La YagaEmma-Lindsay Squier's Pirate Stories

Jessica Amanda Salmonson

   

Emma-Lindsay Squier's niece Aileen Block told me in our correspondence: "Emma-Lindsay's fascination with Pirate tales may have begun when she learned that her great-great grandfather, Noble Squier, had been a Privateer during part of the Revolutionary war. She never mentioned it, that I recall, but she must have heard the story from her father, who would surely have heard it fromİhis own father or grandfather. A few years ago, I obtained copies of Noble Squier's pension papers. He had served during the Revolution in several capacities -- soldier, sailor, Indian scout. He had spent several months aboard the Privateering vessel Randolph, whose crew had captured 8 ships. One of the xeroxed papers I have lists his occupation as 'Privateer.' Just a surmise, but that's just the sort of thing that would catch her wonderful imagination & set it afire."

Certainly Emma-Lindsay loved pirate stories from girlhood on. During her earliest teen years (spent on a ranch in Port Orchard, Washington not even ten miles from my own present Edwardian home!) she was a rambunctious tomboy. Aileen Block in her as yet unpublished biography Emma-Lindsay's Scrapbook said of Emily & her playmates: "The youngsters invented the game of 'Pirates' which they pursued with all the noisy enthusiasm that had characterized their Indian adventures in Salem." In the nearby brickyard where Grampa Squier worked as caretaker the children found "wonderful props to facilitate the dramatizing of the fanciful stories that issued from Emily's active imagination. Scaffolds became riggings to climb, & shed-roofs high & low served as decks for their pirate vessels. Day after day the cavernous reaches of the brickyard rang with shouts of 'Avast!,' 'Belay!,' 'Surrender, or feel the cold steel of my cutlass in yer belly!'"

Many years later as an author she would quite naturally include historically-based woman pirates amidst the swashbuckling yarns she wrote under the overall heading "Pirates Plunder" for Good Housekeeping, chiefly the story of "La Yaga." Her pirate research also led to a series of California lectures on the subject.

Although she published her first pirate tale in 1927 (or perhaps earlier since I've not yet tracked down all of her uncollected tales), it was in 1932 that she began seriously researching such pirates as Morgan & Bluebeard while in New York & having access to a world-class research library. Then she set off for the Virgin Islands for first-hand knowledge of the landscapes of the stories she was preparing, sailing & tramping through the ancient haunts of bloodthirsty buccaneers throughout the West Indies.

Besides her swashbuckling short stories of piracy penned for Colliers & for Good Housekeeping, Emma-Lindsay also wrote of pirates in her travel articles such as "The City of Tragic Romance" for American Girl June 1937, framing Sir Francis Drake's cruel exploits in Santo Domingo as the piratical conquest it actually was; & "Things are Looking Up Again in Blackbeard's Home Town" in Every Week Mgazine April 1934. In her sundry public lectures her subject was frequently pirate history.

In 1936 one of her pirate tales was produced as the film The Dancing Pirate based on her novelette "Glorious Buccaneer." The film is available on VHS video. She wrote several other pirate yarns, all of them uncollected from magazine appearances. One reference book with an entry for Emma-Lindsay listed all her books including Pirates Plunder (1933) & added "etc" as though there were still other books than those listed; it only recently sunk in that this was in error, the list given was in fact complete plus something extra as Pirate Plunder was a phantom book; the only time I ever saw it listed for sale (very expensively) it was actually a bound set of Good Housekeeping pages! I know it is unlikely that these tales will ever be collected at this late date, but I can dream it will happen. I can even dream someone would let me be the editor!

Here is a bibliography of these tales. I still have to check several of her uncollected stories, & some others may turn out to be about pirates too. But here are the items thus far identified:

       

  1. "To Her Majesty" in Colliers July 30, 1927

  2. "Jewels of the Dead" in Colliers January 18, 1930

  3. "Glorious Buccaneer" in Colliers December 17, 1930

  4. "Bluebeard & the Spanish Witch" in Good Housekeeping December 1932

  5. "La Yaga; or, The Deep Wound" in Good Housekeeping April 1933

  6. "Lady of Panama" in Good Housekeeping July 1933

  7. "The Dragon Comes" in Good Housekeeping October 1933

  8. "The Laughing Pirate" in Good Housekeeping December 1933

  9. "Golden Chains" in Good Housekeeping March 1934

  10. "The Man Who Didn't Want to be a Pirate" in Good Housekeeping July 1934

  11. "Bluebeard vs. Blue Eyes" in Good Housekeeping March 1935.

To view some of James E. Allen's illustrations for
the "Pirate Plunder" series, together with
Aileen Block's synopses of the tales,
start Here! & follow the links in a circle.
See also his great-nephew's essay On James E. Allen, Illustrator.

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