Kent, I can't help with any information, but I must say, I WANT there to be some evidence of piracy in the Indian Ocean, preferably around the early 1870s, and I WANT to learn that ol' MT knew about it and used it (without giving his sources away). If all else fails, maybe we could make something up? Best, Ken On 2/26/2012 3:17 PM, R. Kent Rasmussen wrote: > In chapter 20 of HUCKLEBERRY FINN, the king addresses the Pokeville camp = > meeting: > > "He told them he was a pirate--been a pirate for thirty years, out in = > the Indian Ocean, and his crew was thinned out considerable, last = > spring, in a fight, and he was home now, to take out some fresh men, and = > thanks to goodness he'd been robbed last night, and put ashore off of a = > steamboat without a cent, and he was glad of it, it was the blessedest = > thing that ever happened to him, because he was a changed man now, and = > happy for the first time in his life; and poor as he was, he was going = > to start right off and work his way back to the Indian Ocean an fd put = > in the rest of his life trying to turn the pirates into the true path; = > for he could do it better than anybody else, being acquainted with all = > the pirate crews in that ocean; and though it would take him a long time = > to get there, without money, he would get there anyway ..."=20 > > I've just learned of a draft history paper on early piracy in the Indian = > Ocean that opens with this HF passage. The paper's author goes on to = > speculate why Mark Twain used Indian Ocean piracy as an example. The = > person who told me about this paper (which I haven't seen) is himself an = > authority on the Indian Ocean slave trade. He tells me there was little = > true piracy in that ocean by the time Mark Twain was writing HF. This = > makes the king's speech more interesting. Michael Patrick Hearn's = > ANNOTATED HUCKLEBERRY FINN (2d ed., 2001, p. 235, n.55) says "The Indian = > Ocean was infamous for its pirates in the early nineteenth century ..." = > but offers no source for this assertion. The revised UC Press edition of = > HF doesn't comment on the subject. I'm inclined to think that Mark Twain = > knew nothing about the existence or nonexistence of piracy in the Indian = > Ocean when he was writing but used that region simply because its = > exoticness as a Christian missionary field would have appealed to = > mid-19th-century Protestants. He could just as easily have used Borneo = > or Tierra del Fuego as examples. > > I'd like to hear from anyone who thinks there was more to Mark Twain's = > use of Indian Ocean piracy than meets the eye. > > Kent >