By Frampton Jones

You may have noticed over the last three years, the new tradition of ‘Smell like a Pirate’ day. Started by a number of younger folk from the Jones clan, the initial aim was to celebrate our shared piratical history. None of us has admitted to being a practical pirate for several generations now, so it’s all been rather silly and harmless.

This year brought us Captain Samuel Roberts, an all round splendid fellow, and experienced privateer. He was inevitably attractive to young Jones cousins wishing to celebrate their piratical history, and so it was that this year’s Smell like a Pirate day involved boats, for the first time. It was, I have been told, intended to be a colourful, amusing sort of a day with fun for all the family and all the usual social opportunities to contract a nasty dose of food poisoning.

No one has come forward to take responsibility for deciding to use round cheeses as substitute cannon balls. No one has admitted to supplying the cheese, or the cannon, and no one has admitted to being in the boat that fired these unholy projectiles.

What we can say with confidence is that Captain Samuel Roberts was in the boat struck by cheeses, and that he was thrown into the water. There, topped with a charming patina of cheese, he proved a tasty snack for a passing sea creature. Surviving members of the Smell like a Pirate project returned to the shore, shamefaced and mournful in about equal proportion.

This makes Samuel the first person to die in a pirate-related incident off Hopeless, Maine, in living memory. On the whole, I do not think it was what he would have wanted.