The Tale of Sober Joe: The Pirate Who Didn’t Drink

Joe looked hopelessly at the ship, sailing off towards a shimmering horizon. It was him and the sand now. And the palm trees.

He knew he would open the chest; it was just a matter of when. In the end it took him less than 24 hours to dig up the old trunk and prize back its wooden hinges to reveal the shimmering gold inside.

Joe hadn’t always been sober. In his youth he was partial to a goblet of wine or a pitcher of ale. Sometimes many. Occasionally too many. When he first started work on ships he drank with the rest of the crew, just like any other sailor.

When he became a pirate a year and a half later, he drank like a pirate. Loot all day, drink all night; that was the pirate motto. He joined an infamously rowdy and barbaric ship called The Aargh, on which the crew lived by the pirate motto as if it were life and death.

But it was one binge too many for Joe, and after a particularly heavy week of looting and drinking he realised waking up each and every day with a hangover that made him want to jump off the top deck into the shark-infested waters below just wasn’t for him.

“I am done,” he said to himself whilst half-heartedly cleaning his sword. “Not just till this hangover clears, for good.”

“Who you talkin’ to?” It was Cut-throat Chris, his bunkmate.

“Err…no-one?” said Joe. “Just some…ghosts?”

Cut-throat Chris nodded thoughtfully whilst swilling from his tankard. “I fuckin’ hate them ghosts,” he said, before quickly leaving the room.

****

The news that Joe had become Sober Joe overnight didn’t go down well with the crew, but now clear-headed he had come up with a cunning explanation: “It’s true,” he said, “I will no longer be drinking any of The Aargh’s finest grog. But this just means there’s extra booze for everyone!” This received a hearty, somewhat belligerent round of applause. They were on board.

It’s only when you stop the daily drinking ritual that you realise how disgusting pirates really are… Sober Joe wrote in his diary in his hammock one night. I wonder how history will remember us? he continued, the fun, carefree seamen of which my family thinks I am vital team member? Or the violent, degenerate thieves we really are? If it wasn’t for the rampant disease and feudal barbarity back in England I would return and tend some sheep and re-join the church choir, but alas, I guess I’m now in too deep with these savages on The Aargh.

It was at this point Sober Joe was roused by a particularly brutal-sounding disturbance on deck.

This, it soon turned out, wasn’t just your everyday pirate fight; this was a proper scrap, an out-and-out brawl, an unhinged fracas the likes of which they probably wove tapestries about back home. Swords were out, blood was flying, the deck was strewn with pirate-paraphernalia (silver chains, mismatched tunics and assorted parrot feathers, to name a few). Joe took one look at the chaos on deck and ducked back towards the safety of his hammock.

He was blocked by One-Armed Nigel. “Sober Joe…” he said, slurring his words profusely. “We meet at last…”

“What? You drunk moron…” Sober Joe replied, “…we spoke this morning during first watch.” One-Armed Nigel scratched his beard. “And I think even again just before dinner…”

One-Armed Nigel looked even more confused than usual, and often when pirates are confused, they resort to violence. After a long pause where he was clearly weighing up the appropriate level of retaliation to the verbal mocking, he took a giant swing at Sober Joe. It may have felled a more legless pirate, but not Sober Joe, who effortlessly swayed to one side before pushing One-Armed Nigel to the deck. The inebriated pirate didn’t respond well to this and quickly drew his sword, stumbling to his feet and shakily regaining his balance. (Editor’s note: Sober Joe wanted it pointed out here that One-Armed Nigel didn’t actually have just one arm: He gained the moniker because of his legendary reputation for beating any opponent who dare challenge him with one arm tied behind his back).

Everyone had now stopped fighting and had circled the duelling pair. “Kill him One-Arm!” someone shouted. “Kill him and then force feed him some ale!” another added. “Nig-el! Nig-el! Nig-el! Nig-el!” the rest of the mob roared.

Sober Joe looked on through clear eyes and with his now-sharp mind he realised that he could neutralise One-Armed Nigel in about three seconds and probably kill him in five; but decided to draw it out for the crowd. A minute later and he had his opponent hog-tied in a piece of rope that was handily lying around on deck.

The crowd was stunned into silence. Sober Joe had gone from weird sober guy to ship legend in less than 60 seconds.

****

This new-found status didn’t go unnoticed. A week later the captain called him to his office. The door was opened by Tiny Terry (a burly man named Simon) the first-mate, and Sober Joe walked inside.

“Sober Joe,” the captain said, holding out an open bottle of wine. “Oh right, of course…” he said, withdrawing the bottle and taking a big swig of it before sitting down.

The captain was determined — as was the fashion at the time — to have a large bushy beard and to go down in pirating legend because of it. But for some reason the captain just couldn’t grow proper facial hair, so no matter how hard he tried it always came out patchy. The crew called him Captain Scragglebeard. Not to his face though of course, because Captain Scragglebeard was a mean bastard, a nasty, violent drunk and not someone you would want to piss off whilst trapped on a boat many thousands of miles from the nearest spit of land.

“I think it’s time,” the captain continued, “for a promotion.”

Sober Joe was not expecting this. “A promotion? Me?” he said.

“Yes you. I want to promote you from… what position is he now?” Captain Scragglebeard asked, looking at Tiny Terry.

His first-mate shuffled awkwardly. “Well, er, captain, you know we don’t really have ‘positions’…” Tiny Terry said. The only real hierarchy that Sober Joe had thus far noticed on the ship was: The captain at the top of the totem pole; his first mate below him; the chef — an unconventionally handsome Frenchman who everyone called Pierre, but Sober Joe knew to actually be called Gary (English mother) — who obviously no-one wanted to aggravate or annoy and was treated like a demi-god; and then the guy who sat in the crow’s nest with a telescope looking for boats to pillage and land to dodge whilst generally avoiding the mayhem down on deck. He was both physically and metaphorically untouchable and seemed extremely important to the general safety and well-being of the ship.

After that there was just the rest of the crew, who did everything else that needed doing. Sometimes there were 30 men; other times 50, depending on how many had been killed in a raid on another boat, how many had been taken hostage and press-ganged into work from another ship, how many had been slain by other shipmates on a regular weeknight, or how many had been thrown overboard by the captain during one of his many hangover-induced rages.

“Right, right,” said the captain, stroking his pathetic excuse for a beard. “Okay, well, what about…second mate?” he said, as if it was a ground-breaking piece of ingenuity. “You can help Tiny Terry do…well, whatever it is that you do Tiny Terry.”

Tiny Terry nodded his approval before looking to Sober Joe, but the visitor had been distracted by the interior of the captain’s cabin. It was the first time Sober Joe had ever been inside Captain Scragglebeard’s lodgings, and he couldn’t stop staring at the map on the wall. “What are you looking at?” the captain barked, still clutching his wine.

“Well, sir,” Sober Joe said, “what exactly is on that map?”

The captain strode over and pulled the map down off the wall with a clumsy flourish. “This, my sober second mate, is the greatest treasure ever known to pirates. The treasure to trump all treasures.”

Sober Joe opened his mouth to speak, but Captain Scragglebeard wasn’t done: “Legend has it that the infamous Arctic pirate ship the Shivery Timbers tried to sail into warmer waters; but ran aground off one of the Caribbean coasts. They buried the treasure to avoid it being stolen as they rebuilt their boat, but they all mysteriously died before it sailed again.” The captain clutched the map in his free hand, staring at it wistfully. “Some doubt it will ever be found.”

“Erm, captain…” Sober Joe said after waiting a while to check the speech was indeed now finished, “you do know that the map is…well…it’s upside down, sir.”

Captain Scragglebeard looked at Sober Joe with a certain menace in his eyes, and in that instant Sober Joe was convinced the captain did indeed know the map was upside down and would make him walk the plank immediately for such a statement.

But a long moment later the captain put his wine down on the table and slowly rotated the map 180 degrees. “By Jonah, you’re right boy! You’re bloody right!”

He rushed out of his office and onto deck, where the day’s drinking and gambling and fighting was well under way. “FULL STEAM AHEAD!” the captain roared.

“Captain…” Tiny Terry whispered in his ear, “…this, er, isn’t a steam ship.”

Captain Scragglebeard looked at him through his eye (he wore an eye-patch, even though he had two perfectly working eyes, he just wanted to look cool and tough. Mainly cool).

“In fact, steam ships won’t be invented for about 150 years…” Tiny Terry continued, before eventually sensing the captain wasn’t in the mood for cold hard facts and quietly sidled off into the melee.

****

Three days later they spotted land; a day after that they found the treasure, deep in the jungle. One of the crew exclaimed that it was “exactly where you’d expect pirate treasure to be hidden” and that it was in fact “so obvious that it was a wonder the captain hadn’t found it many years ago.” Fortunately the captain was too busy plotting what to do with his new-found horde to appropriately punish the comment.

The entire crew hoisted me onto their shoulders Sober Joe wrote in his diary and Captain Scragglebeard said I should be the one to open the chest. It was certainly the pinnacle of my pirating career to date. All the crew have been debating about how to spend their share of the loot — Gold-Toothed Tim said he’s going to buy a lifetime supply of rum. Silver-Toothed Steve boasted he was going to buy an island — before everyone pointed out that we wouldn’t have to buy an island…we could just go and take one by force, like we usually do. After that, Silver-Toothed Steve said he too would also buy a lifetime supply of rum.

Me? Well, I think I’ll probably invest mine when I get back to the UK. Open an ISA, usual stuff for a sensible pirate with an improbable amount of stolen gold.

****

In a surprising turn of events, a week after the treasure was hauled back onto the ship, Captain Scragglebeard announced he was retiring.

“Time has come,” the captain said before the start of the seventh celebratory banquet in a row, “for me to settle on a Caribbean island and watch the sun set every day with a rum and coke. Or a rum cocktail. Or maybe just a bottle of rum, depending on the mood.”

The crew were in absolute uproar at this announcement. As you may have guessed, the changing of captains onboard a pirate ship wasn’t exactly a straightforward process, and the fact that Captain Scragglebeard had managed seven years in the job was frankly a miracle. Not many pirates choose when they get to retire, particularly when you have both the job everyone wants, and the power to hand down daily chores and punishments arbitrarily and malevolently with absolutely no repercussions.

Many minutes later once the hubbub had died down, the captain could continue his oration: “Now I know each and every one of you feels they could and probably should be captain…” *More uproar at this juncture* “…but the truth is there is only one pirate for the job.”

Captain Scragglebeard paused here for effect, and for the first time in potentially the history of The Aargh, every single sailor was silent. The captain continued: “Yes, it’s the feller of foes, the hunter of hidden treasure, the least sozzled sailor to ever grace the seven seas, your new chieftain: Captain Sober Joe!” The boat erupted into cheers louder than had ever been heard aboard the vessel.

After Captain Scragglebeard’s fortnightly retirement party — which involved robbing no less than five ships and seizing at least half a dozen islands — Captain Sober Joe took the reins. He thought he would make a very good captain, particularly without the prohibitive restraints of a daily hangover. He vowed to make some changes — a stricter watch schedule to avoid the weekly near-misses with outcrops of land and the monthly skirmishes with smaller but no-less ambitious pirate ships. There would be no more aimlessly making people walk the plank; and the new skipper even tried to put an end to the incessant and inevitable fighting and unrest between the crew when the day’s alcohol had been consumed.

The trouble for Captain Sober Joe was the simple fact that pirates needed action. A life at sea was pretty dull, it turned out, if you weren’t plundering or pillaging; marauding or looting.

“We haven’t ransacked another ship in weeks!” Tiny Terry said to Captain Sober Joe over their morning coffee and pastry in the captain’s cabin. “The crew are restless. They’re itching for some malice.”

Captain Sober Joe sipped his coffee thoughtfully. “They weren’t happy with you trying to barter with that village for supplies,” continued Tiny Terry. “They couldn’t understand why we didn’t just take the fish and all their ale…”

Captain Sober Joe agreed, something did need to be done. He decided it was time to set a course for Africa to try their luck there. But rounding the Cape of Good Hope was a brutal week at sea, with at least a dozen of the crew washed out into the stormy ocean. By the time they’d repaired the ship and forced a handful of villagers on board to make up the numbers, the crew had had enough.

“A mutiny?” said Captain Sober Joe as two of his men tied him up. “How cliché. I bet you’re going to desert me on a faraway island now too?”

“Hey! That’s not a bad plan…” the gang tasked with incarcerating the captain agreed. “We’ll tell the new captain your idea.”

This is absolutely typical, I tell you diary, absolutely typical behaviour of pirates. It is for this very reason that we have garnered such a terrible reputation both on water and on land. There is no respect, no code, nothing to these sea bandits, these ocean-going gangsters. It is every man for themselves, and after a week’s inaction and a belly full of grog even the meekest of sailor plots vengeful, merciless action on their fellow seamen. No, their captain, nonetheless! I am sure with my superior functioning brain I will find a way out of this jail cell and will have the reprobates clapped in irons in no time.

But it did not turn out to be so for Captain Sober Joe, and 24 hours later he was being rowed ashore by four men who had just recently been under his command. His captain’s hat had been snatched off his head, and as he looked back at The Aargh he saw it perched on the balding scalp of Silver-Toothed Steve.

“Seriously? That guy?” Sober Joe said to the men rowing him towards the beach. “He is an idiot! I mean, you’re all absolute morons…but Silver-Tooth is a genuine, out-and-out imbecile.”

None of the crew replied.

“I’m serious,” continued Sober Joe. “You’ll either be shipwrecked or shark-food within a month.”

Half an hour later and there he was, ex-Captain Sober Joe, watching hopelessly at his ship, sailing off towards a shimmering horizon. It was him and the sand now. And the palm trees.

And the chest with which he had been left. He knew what was inside and vowed never to open its wooden lid. In fact, he was so sure he’d never do it he had buried the chest in the warm sand. He had even contemplated drawing at X on the top of the hole once he’d filled it in, but decided that was too “piratey”.

Three hours later he realised he was going to have to open the box, and before the end of his first night on the desert island he was clawing at the sand, wishing he’d drawn that X after all.

Once he’d found the spot and dug up the chest it didn’t take him long to prize open the rusty hinges to reveal the golden treasure within.

Rum.

Lots of rum.

A lifetime’s supply, he guessed.

But how long would that lifetime be? There was nothing else here: No food, no drinking water, no hope. How long could he survive on just rum? he wondered to himself.

It turns out the answer was 146 hours. Six days and two hours. He’d got through 41 bottles of rum. What killed Joe would never be known. Starvation? Alcohol poisoning? Heatstroke? Dehydration? The last entry in Joe’s diary was just two words, in an almost illegible scrawl: Fucking pirates.

He was eventually found by a merchant ship and buried off the coast of Madagascar. Do NOT bury me in a pirate cemetery! Joe had written in his penultimate diary entry. I am NOT a pirate. His grave can still be found in a small pirate cemetery on the tiny island of Ile Saint Marie. (The merchant crew decided on his fate after reading the caption on the inside of the book: Sober Joe’s Pirate Adventures).

In the graveyard the inscription on his headstone reads: Here lies Sober Joe, who died doing what he didn’t love: drinking rum.

Editor’s addendum: Back on The Aargh, Sober Joe’s prediction that Captain Silver-Tooth’s reign would only last a month proved to be wildly inaccurate. The new skipper streamlined the ship, tossing 25 people overboard in his first 48 hours in charge, and under a strict no-drinking-before-fifth-bell policy The Aargh became the most efficient, dangerous ship in the Indian Ocean. For five years they roamed the seas plundering and pillaging, looting and marauding with deadly competence, until Captain Silver-Tooth caught wind of an investment opportunity in Singapore, where he sailed his ship, handed it over to Pierre (the first ever reported chef-captain in pirating history) and retired to a fishing village. There he spent most of his time writing children’s stories about benevolent pirates.

Some say The Aargh is still sailing to this day, almost certainly under a different, actual proper ship name.