8

...And a Bottle of Rum

FTER noticing a Listener portrait of Oscar Natzke with a highly nauticallooking beard, I heard him the other morning singing Masefield’s "Captain Stratton’s Faney" ("says the old bold mate of ’Enry Morgan"), The result was reflections on the odd career of piracy

in English song and story, It began, I suppose, with the eighteenth century; most of the pirates of fact having been safely hanged by 1700, such works as the Newgate Calendar and The Lives and Histories of the Most Notorious High-waymen-those fascinating if unreliable precursors of the "thud and blunder" story-went freely ahead, incorporating Teach, Kidd, and Mayhew into their rogues’ yalleries with the maximum of colourful and invigorating detail, Thus, partly because of their prestige as a sort of bar sinister on the more respectable sagas of Hawkins, Drake, and Grenville, and partly because of the natural charm of a hearty and unreal villain, they were received te the bosom of popular legend, generally of a juvenile nature. Tom Sawyer and his henchmen bear witness to their popularity in America of the 1830’s; but it was 50 years later that the genius of Stevenson achieved perfection in this art-form, After Treasure Island there was clearly nothing left but imitation; and ever since authors of pirate stories have been taking up squatter’s rights on the Dead Man’s Chest in their myriads, even unto such a poor-lace-collared phantom as Captain Blood -while Barrie turned them half into fairies. And everyone is fully aware that the original buccaneers were a set of seagoing Scarfaces for the most part, and those lovingly described autos-da-fe at Execution Dock as unromantic as they were justified.