Description
Pirates Smugglers and Shipwrecks
This is a special Buy 2 Get 2 free package!
It consists of 3 scripts, with 6 speakers each:
Pirates Ahoy! script
Smugglers Alert! script
Shipwrecks! script
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Pirates Quiz
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Pirates Smugglers and Shipwrecks Sample texts of all 3 plays:
Sample Text 1:
Pirates Ahoy!
6 speakers – Interviewer, Long John Silver, Blackbeard, Black Bart, Captain Henry Morgan, and Mary Read. Climb aboard with this motley crew – if you dare!
This ‘interview’ draws out the main historical facts available on these characters. Additional background information is supplied at the end of the play – the sum total of this information available in quiz form shortly (from Quiz section)
Pirates Smugglers and Shipwrecks Sample Text:
Pirates Ahoy!
Speakers: Interviewer
Long John Silver
Blackbeard (Edward Teach)
Mary Read
Captain Henry Morgan
Black Bart (Captain Bartholomew ‘Black Bart’ Roberts)
Interviewer: A very good morning to you, Gentlemen (To Mary) Begging your pardon, ma’am!
Mary Read: That’s quite all right! I’m more than happy to be treated the same as these gents!
Long John Silver: A clear case of ‘Who’s a pretty boy then?’
Blackbeard: (Growling) Well, she’s certainly better looking than you!
Cpt. Morgan: (‘Groggily’) Yes, even I can see that
Black Bart: Which sure is saying something given the state you’re in!
Cpt. Morgan: Yo ho ho! And a bottle of rum!
Interviewer: Oh dear! Who left out that bottle of rum?
Long John Silver: And he’s already had a whole barrel that he brought along with him!
Interviewer: Something tells me we’re not going to get a lot of sense out of Captain Morgan this morning!
Mary Read: Oh! Don’t you worry! You wouldn’t believe what us pirates are capable of – even after a large number of rums!
Interviewer: Hmm. So I’ve heard! But perhaps we’d better start with this Welshman
Black Bart: Who? Me?
Interviewer: No. I’ll come to you in a minute. I was going to have a few words with Captain Morgan here – whilst he’s still capable of speech!
Blackbeard: (Hissing) You’d better get in there quick, then! And I’d make it a simple question, if I were you!
Interviewer: OK. So, why are pirates, pirates?
Cpt. Morgan: Because they Arrrrrrrrrrr!
Interviewer: (Sighing) Hmm. Very good! Let’s try again. Everyone knows that the Captain Morgan line of rum is named after you, but I wonder if they know about your lucky escape aboard that warship ‘Oxford’?
Cpt. Morgan: How could I forget? That stray spark so nearly took me out with my 350 crewmen!
Interviewer: Talk about going out with a bang! Very careless of someone to ‘strike a light’ near that gunpowder!
Blackbeard: What a waste! Much better drunk as part of a rum cocktail!
Interviewer: What, gunpowder?
Blackbeard: Ah yes! The perfect rum cocktail ingredient! You wouldn’t catch me being that careless with my gunpowder!
Cpt. Morgan: Huh! Coming from Mr. Health and Safety, over here! What about those burning fuses you used to light in your hair?
Mary Read: Ugh! All that filthy black smoke! What filthy habits some of those men pirates had!
Black Bart: Well, it certainly scared the living daylights out of his enemies! He sure was a scary sight at battle time!
Cpt. Morgan: Arrrrrr! Shiver me timbers!
Long John Silver: Hey! Quit stealing my lines! I’ll have none left!
Blackbeard: (Sarcastically) Oh I’m sure that nice Robert Louis Stephenson will find you some more!
Black Bart: Yeah! Who invited this ‘fake’ along? A mere fictional pirate!
Long John Silver: (Spluttering, furiously) Well, of all the cheek …
Cpt. Morgan: Huh! Cat got your tongue?
Blackbeard: No, but it might have got his parrot!
Mary Read: Boys! Boys! Why so cruel?
Blackbeard: (Sarcastically) Uh, because we’re pirates!
Mary Read: That’s no excuse for bad manners! Allow me to apologize, Long John Silver, on their behalf.
Long John Silver: Nah! Don’t worry about them! They’re just jealous!
Black Bart: (Exploding) Jealous? Of you? Oh, pull the other one!
Cpt. Morgan: (Laughing) But he’s only got the one! Leg, that is!
Blackbeard: (Sneering) Along with that peg leg! I’m surprised Mr. Stevenson didn’t give you a hook instead of an arm, too!
Cpt. Morgan: Nah! Would have cost him too much!
Blackbeard: You mean (pausing for effect) an arm and a leg?
Sample Text 2:
Smugglers Alert!
Duration: around 5 – 10 mins
Cast: 6 – Interviewer, Thomas Kingsmill, Tom Johnstone, Cruel Copinger, Jack Rattenbury and John Trenchard
Copinger: And proud of it! A pity you weren’t a little more loyal to your country!
Johnstone: (Sighing) OK. So you’ve all heard how I helped the Frenchies a little ..
Rattenbury: (Exploding) A little? So what part of ‘smuggling gold from England to France, to pay Napoleon’s armies’ was little?
Kingsmill: Indeed! Fancy me thinking I was the one who was going ‘to come in for all the flack’! At least I knew whose side I was on!
Interviewer: Now, come along, gentlemen! Perhaps we are being a little heavy on Mr. Johnstone! Don’t you agree, Mr. Trenchard?
Trenchard: Actually, I’m with them on this one! However much I might have disapproved of the violence I saw going on around me, nothing would have made me turn my old mates in!
Interviewer: Well, of course not!
Copinger: But that’s what this gentleman did!
Rattenbury: Not only did he swap sides as in swapping what country he fought for but he also went from being the hunted to the hunter!
Interviewer: You mean, he became a revenue man?
Kingsmill: (Spitting) He did indeed! How much lower could he stoop?
Johnstone: Well, I could have led a French invasion force! Turning the Emperor down cost me nine months in gaol!
Rattenbury: So? Do you want to hear about some of my adventures? Escaping from gaol, from the navy, from the customs man (pauses) Oh, but that was you, I was forgetting!
Johnstone: OK! OK! So I’m never going to win you round
Trenchard: I don’t think so!
Johnstone: (Sulkily, to Trenchard) All I wanted to do was retire peacefully, like you!
Trenchard: Now don’t you go comparing my happy ending with yours! Mine was honorable!
Johnstone: (Tutting) As if this lot know anything about honour! Tell that to their victims and their victims’ families! I wonder how much honour they saw!
Kingsmill: Ah! Those 1740s! When men were men!
Trenchard: Bullies and thugs, more like!
Kingsmill: (Furiously) Why, you …
Interviewer: Gentlemen! Gentlemen! I am not prepared to tolerate any violence in our ranks today! That time has gone! (Aside) Thank goodness! Now, we will proceed in an orderly manner. No more confrontation – let’s just hear it as it was!
Kingsmill: Well, if you want some idea of how powerful my gang was, let’s mention the five hundred men we could muster in less than two hours!
Interviewer: Sounds like an army!
Kingsmill: We let nothing stand in our way!
Interviewer: Not even the law?
Kingsmill: (Snorting) Not even the law! I mean, who in their right minds was going to take us lot on?
Interviewer: Er, the village of Goudhurst,I believe?
Sample Text 3
From Shipwrecks!
S.O.S.D. 1: OK. So what about that Marie Celeste?
S.O.S.D. 2: Indeed. What about that Marie Celeste? Nobody knows!
S.O.S.D. 3: There may have been survivors – but there was no sign of them when the sailing ship was found drifting in the Atlantic Ocean, 1872.
S.O.S.D. 4: Did they abandon ship? Were they attacked? Nobody will ever know what happened. It’s one of those Bermuda Triangle riddles that has no answer.
S.O.S.D. 5: And then we come to the Titanic, 1912! One of the great maritime disasters of all time!
