Buccaneers and Barbecues

Hello,

With the fourth of July behind us and the sun shining in the sky here it seems like the right time to discuss two more words the sea gave us – buccaneers and barbecues – but first a quick side note on spelling. There is debate online about the correct spelling of barbecue. Does it end with cue or que? I’ve always used the que, because of the abbreviation BBQ.

Grammar.com says “Barbecue is the traditional and correct spelling, whereas barbeque is a confusion created by BBQ”. The dictionaries are not quite so adamant. Merriam-Webster and the Oxford English Dictionary give barbecue as the primary spelling and add barbeque as a variant. This, to me at least, says that barbeque isn’t incorrect or a mistake, simply a variation which is also acceptable (although the spellcheck on my blog post doesn’t like it!). Perhaps the simplest solution is to borrow from our Australian friends and use barbie.

Ahoy there, buccaneers – got any barbecue?

But who was a buccaneer and how were they linked to barbecues? Caribbean buccaneers were privateers in the 1700s and 1800s. A privateer was a legal pirate. They carried letters of marque entitling them to attack and capture ships of enemy forces. They weren’t the official navy but their targets were, or were meant to be, the enemies of their patron country. Most major European nations employed privateers during the Age of Sail.

Employing privateers could be a risky business. The countries ran the risk of the privateers being bought by the highest bidder or simply doing as they wished once out of sight of the commissioning country. Did that happen? Yes, many times.

Equally, letters of marque weren’t always honoured by the issuing nation. Captain Kidd had letters of marque and they hanged him as a pirate anyway.

As for the word buccaneer, it has an unexpected link to barbecues and jerky. Caribbean locals on Tortuga and Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic) dried meat on a frame called a bocan over a low fire. When the Spanish arrived in the area they loved the idea but called it a barbacoa, from which we get barbecue. The meat produced by this method they called charque, and we now call jerky.

Sailors who adopted the bocan method of preserving meat for their ships became known as buccaneers.

Love nautical words? Read all about them!

Note: Today’s blog is largely drawn from my book “Words The Sea Gave Us” and is copyright Grace Tierney (2020).

Until next time happy reading, writing, and barbecuing / barbequing,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

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