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Parrots
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Salty Dog
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 10, 2018 11:21 pm    Post subject: Parrots Reply with quote

Parrots
Author: Krzysztof Wilczynski


Parrots: Probably became widely thought of from the story "Treasure Island", specifically from the character "Long John Silver". There is a deal of controversy on this subject as many people suspect that pirates were much too practical to deal with pets. A parrot permanently stationed on the shoulder of a pirate would regularly generate a mess. As well, a parrot might get in the way of work, or be consumed during hard times at sea. So it is highly unlikely that having a parrot, or any pet for that matter, was too popular with pirates... Maybe some pirates dealt with their pet's messes just like some people today?

Though less popular amongst children now Ransome's tales of school holidays in the lake district of the 1930s were children's favourites for decades. That Uncle Jim has a parrot and a cannon only confirm the children's suspicions that he is a retired pirate. The link with Treasure Island is further shown when the Blacketts and Walkers give Uncle Jim the nickname "Captain Flint", but the parallels do not stop there. Stevenson's Captain Flint shrieks "pieces of eight" to keep himself amused, but Ransome's Polly says little more than "pretty polly", and is told that he can't be a proper pirate's parrot unless he can say "pieces of eight", which he does at the end of the book. In Treasure Island Long John Silver offers his parrot to young Jim Hawkins, fearing that a prison would be no place for a wild bird, and in Swallows and Amazons Uncle Jim gives Polly to Able Seaman Titty saying it would be much better for a parrot to be around young people than with a retired pirate like himself.

So much then for the fictional roots, but how many pirates actually had parrots? Exotic pets were certainly popular amongst sailors, if for no other reason than the high price they could command in the European markets, and parrots were especially popular, perhaps because they could be taught to talk. Several probate inventories of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries list parrots or parrot cages amongst the possessions of seamen, but most importantly perhaps is the description of parrots to be found in William Dampier's journal of his circumnavigation in which he describes the parrots of Campeachy Bay as "yellow and red, very coarsely mixed; and they would prate [talk] very prettily…" Most of the men with whom Dampier was associating at the time included a parrot or two in their possessions, as well as parrot cages.
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