It doesn't take long for you to realise that Hastings is seriously wacky. Not the self-conscious slightly up-your-own-backside wackiness of Brighton, but the real downright eccentric version. Nothing typifies it more than the annual Pirates Day. A hint of what was in store occurred yesterday, with the first Hastings Sea Shanty Festival, when a series of characters in black costumes appeared on a stage on the Stade - the open space beside the new Jerwood Gallery - and sang folk songs about pulling and heaving, with appropriate choruses involving words like "me hearties" and "ho boys ho". It was all good fun and a lot of the audience - of all ages and classes - joined in the choruses with gusto.
But today was the real thing. A challenge had been set. In 2010 Hastings had set a world record for the number of "pirates" gathered in one place, when 6,166 people gathered on the beach dressed in pirate costume. To their horror, the people of Penzance robbed them of the record in the following year, by getting over 8,734 people together. So it was up to Hastings this year to regain the crown.
Conditions were stipulated by the Guinness Book of Records: a strict dress code was applied, and participants had to be corralled into a fenced-off pen on the beach. We were all counted in, and hung around on the beach with eyepatches, cutlasses etc. for around an hour. Someone said that there was to be an aerial photograph, Three members of the Hastings Bonfire Society (I kid you not) were messing about round a cannon pointed at the sea. After an hour the crowd began to break up, and we drifted off with the rest. The Old Town was thronged with pirates of all shapes and sizes - Johnny Depp meets Moll Flanders by the sea.
News filtered through in due course that there had been 14,000 pirates on the beach. Wackiness wins!
Antony Mair
22 July 2012
You can see more pirate-theme photos by clicking here.
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