Veronika Wild

I suspect that this is a statue of Errol Flynn, Tasmania's most famous 'pirate' having starred in no less than five pirate films - seen in the Hope and Anchor - Tasmania's oldest pub Argh me hearties! Perhaps it was passing the smuggler's pub in Sandy Bay today, but for some reason I am moved to write about pirates – no, not those who rip videos or those who attack pleasure craft or even oil rigs in the South China Sea, but the old fashioned swashbuckling kind. Though the Tasmanian ones may not have worn cocked hats or had parrots on their shoulders, they were nevertheless a big item in Old Hobart Town. As curator of the Australian Maritime Museum Dr Stephen Gapps wrote in his “ Pirate Tales ”  “If there was ever a scourge of piracy in Australian history, it was in Tasmania during the 1820s to 1850s, when Van Diemen’s Land was the repository of the largest number, and many of the most hardened and desperate, of convicts in the colonies. ‘Piratical seizure’ was ...