The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists
Author: Gideon Defoe
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
ISBN10: 1-4088-2495-7
ISBN13: 978-1-4088-2495-5
Let’s be frank: this book would not be reviewed if it were not for the April 2012 release in America of the Aardman Animations stop-motion movie The Pirates! Band of Misfits. This is a retitling for Americans of the British release The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists, which is an adaptation of the first novel (2004) in a long-running series by Gideon Defoe that presumably the American Distributors thought that American audiences wouldn’t have heard of. Actually, there is an American edition (Pantheon, October 2004), but the movie is doing nothing to promote the series in either country. (Or Canada. Or Scotland.) So read about it here.
The publicity compares The Pirates! novels favorably with Monty Python, Douglas Adams, Blackadder, and other bits of British humour [sic.] that flagrantly promote being funny over being historically accurate. Therefore the movie is set in 1837 but has a Pirate King whose costume is a parody of Elvis Presley’s, a pirate’s parrot that is really a dodo (extinct since the 1670s), and mermaids which have been extinct since … well, whenever. And “Aarrr, matey!” pirates were long-gone by 1837, for that matter. The novel has Post-It notes, the Elephant Man, Coco-Pops, a mysterious reference to a metal lady (a robot?), and so on.
The novel opens with the Pirate Captain and his first mate, the pirate with the scarf, talking about their recent Adventure with Cowboys. This is a sly reference to make the reader feel frustrated because there is no “In an Adventure with Cowboys”. “In an Adventure with Moby Dick”, yes. With Communists (Karl Marx has a very piratical beard), with Napoleon, with the Romantics (the pirates meet Lord Byron, Percy Shelly, and Mary Wollstonecraft). But no Cowboys. Yet.
The novel and the movie are quite different, but the humour [sic. again] is very similar. The Pirate Captain and his inept, ham-loving crew (the pirate with gout, the albino pirate, the pirate dressed in green, the pirate with a nut allergy, etc.), sailing the seas for adventure and booty, are tricked by their old enemy Black Bellamy into thinking that Charles Darwin’s HMS Beagle is a Bank of England ship overflowing with gold. Darwin explains to the disappointed pirates that he has been successfully training and educating a monkey, Mr. Bobo, to dress up like a gentleman and become a refined Man-panzee (although Mr. Bobo cannot speak except through an amazingly comprehensive set of flash cards). Unfortunately, Darwin’s revolutionary scientific theories have drawn the ire of the Bishop of Oxford, not because of any religious controversy but because the Bishop has just become the largest shareholder in P. T. Barnum’s Circus of Freaks, and the Bishop fears that Mr. Bobo will upstage Barnum’s star freak, the Elephant Man. The Bishop has denounced Darwin for blasphemy, and he has just kidnapped Darwin’s brother Erasmus to force Darwin to abandon his research. The Pirate Captain is aghast at such villainy, and pledges to help Darwin to rescue his brother even if this means sailing to London, which has a policy of hanging pirates in irons at Execution Dock.
The pirates have a fascinating time sightseeing in London and visiting the Natural History Museum disguised as scientists. London is plastered with posters for P. T. Barnum’s (in association with the Bishop of Oxford) Circus of Freaks, with five free Ladies’ Nights a week.
“‘I wonder if that foreshadows anything sinister?’ said the Pirate Captain.
‘We shouldn’t leap to conclusions, just because the unspeakable Bishop is our enemy,’ said Darwin reasonably. ‘After all, it may be that he feels sorry for ladies, and thinks they could do with some free entertainment.’
‘Why would he feel sorry for ladies?’ asked the albino pirate.
‘Well, with so many of them going missing lately, and then being found washed up in the River Thames, all shriveled and lifeless.’” (pgs. 84-85).
The Pirate Captain announces a lecture featuring Darwin and Mr. Bobo at the Museum, to draw the Bishop out, while the pirate with the scarf in disguise is assigned to investigate the very popular Circus of Freaks, where he meets Jennifer, who is looking for her sister who disappeared while visiting the Circus. This leads to a dramatic climax in which the Pirate Captain and the evil Bishop hunt each other throughout the Natural History Museum, while the pirate with the scarf, Jennifer, and Erasmus Darwin are trapped in a gigantic death machine in the Circus of Freaks. You can guess who wins by the fact that there are four sequels (to date). Jennifer becomes a regular member of the pirates.
The movie features Charles Darwin and Mr. Bobo (as Darwin’s man-panzee-servant), and the pirates disguised as scientists at the Natural History Museum. It substitutes Queen Victoria for the Bishop of Oxford as the villain, adds the Pirate Captain’s pet dodo-parrot, eliminates the Circus of Freaks, and invents a new subplot with the Pirate Captain competing with Black Bellamy and Cutlass Liz (from The Pirates! In an Adventure with Moby Dick) for the Pirate of the Year Award. It is very funny, and different enough from the novel that readers/viewers of one can enjoy the other without knowing how it will turn out. And while there is only one movie, there are four more novels! Gideon Defoe has an admirable talent for writing humor [no sic.] that is silly but genuinely funny; witty and nonsensical at the same time; outrageously anachronistic in its main text but solemnly accurate in its footnotes. Please, use the movie to promote the novels!
