Happy ITLAPD! (International Talk Like A Pirate Day)

Avast, me hearties! I'm Darlene Marshall, and I write historical romance with pirates, privateers, smugglers, and the occasional possum. In honor of this year's International Talk Like a Pirate Day on September 19, I want to give a shout-out to my favorite pirates, the ones Romancelandia refers to as "chicks in breeches."

I've been fascinated by pirates since I was a little girl, especially women pirates like Anne Bonny (pictured in the woodcut) and her bestie Mary Read. In the non-fiction Bold in Her Breeches, author Jo Stanley refers to these women as "transgressive rovers" and there were more of them out there than you might think

In addition to pirates Bonny and Read, historian Suzanne Stark says in Female Tars that there were 20 known cases of cross-dressing women in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, the Regency Period when most of my books are set. If there were 20 known cases, how many more do we not have on the record? 

When I started writing Sea Change, the first in my High Seas series, I wanted a cross-dressing woman who goes to sea, someone who has to be able to hold her own on a ship full of men. One of the factoids from my research that interested me the most was this: If a woman's true identity was discovered, "he" was sometimes allowed to stay aboard ship if 1. they continued to dress and act as a man and 2. if they had particular skills like my like my surgeon/apprentice physician Charley Alcott.  One of these sailors in the historical record is "William Brown", an Anglo-African hero of the Royal Navy who continued to serve after their identity was discovered. William was too valuable as a Master of the Maintop to be discarded during wartime. 

Nowadays, of course, women serve with distinction in various navies around the world and when there are pirates about (as there still are), women may be going to sea with them. Transgressive rovers have always been with us, and when we are fighting off space pirates there no doubt will be bold people of all persuasions among them. So hoist your tankard of grog and toast the pirates past and future on International Talk Like a Pirate Day 2026!

Darlene Marshall writes award-winning historical romance set in the early to mid-19th c., mostly set around Florida and the Caribbean. She loves to hear from readers and you can email her at darlenemarshall[at]darlenemarshall[dot]com. Her books are available in French, German, English and Estonian. Marshall is Membership Director of Regency Fiction Writers, an organization for all authors of fiction set across the mid-18th to mid-19th c. She's also Section Leader for Erotic Writing at the Litforum.com. You can find her at her website www.darlenemarshall.com and on various social media sites wasting time when she should be writing her next book. She lives in North Central Florida, an excellent location for driving to the beach to do pirate research and drink mojitos.