07/08/2002

Reported by John Stofflet, Evening Magazine

Seafair is here again and it wouldn’t be Seafair without the Seafair Pirates. But did you know that Seattle is not the only place they dock? They’ve been making a pilgrimage to the Cayman Islands for 10 years!

For years, the Seattle Seafair Pirates have been one of the star attractions of Pirates Week – a celebration of the heritage of the Cayman Islands.

Evening Magazine followed along on their piratical pilgrimage to an island where in the 1600s and 1700s, Buccaneers roamed for real, armed with more than just dime store spiders.

Resource Links

Seafair Pirates Seafair

The scenery is certainly beautiful there, but that's not what brought pirates to the Cayman Islands. They were looking for fresh water, food, safe harbor for ships and if they could get into a little trouble on the island, that was okay, too.

There's even legend of a buried treasure, Some say booty’s buried below a place called Pedro Castle or deep in the darkest corners of the pirate caves near Boddentown.

You don’t have to look for to find reminders of how the Caymanians once tried to stop pirates like Blackbears from coming ashore. Places like Fort George where built in the days when a pirate ship on the horizon was bad news.

The trip to the Cayman Islands has become a tradition.

But today, the sight of a pirate ship is welcome there and our Seattle Seafair Pirates are happy to help celebrate that history.

This pirate partnership got started 10 years ago when Cayman Tourism officials heard we had a hearty bunch of Buccaneers in the Northwest and they invited them to be part of the celebration.

It’s the time that turns a salesman from Kirkland and a Metro bus mechanic into real pirates of the Caribbean.

The script plays out the same each year. There’s a brief sword fight and the pirates take over the island after taking island officials captive.

Thousands anxiously await the arrival of the pirates from the Pacific Northwest.

To most of the Cayman Islands residents, the Seattle pirates are celebrities. Local media follow the group’s every move while they are there.

Each day during the celebration, the party and pirates move to a different part of the island where there’s everything from music to menus featuring traditional foods. Several times a day, they raid restaurants and schools across the island.