It's Pirate Week till Saturday at Independence Seaport Museum on Penn's Landing, just one part of the monthlong Philadelphia Seaport Festival, which ends Oct. 8. Sunday's onetime sail and battle was a thank-you for museum employees and their friends and families, and many embraced the fantasy.
Guests and crew on the Gazela dressed in eye patches and ragged vests, do-rags and feathered hats, and insisted, when it was over, that they had won. Truthfully, with all the booming and bravado, and with the other guns and pirates so far away, it was hard to tell.
But no matter. Gazela's 20 guests and 15-member crew reveled in the silliness. They shot extremely loud blanks from a cannon barely 15 inches long. They inhaled meatball sandwiches, strawberry pastries, and ginger ale. And they staged fights with plastic daggers and swords, yelling "Arrrrgh!" again and again, as 4-year-olds are fond of doing, too.
The miniguns were actually signal cannons, like the ones yacht clubs fire at sunset when the flag is lowered. But no such traditions prevailed Sunday.
"Nothing authentic going on here. It's just fun," acknowledged Chris Simmons, the Gazela's pirate captain and one of many Chrisses among the crew. In real life, he's a SEPTA trolley mechanic from Mayfair with a lifelong interest in history.
"I'm always more for experience than reading out of a book," he said.
There was some history in play, however.
Cubby Altobelli, an actor from Trenton, provided entertaining battle commentary for spectators at the museum in the persona of "Calico Jack" Rackam. Rackam was a real English pirate famous for designing the skull-and-crossbones flag Jolly Roger.
"I'm really getting into Jack. My costume's pretty awesome, don't you think?" Altobelli said.
