What Are Your Favorite Pirate Books, Movies, and Songs?

I feel sorry for the current generation. I grew up watching old swashbuckler movies about pirate adventures and from junior high up, I went to Disneyland once a year and rode the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.

Modern kids who’ve grown up with The Wiggles’ Captain Feathersword, Barney the purple dinosaur, and/or Jake and the Neverland Pirates, think that pirates are harmless treasure seekers who dress like the Pirate Don Durk of Dowdee (although they’ve likely not read that glorious poem) and have no idea that pirates were scoundrels, scalawags, and sea-thieves. Nor have they any idea of the existence of “rum, sodomy, and the lash.”

My favorite pirate movies are Captain Blood andThe King’s Pirate. My favorite non-fiction pirate book is Jane Yolen’s Pirates in Petticoats, which was her first book. My favorite fictional pirate book is Andre Norton’s Scarface. Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island is a classic book and has been made into a movie several times, but the above are my personal favorites.

Disney has made five movies in its Pirates of the Caribbean franchise (loosely based on the E-ticket ride of the same name) and have two more pirate movies in pre-production. One movie — untitled as yet — will star Australian actress Margot Robbie and be written by Christina Hodson. The other, also untitled at present, will be written by Ted Elliott and Craig Mazin.

For young readers, I recommend F. N. Monjo’s Pirates in Panama, which is unusual from an Anglo-American point of view in making Henry Morgan the villain rather than the hero. Instead of a heroic raider, stealing gold the Spaniards had already stolen from the Indians, Monjo focuses on the clever Panamanian orphan boy who helps the village priest outwit (not outfight) Morgan to save the town’s treasure… and then has the chutzpah to ask Morgan for a donation to the village church.

Some pirate songs date back to when the Stuart kings sat on the British throne. Some are modern, written in the 20th or 21st centuries merely to entertain and remind us of days gone by.

What are your favorite pirate adventures? Who are your favorite buccaneers, real or fictional?