It’s all hands on deck for family fun at the St. Louis Pirate Festival
By Beck Ireland
Photograph by Whitney Curtis
Rated “arrr”—not R—is how the organizers of the second annual St. Louis Pirate Festival describe their swashbucklin’ event. Despite bringing together some of the most notorious freebooters in history—Anne Bonny, Mary Read, Christopher Condent, Black Bart—the festival, scheduled to weigh anchor September 15 in Wentzville, Mo., promises to keep the true hornswogglers out. Any parting of visitors from their hard-earned doubloons is strictly voluntary. And for fear of being forced to walk the plank, those buccaneers that refuse to strike the Jolly Roger—they are pirates, after all—are likely to forewarn their landlubber public that what is to come is not for the lily-livered. “We had an act last year that wouldn’t start the show until a little boy found his family,” says Tammy Duncan, associate director of the festival. “Some pirates are just not family-friendly pirates, and they’re good at letting the audience know when it’s not a family-friendly show.”
During last year’s festivities, the main family-oriented activity centered around a scavenger hunt in which even the littlest scalawags, working from wanted posters displayed at the front gate, were asked to take on the pirates’ own hit-and-run tactics to gather stamps on a passport from the more infamous sea dogs wandering the grounds. After the stamps were collected, the kids were presented to Grace O’Malley, the pirate queen, given a shark’s-tooth necklace and all but press-ganged into
her crew.
In addition, at the front gate the sprogs were given a ticket to enter a sand pile in which they could dig for treasure—a literal buried booty call. “The kids got a real kick out of it,” Duncan says.
But the pirate life isn’t all “yo ho ho” and fun and games. The festival organizers hope visitors will also learn a bit about the salty swabbies that inhabited colonial Martinique circa 1755. “Johnny Depp’s portrayal of Jack Sparrow is what’s really popular,” Duncan says. “But we want people to hear a little bit about the history, what the colonial Caribbean was like and what the true pirates of the Caribbean were like.”
An all-volunteer cast is responsible for swabbing the deck, so to speak, but not everyone gets to play a pirate. The organizers recruit soldiers, peasants and even members of the aristocracy to portray fictional Gov. Rouille De Rocourt, his spoiled daughter and members of the French militia impressed to guard the aristocracy—although the unofficial storyline has them watching over the island’s supply of rum as well. Rumor has it, the governor has offered Letters of Marque to any pirate willing to go legit as a privateer, leaving the sweet trade to never go on the account again.
The main requirements for festival volunteers are a willingness to be in character, a high level of commitment and a proper costume. This production is strictly BYO ruffled shirts and panniers. “We have some things that we can help with, but generally they have to bring their own,” Duncan says. “We want the people who populate our village to look the part. We really do our best to make them as historically accurate as we can.” That means no obvious Velcro, polyester or mass-manufactured costumes will get past the costuming committee.
Apparently, pirates don’t wear raincoats either. Last year, two of the four festival days were hampered by rain, keeping the festival’s attendance to just less than 4,000 for both sunny days. This year, pirates and landlubbers alike are hoping for fair sailing. “We’re going to three weekends instead of two, which hopefully will help us with our rain situation,” Duncan says. “Hopefully we’ll have some good weather out of the three weekends.”
