I have built, designed and hosted many programs with a pirate theme. The annual battle, barbeque and treasure hunt being the most developed version of this form of controlled mayhem. These featured tennis ball cannon and ships on wheels. The game involved recovering buried treasure, deciphering clues, compleating tasks and trying to stay alive.
The cannon also have been in parades pushed by people dressed as pirates of course and ridden by smaller versions of the same. I was contracted to build a treasure hunt for a hundred fourth graders, at least that’s what I remember it felt like… and the cannon have done duty as arcade games for our school’s fundraiser.
The Pirates and Literacy is still in the conceptual stage but may be the first full scale SOD idea, one which predates groundbreaking on the shop. Basically it is going to be program which uses the exciting historical aspects of maritime history together with props, games and music from the golden age of piracy, as a hook, (sorry), to get young and old people reading. The program would look like a portable museum and would come to schools for a day. Classes supervised by parent aids would tour the displays, see brief presentations and students could earn a plastic jewel at several places upon completion of tasks relating to history, literacy or maritime technology. A good example of this would be the decoding of a hoist of signal flags. Prior to coming to the school the program would provide an age and reading level graded reading list and the program would be a reward for completing a reading goal reached within the school. There is an immense wealth of material for all ages relating to the age of sail. From Danas Two Years before the Mast to Stevenson’s Treasure Island. From the Horatio Horn blower series to Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander Series. There is nonfiction just as compelling in the accounts of shipwrecks, treasure hunters and maritime battles including the accounts of real pirates. (Did you know that the most powerful pirate in all of history was a woman? Cheng e Sau (sp) controlled the china seas with a fleet of over two thousand ships.) The idea came from other successful commercial programs which educate through mobile living history programs. I have been building pirate themed treasure hunts for years and I have an enormous collection of maritime props from barrels to belaying pins.