Photo of the Day
Marooned
Saturday 19 September 2026
It's International Talk Like a Pirate Day.
A detail of Howard Pyle's 1909 painting Marooned: a lone pirate abandoned on a sandbar, with nothing but his hat and a stretch of empty sea. Pyle's illustrations did more than any historian to fix the image of the pirate in the public mind.
Fun facts
- Marooning, leaving a man on a deserted shore with little or nothing, was a real pirate punishment for breaking the crew's rules. source ↗
- Pyle invented much of the pirate look we recognise today, including the bandanas, sashes and earrings, which later films copied. source ↗
- His teaching gave rise to what became known as the Brandywine School of illustration; his students included N. C. Wyeth and Maxfield Parrish. source ↗
- Talk Like a Pirate Day started as a joke between two friends in Oregon in 1995 and went worldwide after a newspaper column in 2002. source ↗
- Image
- Howard Pyle · Delaware Art Museum
- Licence
- Public domain
- Source
- Wikimedia Commons