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Hi everyone, and welcome back to 酒馆. Hi, 安澜.
Ah~~
What is the matter, what's going on? Are you stuck? Are you ill?
Avast, ye matey.
Oh~~~~, I know what we're gonna talk about today. Are we gonna talk about pirates?
Ahoy.
Okay. Stop it now.
Ok.
听到安澜刚才说的那些话, 我就知道我们今天要讨论的是 pirates. 海盗
Yes. So today I thought it would be interesting to talk a little bit about pirates, and also we can look at some of the language they are supposed to use.
I like pirate talks. It's just every time I know they're criminals, but it's just adventure stories that's sort of like excitement.
Well, exactly. If you think back to our course, we actually talk about Treasure Island in that. And a lot of the stereotypes around pirates actually come from that book.
对，我们的那个宝藏音频课程，就是【名著扫盲班】里面第一季就讲到了金银岛, Treasure Island, 金银岛其实基本上是属于这个类型海盗文学的这个鼻祖了.
Yes.
So let’s talk about pirate, p-i-r-a-t-e, pirate.
Yes.
Not to be confused with private.
No, pirate.
So what is a pirate? Pirate, 我们叫 “海盗” 就是bandits on the sea.
Yeah. Well, essentially that's what it is. A pirate is someone who robs and steals from ships, particularly merchant ships.
Merchant ships are ships that are selling things.
Yes.
商船。
Now, piracy, we call the crime piracy, has been a crime for centuries, and there's still pirates nowadays.
Hang on a minute. Piracy, 就是海盗的行为, 对吧? But nowadays we say piracy as in盗版。For example, piracy of copyright stuff.
Yeah. So when we talk about privacy, it can be nautical privacy.
Mhm.
Or it can be video piracy.
Nautical means about sailing.
Yeah.
航海的这个词。Nautical, it’s a nautical term.
Yes.
And there's no pirates today, right? Like the pirates pirates, arghh pirates, they are pirates.
They probably not are pirates, but certainly in some parts of... near Africa, also in the ocean, there are still pirates around.
Because a large part of the ocean is still it's difficult to sort of control and govern.
Exactly. But today we're gonna be talking about what is known as the golden age of piracy.
It's just so paradoxical, because piracy is supposed to be a bad thing as a crime, but you call it the golden age of piracy.
Yeah.
就是海盗的黄金年代.
So this is the era of, for example, pirates in the Caribbean.
The whole pirates of the Caribbean /kærɪˈbi:ən/ or Caribbean /kəˈrɪbiən/, 加勒比海盗就是那个时候.
Yes. And this is around 1650~1720. Now this was a time of wars between Britain and Spain. So, Britain then controlled a lot of North America. Spain controlled a lot of Central and South America.
If you read your history, if you know your history, then you would know that there were lots of conflicts between the British fleets and the Spanish fleets.
Yeah, and also the French as well, pretty much everyone was fighting in the Caribbean at that time.
And back then Spain, most of its economy relied on gold and silver from South America, and galleons (15-18世纪用做军舰或商船的西班牙大帆船) used to transport all of this precious material from Mexico and South America to Spain.
Galleons is a specific ship.
Yeah. A galleon is a very large sailing ship, and we still talk about galleons and we think about galleons when we think of pirates, these very big ships with lots of sales, lots of cannon.
Almost stereotypical.
Yeah.
When you think of pirate stories, you think about galleons.
Yes.
Mhm.
Now the strange thing is that originally pirates were encouraged to attack Spanish ships.
Encouraged by whom, by you guys?
Yes. Britain was at war with Spain. And back then, the government would actually give a license to what we call privateers. Now a privateer is not part of the navy. They were a private individual, but they had a letter from the British government saying if they wanted to attack a Spanish ship, they were allowed to.