Criminal Dawn

By Marisa Petrich

“Shots of random cleavage!” The man in the brocade coat announces to the room, and stumbles forward with his digital camera. He comes to me, angles the camera downward, and takes another drink.

“This is going to end up on the internet, isn’t it?” I ask.

“Definitely,” says John Korba, who is sitting across from me.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this group, it’s that the path of least resistance is usually safest, and I roll my eyes and wait to be finished with my close-up. The digital shutter closes and the man walks away from me, swaying back and forth, his coined sash jingling behind him, to find a more willing participant.

The room is full of music and laughter and booze, and the people around me are dressed in tunics, feathered hats, and thigh-high boots. I know what you’re thinking, and no, it is not Halloween or a nautical fair or even the grand opening of a movie starring Johnny Depp. From one corner, and for no apparent reason, someone shouts “Whore!” All around me, the others raise their tankards and bellow it back, holding the ‘orrrr’ as long as possible before taking a swig.

Moments later the cleavage pirate, more formally known as Mem-Bar of the Broken Scabbard, emerges from the fray. “Look! Man cleavage!” he slurs gleefully.
The camera screen shows a velvet vest being pulled open, exposing a faceless person’s hairy chest. “Wow,” I tell him, not too impressed.

This is exactly the type of thing I have come to expect, sailing with the pirates of the Criminal Dawn.

“The average man will bristle if you say his father was dishonest, but he will
brag a little if he discovers his great-grandfather was a pirate.”
~Bernard Williams

Okay, so they’re not real pirates. That is, they don’t have a ship or scurvy or run around stealing things.

Well. They don’t have a ship or scurvy, anyway.

The crew of the Criminal Dawn is a group of what might be called pirate reenactors based out of Lakewood, Washington. They sail a fictional ship, create fictional characters for themselves, and drink lots of genuine rum. It’s like a Renaissance Fair—but for the bad kids.

I have stumbled into what is known as “eventing.” The term covers everything from, wait for it, live action Dungeons and Dragons games to medieval reenactments. Whether they are crashing an event held by the SCA (the Society for Creative Anachronism) or holding their own exclusively piratical weekend of debauchery, this is how the hundreds of “pirates” in the Pacific Northwest spend their summers—dressing up, camping, and singing lewd songs.

“Welcome to the fun side of dorkdom,” Korba, who works at an event site, tells me. He isn’t officially “on ship” yet. Right now he holds the status of stowaway, a prospective crewmember that’s spending time with the group. After seeing just about every possible group of eventors in action, he’s chosen to pursue a life on the high seas…er, so to speak.

Others came to a life of piracy after leaving, or being asked to leave, the SCA. Andrew Orrock, aka Parlan Stewart of the Criminal Dawn, was “drummed out” of the society after correcting a “pompous pontificator” at an event.

“A few things you should never do at an SCA event: Get horribly drunk, reprimand a ranking member of the kingdom, and be right,” he says.

There are plenty more like him, and the resentment toward the SCA runs deep amongst pirates. SCA events are lands where Period Nazis (yes, they’re actually called that) nitpick over every detail of participants’ “garb” and supplies for historical accuracy, and rules must be followed to the letter. Is that a lighter you’re using to start your fire? Not possible! Your intricately detailed bone buttons were made by machine? Sorry, try again.

This is not that world. The pirates are the event nerds’ “red-headed stepchildren,” the counterculture of the reenactment world. Historical accuracy is always second to fun, and the fewer regulations the better.

Again, I know what you’re thinking: why would a group of grown-ups spend so much time and money playing make-believe? Isn’t that weird? Why pirates, anyway? After all, the real ones aren’t so nice—but then, neither are mobsters, and that’s never stopped them from becoming the heroes of popular stories.

“It’s like going on vacation and being someone else, except you’re on vacation three weekends a month,” J.J. Payne, pirate name Alias of the Criminal Dawn, explains.

In this particular instance, the counterculture of the high seas has become the counterculture of the event world—and it makes perfect sense. Like in every highly-romanticized buccaneer story you’ve ever heard, these are the ones that simply wouldn’t play by the rules.

“…a merry life and a short one, that’s my motto.”
~Black Bart

The crew, or part of it, is meeting for a beer—not in garb this time. They are gathered around a long wooden table, talking about their days and mutual friends, sharing bites of food, sitting on each other’s laps.

On one end of the table John and Amarae (whose given name is Britney and pirate name is Dae’Iza—confused yet?) are slamming their fists down on forks and catapulting them across the restaurant. After hitting the wall and clattering to the floor, the forks are collected and the ammunition is reused.

I’m nervously waiting for a small child to get speared in the eye when a voice calls down the table, “Seriously, what is your childhood trauma? Did you not have toys as a kid?”

It’s Captain Kat (though some prefer to call her Kathy Christian), the leader of the Criminal Dawn, and the mother hen of the group. She’s just arrived from work, her plastic ID badge still around her neck.

“No. I’ve told you about my mom,” John responds, but the fork flinging does stop—for the moment.

Kat sits down and tosses a bag of makeup on the table. She no longer uses the supply, and the crew is left to divvy the spoils amongst themselves. Ankyl, who is known as Imitatia while impersonating a pirate wench, tests out a fire-engine red lipstick before sorting through the rest of the loot.

Ankyl is the crew’s bard, responsible for writing and singing songs featuring the crew, and two time winner of the Gypsy Days & Seadog Nights annual Siren contest. The competition is part concert and part beauty pageant, but to win you must successfully execute a massively treacherous act. In Ankyl’s case, this has been known to include luring an entire crew away from its ship, capturing its octopus masthead, and holding it for ransom.

He is also the only one at the table willing to own up to, er, being boarded at an event site. A certain saying claims if you can’t get laid at the SCA, you can’t get laid at all, and the pirates have adopted a similar policy. However, there appear to be a few SCAdian (and yes, that is a real term) limitations to the debauchery.

“He was historically accurate,” Ankyl assures us. “No buttons, no zippers, just one pocket…”

As one might expect, pirate events are an “anything goes” environment. Feel free to leave your social inhibitions at the gate.

“Just about the only sin among us is not being able to hold your liquor,” says crewmember Steele—and what a sin it is. The surest way to lose the respect of the crew is to throw up perfectly good booze.

Of course, the drunker you are when engaging in an act of pirate-y mischief, the more likely you are to become a living legend—at least, for the duration of the event you’re attending. Take, for example, Mem-Bar of the Broken Scabbard and Quartermaster of the Criminal Dawn. His real name is Dennis Darnell—but that’s about as everyday as he gets.

“Do I know you?” he once asked me on our second meeting, pointing at me after emerging from a crowd of fully garbed pirates. He’s the type who is so into the role, I have trouble picturing him out in the real world. On this occasion his full sleeves were trimmed in a small ruffle, and a red scarf hid his bald head. His ears are pierced, his teeth are crooked, and his slouchy black boots are creased and wrinkled from use. Eyeliner and a pencil-thin goatee complete the look.

I re-introduced myself, casually explaining we’d met before.

“Oh,” he replied, cocking his head to one side. “Was I sober?”

Honestly? Probably not. But then, Mem-Bar is rarely sober. He is frequently talked about, though—I’d heard at least a dozen epic stories (some of them in the form of warnings) about the man before I ever saw him.

“Everything he does is pirate flavored, whether he means it or not,” Stephan Bowman, aka Ziegler Aquavitae of the Vendetta, says. Bowman used to sail with the Criminal Dawn, and though he’s been with a few crews since, the Quartermaster is a pretty unforgettable character.

One mythic tale of Mem-Bar of the Broken Scabbard starts with a Toblero Tournament—think of checkers, but with shot glasses of beer. The objective is to drink your opponent’s alcohol, and cheating is encouraged. In fact, the official guidelines state that if you convince your fellow pirates something is a rule, it becomes one for the rest of the game.

A tournament involves a series five games, played with two beers per person. The first one to run dry loses. Mem-Bar, of course, was victorious.

“He cheated maybe 100 plus times,” Bowman tells me. But the story doesn’t end there. His next feat was winning a bare-chested knife fight (Exactly what it sounds like, but with padded “boffer” weapons), continued drinking, and managed to swindle a crew out of its mast ornament…and then switched it with another’s.

Still, the best was yet to come. After drinking all day, Mem-Bar was, as Bowman put it, “drunk out of his mind.” The fact that he was shouting and staggering about in what has become classic Mem-Bar fashion didn’t stop him from pulling off his grand finale—and no one who really knows him would expect it to.

That night he snuck aboard another crew’s ship and scaled a full-sized mast they had erected on the site, stealing the rival crew’s flag and all the pennants they had collected over the course of the event. Perhaps more miraculous is the fact that he made it back down the mast alive, where he hid the pennants from their rightful owners.

“How everyone didn’t hear him I’ll never know, because the man is loud,” Bowman concludes. He’s the stuff legends are made of. This happened years ago, and local crews are still telling the story.

This is a lifestyle that requires participants to let loose, to step away from convention, and most importantly, to laugh at themselves. Those with a rigid sense of morality or a disdain for mischief need not apply—chances are you’re what these old salts are trying to escape from.

“Even pirates, before they attack another ship, hoist a black flag.”
~Bela Kiraly

“Guests first,” Captain Kat calls to her crew as a line forms near the tables of food. Everyone is in full garb for the Criminal Dawn’s member activation event—a formal affair for the pirates. Three stowaways are being granted active crew status, and two old members are being promoted to officer. This brings the ranks to 19 active members, including six officers.

It’s not just the crew this time around, though. Members of Paisley Glenn, a Ren Fair group of non-pirates, and the pirate crew The Hazard, based out of Portland, have been invited as well. Slinky, a member of the Criminal Dawn, has brought her two daughters along. And then there’s me, a pirate anthropologist of sorts and the crew’s “favorite little voyeur.” The members of the Criminal Dawn remain seated as we make our way to the head of the line.

Few crewmembers need Kat’s reminder. Being hospitable to guests is an important part of what the Criminal Dawn is known for, and even if it weren’t the order would stand. It’s not a real ship and the titles may be made up, but the Captain and other officers have actual authority. It is, as Korba calls it, “pseudo pretend.”

“Here’s how ‘pseudo pretend’ it is,” Kat tells me. “Someone asked me if I have kids and I said yes. I have 14. Mem-Bar is my oldest, he’s 39…”

The entire crew acknowledges that the Captain is the only one who can get Mem-Bar to behave—at least, most of the time. This chain of command is part of the unofficial code of conduct that keeps the pirates in line.

It is also one of the features of the group that parallels the lives of real buccaneers during the golden age of piracy—roughly 1660 to 1730. Many crews were governed by rules of their own creation, known as articles. The Articles of Black Bart, for instance, stated that each man aboard was to have an equal share of food and drink, that desertion would be punished with death or marooning, and (my personal favorite) that lights below decks were to be out by eight o’clock each night—those that wanted to stay up late had to continue the party above decks.

The Criminal Dawn’s written rules include leaving weapons (real or replica) at home unless they are specifically allowed, not leaving the fire unattended, and most importantly, no fighting. Crewmembers are also asked to look out for “smalls,” the affectionate term for pirate kids that often accompany their parents to events.

“We’re not asking you to baby-sit,” the crew handbook states, “but if you see kids about to drink our liquor, fall in a river, or set themselves on fire, please help prevent this.”

Above all else the pirates are required to respect each other—and they do. Sure, they joke and tease, they pull pranks, make fun of each other, and sing songs that would make a sailor blush—

Hang on: Maybe not that last one.

—but there’s something to be said for any group that draws such a wide variety of people that actually all seem to get along.

There are Christians and Pagans, nuclear families and polyamorous groups, heavy drinkers, non-drinkers, history nuts, authors of fan fiction, and representatives from a slew of ethnic backgrounds, sexual preferences, and daytime professions. Yet they all keep coming back, dressing up, and enjoying each other’s company.

Event sites can be crazy places, it’s true, but the main idea behind them is that everyone has a good time. This requires a certain amount of structure. Don’t get me wrong: the rules are minimal and mainly pertain to keeping people alive and out of prison, but ultimately what appears to be chaos is (somewhat) managed.

Fortunately for the pirates of today, offenders are likely to be sentenced to monitoring the parking lot in the hot sun instead of being marooned or keelhauled. In the end, the purpose served is a good one: “You know you’re not going to get dragged off into the bushes,” says Sierra Ramirez, or Delphina de la Sangre, Helmsman of the Criminal Dawn. “Unless, you know, you want to be.”

“Now and then we had hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.”
—Mark Twain

Is this weird? Maybe. A bit childish? Probably. But at the end of the day we all have our little escapes. This one is just slightly more elaborate.

Okay, so it’s a lot more elaborate—but then, you have to have a little respect for a pretense so complete it involves fully-masted pirate ships set up on land.

Well. Maybe you don’t.

“There is an aspect of, ‘My life is kind of boring…but here I’m a pirate captain and half-naked women are making out all over the deck,” Amarae says.

For others, it’s just another form of amusement, or the place their friends happen to be. In the end, though, everyone agrees it’s a community for people that weren’t accepted elsewhere.

“We’re a pile of misfits,” Captain Kat says, adding that it’s nice to have a place where you too can be one of the cool kids. “A big girl like me? We don’t get to show off walking around the mall. It’s nice to be somewhere where you’re hot because you’ve got a smart mouth and you’re bold enough to show some skin.”

No matter how outsiders might judge them, they’ve created their own acceptance. In fact, they accept just about everyone.

It’s occurred to me that maybe it’s their experiences from the other side of the circle that make them so welcoming. As an outsider to the group, I found the pirates to be some of the most genuinely friendly, non-judgmental people I’ve ever met. Maybe they are weird. But there are worse things they could be.

Besides, as Ramirez puts it: “As far as nerdy things go…it’s kinda cool.”