Scientists and Salty Seadogs
By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Mar 19, 2007 8:50PM
Note: Beware ye who read this post, and know that we encourage ye to view it in Buccaneer speak for a more authentic experience.
On all the seven seas, what is there to do when one tires of winking at pretty ladies and trying to stick enough jellyfish together to make a bouncy castle? Gideon Defoe tries to tackle this universal need with The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists: A Novel.
If Monty Python's Flying Circus had relations with Douglas Adams in the biblical sense, then Pirates! just might be their tiny lovechild.
Tricked by their arch-pirate-nemesis Black Bellamy into thinking it contained booty, the pirates attack the young Charles Darwin's ship the Beagle. Realizing their mistake after they cut open a few monkeys to discover no jewels but monkey guts, the pirates feel bad and take Darwin on board, along with his "man-panzee" a chimp that behaves, if mutely, exactly like a gentleman. The pirate captain makes room for them by forcing some of his crew walk the plank, to which he remarks to a horrified Darwin, "only fools and lubbers . . . it's good for the species."
The pirates agree to transport Darwin back to Victorian London, where the Vlad the Impaler-esque bishop of Oxford has kidnapped Darwin's brother, Erasmus. In costume as ladies over costumes as scientists over pirate garb, the pirates form a plan.
Lest you think the book is all blubber and no booty, there are several gems to be had in the footnotes, as in the world may be out of helium, used not only for making your voice sound funny, but also to cool superconductors.
The best scene in the book is when the pirate captain and the bishop of Oxford are fighting their way through the Natural History Museum. They enter the mineral room and throw rocks at each other based on atomic weight.
Silly? Very. Brilliant? Assuredly.
Thanks, Jess!