Ahoy there matey! Claire Britton-Warren, founder
of the pirate reenactment organization Tales Of The Seven Seas, based primarily
in Northern California. Here she helms the tall ship Royaliste, which is
also pictured below. (Photo: Tales Of The Seven Seas)
"I have to thank Johnny Depp for making us cool."
As Claire Britton-Warren tells it, five years ago no one would take her crew
members, all decked out in pirate apparel, seriously. But shortly after
the first "Pirates Of The Caribbean" film was released in 2003, people viewed
her and her organization of pirate re-enactors in a vastly different light.
Mr. Depp played Captain Jack Sparrow in Gore Verbinski's smash-hit film based on
the Disney amusement park ride, and the rest, as they say, was history.
Tales Of The Seven Seas was born in 2002 in Northern California and to some
became an extension of the first "Pirates" film in a sense, although much, much
more than that.
"One of the things we wanted to do was to make it a
group that is always very welcoming to new people. We don't like to be
intimidating -- it's the kind of thing where there's a place for everybody,
whether you've done this kind of thing before or not. We keep it very
friendly, very family-oriented. We have a whole lot of fun! We do
all sorts of events like fairs, festivals. We do charitable events,
periodically . . . last year we worked with the Make-A-Wish foundation and
granted a pirate wish for a little boy. We also do a lot of other types of
things . . . some of us are into sailing, there are some of us that crewed with
a tall ship (the Royaliste) for two-and-a-half years, some of us have our own
sailboats . . . so we do all kinds of things." Ms. Britton-Warren speaks
with great passion and enthusiasm about what she does, and she absolutely loves
every minute of it. You can hear the passion and joy in her voice as she
describes the things that her organization does. By day, Britton-Warren is
a technical writer at Hitachi Data Systems, Inc. and has been working there for
several years. Her work colleagues have full knowledge about her "other"
life as a pirate and they embrace it, continually asking her questions about her
organization, whose members are regular joes and joannes themselves.
"Generally most of us have regular day jobs," laughs Britton-Warren. "Very
few are more seriously involved than that -- this is something we do as a labor
of love . . . we've all become a very tight-knit family."
The versatile organization was present in San Francisco back on March 19 for one
of several Disney Pirate Ultimate Fan Events being held across the country in at
least 20 American cities to kick off the extensive publicity campaign for
"Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End", the third film in the "Pirates"
franchise, which opens around the world beginning this Wednesday May 23 (the
U.S. will see the film open on May 25, with advance screenings on Thursday
night, May 24.) At least two dozen members of Tales Of The Seven Seas led
the ranks and file of those who had come to the special Sunday event decked out
as pirates in order to win prizes as the best-dressed pirate. Inside the
city's Metreon multiplex cinema, the company did some sword-fighting plays and
sung songs, played music and created merriment among the hundreds of "Pirates"
fans in attendance.
Aarrrrghh! Members of the pirate re-enactment
group Tales Of The Seven Seas, pictured here in March at the Pirate Ultimate Fan
Event, a Disney kick-off event for "Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End",
at the Metreon Multiplex in San Francisco. The group's founder Claire
Britton-Warren is at the right of the picture in the black dress, wielding a
sword. In both pictures is one of the Tales members as Captain Jack
Sparrow. (Photos: Omar P.L. Moore)
Left photo: The tall ship Royaliste as it sets sail on
the San Francisco Bay. The Golden Gate Bridge is in the distance.
Right photo: Dread Pyrate Gregory (aka Greg Medley) -- left of photo's center,
in beige jacket -- is an ordained minister by day. Here Medley performs an
actual wedding -- pirate style -- of the bride Sasha Govorova and groom Jim
Fitzpatrick. (Photos: Tales Of The Seven Seas)
Pirates were something that intrigued Claire
Britton-Warren, and after being in a gunfighter troupe several years ago, she
was very interested in revisiting similar terrain, but with a medieval twist:
" . . I had become very interested in the history of pirates, and one of the
things that really fascinated me about historical piracy was the contradictions.
Some of the things that you'll find there is that in one form they were a very
brutal society in a lot of ways. They were truly the terrorists of their
day. We [Tales Of The Seven Seas] kind of romanticized that to quite an
extent, but the people of prior centuries were terrified of pirates. And
on the one hand you had that aspect of it, but on the other hand in many ways
they [pirates] ran a very organized and surprisingly at times fair society
within their own crews. So you had this very strange contradiction between
a total lack of caring for human beings, and then on the other hand you had a
very close-knit and very organized society within their own crew in some cases.
Just as an example one of the things that has carried down from pirates to our
own society is health insurance. Pirates were actually the first society
that offered voluntary compensation for injury. So if you lost a hand or
an eye in battle, things like that, you were compensated with a certain amount
of money. That was picked up by the British Navy and it ended up evolving
into what we know as modern-day health insurance. So you have these funny
things like that -- they could vote for the punishment of people on the crew --
it was a very organized type of thing going on within the crew."
The love of, and fascination for pirate history gave Britton-Warren the impetus
to seek out an organization that engaged in pirate lore or re-enactments as
entertainment. Prior to the 2003 release of the initial "Pirates" film she
had scoured the Internet for re-enactment groups to partner with, but found none
at all in Northern California. "At that time, the only ones around were in
Southern California." After networking with a woman at the Gold Coast
Pirate Fair in Ojai, California, and getting encouragement from the woman to
form her own pirate re-enactment organization, she came to the realization that
accomplishing her goals would mean that she would indeed have to start the
organization herself, without any assistance. "[It] wasn't what I was
planning to do . . . ", Britton-Warren said.
But she did it.
In both costume and substance, Tales Of The Seven Seas
"[doesn't] require an historical accuracy, it's more along the lines of 'Pirates
Of The Caribbean', a little more fun . . . ", Britton-Warren said. Pirates
of centuries past would be virtually indistinguishable from the public at large,
says Britton-Warren, and she wanted to create a look that was instantly
recognizable to kids in particular. Tales was also born out of a desire to
work with charitable organizations and hire volunteers through partnerships with
other companies and charities at Tales events.
"Most of the operators are non-profit . . . and it was very important for me to
be able to work with non-profit groups like Make-A-Wish Foundation (which held
the World Premiere of the new "Pirates" film in Disneyland in Anaheim,
California on May 19) and some of the museums in the area, like the Children's
Discovery Museum. And so what I did was organize this as a "C" corporation
which essentially -- when people do things with us -- they are all as
volunteers. And so anything that we make when we are hired to do different
events things like that, what we earn from that goes back into the group and in
to pay taxes, purchase equipment and things like that. So everyone that
does this -- does this -- including me, doesn't get paid -- and we do it because
we love it. And what we earn just goes to pay the bills and buy some
really cool toys and equipment and that kind of thing. We're just doing
what we're doing."
Captain William, one of the "Wish Kids" that Tales Of
The Seven Seas met through the Make-A-Wish Foundation, seen here with a fellow
pirate on a treasure hunt. (Photo: Tales Of The Seven Seas)
Geoffrey Rush (and furry companion), Keira
Knightley and Johnny Depp in "Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End".
The Disney film opens around the world beginning on Wednesday, May 23.
Chow Yun-Fat is one of the new cast members in the third film, in which several
surprises are in store. Last year's second film, "Pirates Of The
Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" took in over $1 billion worldwide. (Photo:
Disney/Buena Vista)
"Oh my gosh, I could so easily make this as a full-time job! It just takes
up a huge amount of time, but you know what? -- it just flies by. I
love to do this. It's just something that is a real passion for me.
And my husband will tell you that it's an obsession, too! Sometimes
everyone has to be careful that I make enough time for family, for work and
things like that. Usually as soon as I'm home, I'm either on the phone, or
typing e-mails, or putting together a list of events that we have coming up,
organizing things, helping new people get started . . . it doesn't feel like
work, but boy, I put in a lot of hours! It would be hard to put an exact
number on that!"
Living out the life of a pirate, albeit in a more merry way than its ancient
predecessors, Tales Of The Seven Seas continues to do a diverse array of things,
including many maritime events. "We've been involved just recently with
martial arts sword-fighting classes, which was a lot of fun. We had a
large number of us that got involved with something called the Historic Maritime
Combat Association, which teaches boarding actions class, where they teach you
how pirates boarded ships, what they did when they got on board, and martial
arts techniques, which were employed by pirates onboard ships. And that
was real interesting. We've done sword choreography, performed in front of
groups. We have cannons . . . that are functional, with black powder . . .
sailing has just been phenomenal. There were so many times when you know
here I'd find myself -- you know all of a sudden you'd just kind of open your
eyes to walk around and go, 'my God, I'm standing at the helm of this incredible
tall ship. With the lives of all of these people around me quite literally
right there in my hands and getting to have, to do these cannon battles with
other ships and with re-enactors on land, and just doing these absolutely
incredible things that someday when I have grandchildren I can't wait to tell
them the stories. There's just been so many wonderful things that have
grown out of this that it's just been an awesome experience. It keeps
changing and evolving."
As far as the future for Tales Of The Seven Seas goes,
Claire Britton-Warren says that what she will "take every opportunity that seems
like a good one for us, and follow them out and just like the pirates did, see
where the winds carry us."
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