German Pirate Skull

[Bilgemunky]

Found an interesting article, and as German pirates aren't something we hear much about, this seemed doubly interesting.

Germany Says Hello to its Most Famous Pirate

[Trish_Cavendish]

Stoertebeker's one of my idols. He was privateer captain who raised his share of Hell in the North Sea around the 17th Century. Like most of his contemporaries, he eventually got captured and taken to trial. When he and his crew were condemned to death, Stoertebeker made a funky last request. He asked if he could be beheaded standing up while his crew stood in a line beside him. He proposed that all of the crewmen he could run past, after the hatchetman had done his job, be set free. Last wishes being serious business, the judge granted Stoertebeker’s.

The day of the execution, the crew was lined up and Stoertebeker was decapitated. But before his blood-spurting, headless body finally hit the dirt, he managed to stagger past fourteen of his men.

And if that wasn’t enough to make Stoertebeker a shoe-in for the Pirate Hall of Fame, he got his name ’cause to join his crew, guys had to chug a huge beaker of beer. Name ‘Stoertebeker’ translates from Kraut as "a beaker in a gulp."

[Nelson Cooke]

To us growing up he was like Ruth or Gehrig to them kids up North.