Armed with my new waistcoat (‘clothes maketh the man’) I recently visited Highfield Prep school where I met with a crew of sea rovers and scurvy scallywags, seasoned with a smattering of privateers and buccaneers. I spent the day telling them all about my adventures at sea, and showing them all sorts of artifacts that pirates like to use.

I told them some scary stories about Blackbeard, let them all study a pile of pieces of eight, and demonstrated more weapons than, frankly, a man should really attempt to carry – a grenado, musket, pistols, cutlass, boarding axe, roundshot, chainshot, etc.

As so often happens, it turned out that one of the petty pirates was a bold sort of lad, and willing to test my mettle in the deadly business of a pistol duel. Well, what could I do? I could hardly stay captain if I proved so cowardly as to refuse! Thus it was I showed the lad in question what he needed to do (which I think was very kind of me considering the circumstances) …

And then the duel commenced!

Luckily the two of us proved to be appalling shots and we both missed. Glad to be alive we decided to be friends again and put our differences behind us.

All in all we had a lovely day, and only the other day I received a bundle of letters thanking me for visiting and telling me what their favourite parts of the day were.

Since then I have managed to get even more things for my pirate character, including black leather belt and baldrick (it’s the details that count), and I have even sewed up a brand new shirt too. I reckon soon I’ll be the fanciest pirate this side of New Providence.

If you want to know more about Captain Burwash, click here.