The buccaneers were pirates who attacked Spanish shipping in the Caribbean Sea during the 17th century. The term buccaneer is now used generally as a synonym for pirate. Originally, buccaneer crews were larger, more apt to attack coastal cities, and more localized to the Caribbean Sea than later pirate crews who sailed to the Indian Ocean on the Pirate Round in the late 17th century.

History

The term buccaneer derives from the Caribbean Arawak word buccan, a wooden frame for smoking meat, preferably manatee. From this derived the French word boucane and hence the name boucanier for French hunters who used such frames to smoke meat from feral cattle and pigs on Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic). English colonists anglicised the word boucanier to buccaneer.

About 1630, some Frenchmen who were driven away from the island of Hispaniola fled to nearby Tortuga. The Spaniards tried to drive them out of Tortuga, but the buccaneers were joined by many other French, Dutch and English and turned to piracy against Spanish shipping, generally using small craft to attack galleons in the vicinity of the Windward Passage. Finally they became so strong that they even sailed to the mainland of Spanish America and sacked cities.

Tim Severin (born 25 Sept 1940) is a British explorer, historian and writer. Severin is noted for his work in retracing the legendary journeys of historical figures. Severin was awarded both the Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society and the Livingstone Medal of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society. He received the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award for his 1982 book The Sindbad Voyage.

Early life and career

He was born Timothy Severin in Assam, India in 1940. Severin attended Tonbridge School and studied geography and history at Keble College, Oxford.

Recreating ancient voyages

Tracking Marco Polo (1961)

While he was an undergraduate at Oxford University, Severin, Stanley Johnson and Michael de Larrabeiti retraced Marco Polo's thirteenth-century journey through Asia on motorcycles, using Polo's The Description of the World as a guide. They travelled from Venice through Turkey, Persia, and Afghanistan, surviving sandstorms, floods, motorcycle accidents, and time spent in jail. Severin and his guides rode camels through Deh Bakri pass to identify the Persian "apples of Paradise" and the hidden hot springs described by Polo. They were unable to complete the voyage due to visa problems at the border of China and returned to England by sea from Bombay.

The Buccaneer was a secondary mascot used by the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball club during their 1995 season. While the team's primary mascot, the Pirate Parrot, wore an elaborate costume with a prosthetic head and molded frame, the Buccaneer was simply a man in pirate's garb who led the crowd in organized cheers. After an audition involving 30 prospective mascots, 23-year-old Tim Beggy was chosen to portray the Buccaneer.

Beggy was arrested along with a woman in July 1995, while skinny dipping after hours in a closed public swimming pool. Beggy and the woman both reached a plea agreement, under which they each paid a $100 fine and court costs in exchange for more serious charges of "open lewdness" being dropped. Beggy's arrest attracted national attention, including jokes on The Tonight Show, and the Pirates subsequently discontinued the use of the character in the wake of the negative publicity.

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