Aaarrgh we talkin’right?
QUESTION Did pirates talk in the way they are portrayed in film?
FOR centuries, piracy has been a worldwide scourge, so buccaneers have spoken many languages in various accents.
They disrupted the maritime trade of pharaoh Akhenaten in 14th-century BC Egypt and today pose a threat to shipping off the coast of Somalia. During the 17thcentury Golden Age of Piracy, British, French and Dutch privateers wrought havoc in the Caribbean.
Some of the most famous are Welsh privateer Sir Henry Morgan, Irish pirate Anne Bonny and pirate William Kidd from Scotland, but filmmakers have not reflected their range of dialects.
When Disney produced its film version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island in 1950, Robert Newton adopted an unrealistic but unforgettable Cornish brogue for his portrayal of Long John Silver. He was born in Dorset and grew up near Land’s End in Cornwall, so overemphasised his natural speaking voice for dramatic effect.
He retained this accent for Blackbeard The Pirate in 1952 and another Long John Silver two years later. This became the default accent for pirates in films.
The West Country, and Cornwall in particular, have long been associated with pirates, smugglers and wreckers. Blackbeard and Calico Jack Rackham were from Bristol, Mary Read was born in Devon while privateers Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake were from the West Country. Daphne du Maurier’s 1936 novel Jamaica Inn told of smugglers on Bodmin Moor.
Ian MacDonald, Billericay, Essex. MANy notorious pirates from the Golden Age of Piracy came from the South-West of England and spoke in the dialect of that region, rolling the letter ‘r’.
Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, came from Bristol, while Henry ‘Long Ben’ Every was from Newton Ferrers, Devon, and Samuel Bellamy, known as the Prince of Pirates, hailed from Dartmoor.
Since his death in 1956, actor Robert Newton, known for his over-the-top portrayal of Long John Silver in Treasure Island, has become the patron saint of International Talk Like A Pirate Day, held annually on September 19.
Cap’n Davy Young, Pirate Plunder magazine, Coulsdon, Surrey.
QUESTION Is there any evidence of an unconscious person dreaming?
SOME people who have recovered from comas report having dreams. In a recent case, a Gloucester man who was put into an induced coma reported nightmares so powerful that he suffers from PTSD and questions reality when awake.
The process is not fully understood but is probably related to the nature of the coma. Where the visual cortex is badly damaged, visual dreams will be lost; if the auditory cortex is destroyed, they will lack sound. If there is damage to the brain’s reticular activating system, which controls the sleep-wakefulness cycle, dreams won’t occur.
J. Singh, Leicester.
QUESTION What is Hooke’s Law and why is it an anagram?
SCIENTIST Robert Hooke’s eponymous law of elasticity of 1660 states that, for small deformations of an object, the displacement or size of the deformation is directly proportional to the deforming force or load, be it stretching, compressing, squeezing, bending or twisting.
Under these conditions, the object returns to its original shape and size if the load is removed. Students of physics will be aware of it in relation to springs and it has a host of practical applications, from engineering buildings to diving boards and car suspension systems.
When Hooke discovered his law, he published it with the anagram ‘ceiiinosssttuv’. He revealed this in 1678, but only after he had explained the theory mathematically. He decoded the anagram as the Latin ut tensio, sic vis, meaning ‘as the extension, so the force’.
An anagram or cipher was once a common way for scientists to prove they had originated the law if someone else made the same discovery during the calculation period.
A famous example was Christiaan Huygens’s 1656 anagram: ‘aaaaaaaccccc deeeeeghiiiiiiillllmmnnnnnnnnnooooppq rrstttttuuuuu.’ In 1659, he published his solution: Annulo cingitur, tenui, plano, nusquam cohaerente, ad eclipticam inclinato. This means: ‘It is girdled by a thin flat ring, nowhere touching, and inclined to the ecliptic.’ It proved there were rings around Saturn.
Anagrams were a way of preventing a repeat of the Newton-Leibniz controversy. Sir Isaac Newton claimed to have invented calculus in the 1660s and 1670s, but didn’t publish until 1693. In the meantime, Gottfried Leibniz had developed and published his own version.
Bernard Strickland, Banbury, Oxon.
QUESTION Why didn’t composer Albert W. Ketelbey feature in the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony celebrating Birmingham?
THE suggestion in the earlier answer that Albert William Ketelbey, the Birmingham composer of light music, has faded from memory is not entirely true.
The Scarborough Spa Orchestra is the only remaining fully professional seaside summer season ‘palm court’ orchestra. Holidaymakers can hear eight concerts a week in a ten-week season. No two programmes are alike and pieces rarely get more than two or three playings.
One of the audience’s favourite composers is Ketelbey. So popular is he that every time his name is mentioned from the concert platform, it is a longstanding tradition to give a hearty cheer.
Holidaymakers travel to Scarborough from all four corners of the UK, thus establishing Ketelbey’s fame and following nationwide. Not faded; not frivolous. Albert W. Ketelbey? Hooray!
Stephen Walker, Scarborough Spa Orchestra, Scarborough, N. Yorks.
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