A Pirate Story

I found the first story I ever wrote and decided to put it up XD this is from around 10th grade and I did it for a creative writing class

One of the greatest and most despised pirates in history, Eric the Longfork was a proud man.  Born to unknown parents in Reykjavik, Iceland, he was abandoned at a dockyard at a young age.  There he was found and taken into the custody of a well-known fisherman, Igmar Johansson, and raised by him thereafter.  Igmar taught young Eric, as he named him, everything he could about the world of sailing and fishing.  He would take the boy out and show him how to fish, use a spear and a knife, swim, sail, and all other necessary skills.  By the time Eric was 12 years old, he had mastered the arts of sailing, fishing, hunting, and navigation.  Igmar was very proud of his adopted son, because he had no children of his own, and wanted someone to carry on his fisherman legacy.  He used to take his son to the local fisherman hangout and have him demonstrate his awesome fishing skills.  There was no doubt int anyone's mind that Eric would  grow up to be the greatest fisherman of all.

However, young Eric had a very different view of himself. He and his best friends, Josef Gunnerson and Gustav Gustavson were obsessed with pirates and their tales.  It was all they could think about.  Eric enjoyed fishing, but the thought of doing that every day of his life wasn't nearly as appealing as hi=jacking ships and stealing gold wherever he went.  He loved the idea of being famous as well, and of being respected wherever he went.  Eric, Josef, and Gustav often pretended they were pirates, having play sword fights and making treasure maps.  Igmar did not like this behavior at all; there was nothing that the fisherman loathed more than pirates.  More than a few times, pirates had raided Reykjavik and caused great misery for all of it's inhabitants. Because of these prior dealings with them, Igmar didn't want Eric and his friends to try and imitate them.  So, Eric stopped his pirate antics, but he still thought about them all the time.

On the day of June 9, 1746, Eric Johansson turned 18.  By now he was probably the most skilled sailor in all of Iceland.  Igmar was very proud, and looked forward to seeing Eric open up a nice little fishing business of his own.  However, this was not to be as calamity was about to strike Reykjavik and all of it's citizens.  The greatest, most evil, most feared pirate of the day, the infamous Blackbeard, was sailing with his crew toward the town.  Reykjavik was quite prosperous due to it's dominance in the fishing industry, which made it an enticing target for any pirate/.  Blackbeard's pirate fleet arrived in Icelandic waters in the middle of the night, and proceeded into the harbor.  Many people were still awake, and the ships were noticed immediately.  "Piiiiirates!!"  shouted one alarmed citizen, waking up many who had been sleeping.  Eric, who was at the tavern With Gustav and Josef, ran out and took a look at the scene.   People were running around in the streets, and everyone hurried to find cover as Blackbeard's ships let their cannons loose upon the city.  Screams could be heard everywhere and explosions rocked the town. 

After a lengthy bombardment, the invading pirates anchored their ships and got out onto the land.  "To the city's vault mates!" cried Captain Blackbeard.  Hooting and hollering, hundreds of his followers swarmed the city, cutting down all who resisted with their swords.  The braver citizens of the town went to the vault with their fishing spears to try and defend it, but they were badly outnumbered, and many of the pirates carried pistols, putting the townsfolk at a further disadvantage.  While his thugs looted the city, Blackbeard and his own crew searched the boats in the harbor for any valuables.  Igmar, who had been out fishing, returned just in time to see what was happening.  Fearing for his rum, he quickly docked his ship and headed toward the tavern, but ran into Blackbeard and his gang on the way there.  "Well, well, well,"  Blackbeard said coldly, "are you lost old man?"  The rest of his crew chuckled.  Igmar looked around; he was sandwiched between the pirates and the freezing waters of the harbor.  Seeing no escape, he lunged at the pirates and managed to take down a couple of them before he was overwhelmed.  They were about to kill them, but Blackbeard wanted him alive.  "This be that famous fisherman, Igmar.  He's bound to fetch a nice price if we ransom him.  Throw him on board!"  By this time the pirates had cleaned out the town, and they headed back towards their ships with all the loot they  could carry.

Eric, Gustav, and Josef regained consciousness slowly.  They and some others had been beaten by the pirates while trying to defend their town.  When the survivors came to, they awoke to see their town in ruin:  buildings were toppled, boats were sunk, nearly everything important was stolen, and many fires burned despite the extreme cold.  "Are they gone?" asked Josef "Yeah, they're gone, and so is all our gold!" Eric replied.  "Those dirty sons of---"  Gustav trailed off suddenly as he thought of something.  "Eric! Where's your pa? Eric had forgotten about him  "Pa! We gotta find him!" Since Josef and Gustav's parents had been and still were out fishing somewhere, they helped Eric search the city for any sign of his father.  They searched through a good part of the remaining night , and finally came upon someone who had witnessed Igmar being dragged off to Blackbeard's flagship.  "well, at least he's okay."  Eric said.  "We better get some sleep.  We can figure out what to do in the morning." Gustav said.  Everyone agreed, and they went back to their homes.  Since Josef's house had been destroyed, he went to Gustav's for the night. 

Eric awoke early the next day, and got dressed and went outside to go over to Gustav's house.  He noticed on the way how badly damaged the cit y was, and got angrier at Blackbeard and his crew for what they had done.  After a while, he arrived at his friend's house, where he saw Josef and Gustav eating their yummy breakfast of raw fish.  "Hey guys.  Can I come in?" "Yeah, sure.  Pull up a chair."  Said Gustav.  Eric did so and started chomping away on some fish. Nobody said a word while eating. "Eric, what are you gonna do about your pa? They've got him somewhere now." "Probably going to ransom him off." Gustav said. "We could just wait until we have enough money to pay them." "And leave paw with those pirates all that time? And then pay the pirates after what they did to us? No way!"  Eric said.  "There is only one thing we can do...." he continued.  Before Josef or Gustav could as what it was, Eric was out the door, so they left their meal and followed him.

Eric and his friends went around to every house that was still standing, and to every boat that was still floating, and got together a bunch of the youngest and strongest fisherman, who were all angry at the pirates.  They all gathered at Reykjavik harbor, and Eric went in front of them to explain what he was thinking.  "Listen!  Listen up!"  Eric shouted over the noise.  "The pirates who were here last night completely wrecked our city! They stole nearly everything from us! And they took my pa! I say we track them down and make them pay it all back!"  The hole crowd cheered at hearing this, but one of them asked, "How are we gonna do that?  Blackbeard's got hundreds of men, and guns too!"  "So what? We Icelanders are better sailors; all we need is one good ship and we'll sink them all!"  once again, the crowd cheered.  Eric led his posse to the one battleship in their harbor, a 60 gun cruiser.  It wasn't very powerful or intimidating, but it made up for this with speed, which meant that the Icelanders could catch up with Blackbeard more quickly.  Thus, the men boarded the vessel and set out for the sea.

It took Eric and his gang a little while to figure out just where to begin looking for the pirates.  "Blackbeard had tons of ships! Surely, someone must have noticed them!"  Josef suggested.  So the men sailed from port to port, inquiring if anyone had seen the fleet.  Obviously ,many people did, but ythey were too afraid to talk lest the face reprisals from Blackbeard.  For many days, they were at sea stopping at this or that port city, until one day, about three weeks after they set out, a bartender in Lisbon, gave them the information they wanted to hear.  "If you be lookin' for the bLackbeard gang, I'm the one to talk to," he began, "but the information don't  come cheap."  Eric and his crew had forgotten to bring any money with them on their trip, so he told the tavern owner so.  The bartender was about tho send him away, but since he didn't want to get beaten upand didn't care much for  Blackbeard himself, he changed his mind.  "Arrr....that's okay.  Blackbeard's tried to rob this fair city more then once, so I wouldn't mind if some bad luck were to come his way."  "Okay, so where is he?"  Eric asked.  "He has a likin' for a tavern in Fuchal, that's on the Madeira Islands about 250 miles southwest of here. But ye didn't here it from me."  The old bartender said.  Eric thanked the bartender enthusiastically and returned with his ment to the ship where they excitedly set sail for Fuchal.  "I can't wait till I get my hands on Blackbeard!"  "Calm down Eric,"  Gustav said, "We're just her to rescue your pa remember?"  "Yeah, there's no way we can take all of them. We'll have to sneak in at night or something"  Josef suggested.

About three days later, Eric and his men arrived in Fuchal harbor at night.  The moon was very bright, but all the people in town barely noticed the puny ship .  "All right, we're here!"  Eric said as he pulled out a scope to check out the scene.  "II see Blackbeard's flag over that building!"  he said, pointing toward the distance.  "Let's go!"  the men shouted in unison.  "We're still too badly outnumbered!  We should soften them up first."  Gustav said.  "Good idea."  Replied Eric.  "To the cannons boys!" he shouted.  The Icelanders all manned their cannons and used every cannon ball they had on the town.

When they ran out of ammo, Eric's gang docked their ships and hipped onto land.  "To the tavern boys!"  Eric shouted.  The Icelanders cheered as they rushed toward the building, easily beating the surprised pirates that they came across.  Meanwhile, Eric, Gustav, and Josef searched the pirate boats in the harbor for any sign of Igmar.  After searching through a few, they came to Blackbeard' s flagship.  "He has to be here!"  Eric thought aloud.  Sure enough, at the bottom level of the ship, the old fisherman lay on the floor, shackled and with a bag over his head.  "Pa!" shouted Eric, running over to check on him.  He took the bag off his head and cut thru his shackles.  "Huh? Is that you Eric?" the old fisherman asked as his eyes slowly readjusted to the light.  "Yeah! Me and some of the others came looking for you.  We've been searching forever!"  Josef and Gustav helped Igmar to his feet, and the men went above the deck.  "Ahh. It feels good to breath fresh air ag---" Igmar stopped speaking as he saw the city of Fuchal in ruins.  The ICelanders Eric brought with him could be seen carrying booty back to the ship.  Eric and his friends seemed completely oblivious to the irony of the situation. 'Maybe Eric was fated to be this way....' Igmar wondered to himself.

Author's Note

pirate pic is from DA

Reviews

[Looouise]

in history, Eric the Longfork was a proud man. - you should put a comma after his name/title (as a pirate), because without it, the first part of the sentence doesn't sound like it has its link to the latter part, if you know what I mean? (I can't even explain it...) :/

him demonstrate his awesome fishing skills. - this is kind of amusing, with the use of the word 'awesome.' :) In your little note thing it says you wrote this in Grade 10 (I don't know how long ago that was for you), so (as I read it) on one level it just sounds like a good adjective for the time, but on the other it fits well as his skills are worthy of awe. That was probably the most useless thing to point out, but it amused me. :)

doubt int anyone's - no t?

I like the innocence of sorts that Eric has about pirates; that they're respected and live a life of wealth and are the people to aspire to; and then you contrast that to how Igmar feels about pirates and the actual reality of it that Eric might not have seen in his life - pirates aren't respected, they're feared. I thought that was a nice contrast. :)

tavern With Gustav - lower case 'w'

They were about to kill them - I think 'them' is meant to be 'him'

Pull up a chair." Said Gustav. - comma and lower case 's'

him off." Gustav said - comma rather than a full stop

The hole crowd - whole :)

"Good idea." Replied Eric. - comma and lower case 'r'

cut thru - through

to breath - 'e' on the end

Overall, I think it's a nice story. :) And you write it well too, it's simple and brief and because it's short, that's good. :) I think if you really wanted to (if you weren't already), you could make something bigger out of the story, do a little more character exploring and all that jazz. I like how this does present what pirates do and shows Eric the consequences for people if he ever became a ruthless pirate, and I like how it kind of shows within him; but at the end there's a slight reference to him being a pirate in a way - even if he is defending his father and people. :) It's a nice piece.

A 'technical' criticism: Your dialogue needs to be separated. When someone new is talking, chuck it on a new line. I don't know if you already do that and just haven't for this piece because it's old (if that's the case, maybe go through and edit it?), but it would be nice to read something if everything was structured a little more properly?