Today’s image collection comes in honour of that most solemn and dignified of annual celebrations: Talk Like A Pirate Day.

And what better source of swashbuckling quotes is there than Robert Louis Stevenson’s formative pirate novel Treasure Island?  Not only has this work given us such celebrated tropes as “Shiver my timbers!”, “Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum”, the Black Spot, one-legged buccaneers, the wily cabin boy, and the classic pirate/parrot partnership, it also contains many instances of top-notch piratical banter such as this exchange between Jim Hawkins and Israel Hands:

“…Well, now, I’m no scholar, and you’re a lad as can read and figure; and, to put it straight, do you take it as a dead man is dead for good, or do he come alive again?”

“You can kill the body, Mr. Hands, but not the spirit; you must know that already,” I replied. “O’Brien, there, is in another world, and may be watching us.”

“Ah!” says he. “Well, that’s unfort’nate—appears as if killing parties was a waste of time. Howsomever, sperrits don’t reckon for much, by what I’ve seen. I’ll chance it with the sperrits, Jim…”

This September 19th, why not celebrate Talk Like A Pirate Day by enjoying the Project Gutenburg edition of Treasure Island?

In the meantime, we hope you enjoy this collection of vintage seafaring images!

 

 

(WordPress has eaten half of my image captions, and I’m afraid the language I used while unsuccessfully trying to replace them was uncalled for even on Talk Like a Pirate Day.  Apologies for the lost image captions, but you can find sources for all of these ship pictures and more on my Flickr gallery!)