"Captain Hook, Treasure Island, the Disney ride, Blackbeard," he said. "If we thought of them or talked about them as punks, thugs, thieves or kidnappers, they wouldn't stir our blood or promise a good yarn."
Asked which story they followed more closely last week than any other, 34 percent of Americans surveyed named the Somali pirate saga, in which sea captain Richard Phillips was rescued by US Navy snipers after five days held hostage in a lifeboat. The economy came in second at 27 percent, according to the Pew Research Center for People & The Press.
What's the reason behind the pirate fascination? The poll didn't ask, but the story is clearly about quick-thinking heroism by a man thrown into unexpected and treacherous circumstances.
It also involves Americans - perhaps a major part of the explanation, since Somali pirates have been attacking foreign ships for several years, with US newspaper readers and TV audiences paying little attention.
And certainly the media, particularly cable, have devoted huge chunks of time to the story. Of course, pirates really are "just your basic thugs," said Mike Carraway, exhibit designer at the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort, N.C., where workers are excavating what is believed to be the 18th-century wreck of Blackbeard's flagship, Queen Anne's Revenge. "We've for some reason romanticized them."
The proof: Any museum can be assured of visitors with a pirate exhibit. "It's like dinosaurs, or the Titanic," Carraway says. "They're our aces in the hole."
Historian Marcus Rediker, author of several books on pirates, says they were folk heroes long before they became staples of children's literature. "They're outlaws, like Jesse James or Bonnie and Clyde," Rediker said. "And being an outlaw is a very popular thing in American popular culture."
Later, of course, pirates became an object of popular fantasy, from "Treasure Island" to Captain Blood to Captain Hook to Captain Jack Sparrow, portrayed by Johnny Depp in the three hugely successful "Pirates of the Caribbean" films.
"They're always kind of roguish in these depictions, not bad so much as saucy, mischievous rather than sinister," said Jay Wolpert, one of three screenwriters on the first film in the trilogy. "They use rapiers. That's a lot more romantic than an AK-47."
"Of course, they're not like any of today's real pirates," said Wolpert, except for one thing: "They're interested in money."
Meanwhile, a Navy spokesman said yesterday that pirates have seized a German-owned ship in the pirate-infested waters between Somalia and Yemen.
