Story inspiration

Does this give you any ideas for a story? What would have happened if Blackbeard himself had visited Birmingham? Maybe he wanted to have words with Captain Johnson about what he’d written about him! Lots of other authors have also written about pirates and ghostly ghastly goings on at sea…. Celia Rees writes about two very different girls who run away to sea and become ‘pyrates’ in her award wining book, Pirates! There are also stories of pirates with a modern twist - Phillip Reeve writes about cities that become like pirate ships in his Mortal Engines books – marauding cities moving around the planet and battling for survival in a post-apocalyptic world.

If you prefer spooky sea stories then there are ghost ships like the Marie Celeste – found empty and drifting in the Atlantic in 1872 - no one has ever discovered what happened to the crew. Or there is the story of Dracula who made his way to England on board Russian ship, the Demeter, feeding off the blood of the sailors and leaving only the captain’s body tied to the ship’s helm by the time they arrive in Whitby.