A Brief History of Pirate Party, By a Landlord Who Has Been To Most of Them

Nick Mason

He/Him

Contributor

10/6/24

Each year in the weeks approaching Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples Day there is excitement, hand wringing, planning, frustration and confusion about the Pirate Party and what it is and why it has become what it has…….which is the signature party “event” of school year at Plymouth State, displacing the previous generation’s Spring Fling for the title.

This essay is to give people (students, Plymouth residents, casual observers, and whoever else cares to read) some context and history and fill in gaps in their knowledge. I don’t claim that this is authoritative or comprehensive in any way, just what I have observed over the years as both a college town landlord and resident of the Plymouth community.

I should point out something obvious before going further. Columbus Day Weekend traditionally marks the halfway point of the fall semester, and as such has ALWAYS been a time when students are looking to blow off some steam and party (at all schools, not just PSU).

2011 -first exposure 

In the fall of 2011 I was spending far more time at our North River St property than others because the neighborhood had suffered a massive flood in late August in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene. 

As I was riding my bike on North River St one weekend, I noticed that there was a “day drinking” style party going on in the parking lot at 12 North River St: Mostly guys, and about 1/2 to 2/3rds of them seemed to be dressed as pirates. Aside from the pirate costumes, there was nothing unusual about this. In those days (before AllWell North and public beach access on the Pemi) North River Street was a true dead end, and had about 5 more houses and a few more trailers than it does these days.  As I rode by on my way back, some of my tenants from across town flagged me down from the party. We chatted a bit and I asked them what was going on.

At this point one of their (very drunk) friends stepped up to give me the lowdown. I don’t remember his exact words but let’s just say the gist was this party (he claimed they had been having it for a few years at this point) was a way of dismantling the “Columbus discovered America” narrative that most American kids had grown up with for generations…that if we were going to celebrate one explorer/sailor’s raping and pillaging exploits, that we should expose him for what he truly was, a pirate. Some might call that a “woke hot take”…and they’d probably be right. But the reality is that at PSU there is a large part of the student body that doesn’t need an excuse or a theme or an ideological position to throw a party. I hung out for 3 minutes and then rode away, but I made a mental bookmark to see if this really was a thing.

2014- rising tide of social media influence 

Pirate Party did continue to be held every year on the day before Columbus Day, and continued to be located at 12 North River St, a property owned by Holderness local Ernie Currier (RIP) at the time.

2014 was a pivotal year in the arc of this silly history lesson. In the summer of 2014, an adjacent property, 8 North River St, was torn down by the university. 8 North Riv was never a student rental, but it was a large 3 Unit house. It had suffered enough neglect over the years, and damage from Hurricane Irene, that the landlord willingly sold out as part of a program where FEMA subsidized the purchase of properties in the floodplain. For years there was a belief in the neighborhood and the PSU community that the school would eventually own all the properties on North River Street as a way to increase the size of campus and build more athletic facilities.  After 8 was torn down, it created a large, direct line of sight from Rte 175 to 12 North River St, so the party was much more obvious to the outside world, and the empty lot where 8 had previously stood became annexed territory to accommodate more pirates.

The other change that was pronounced in 2014 was that students were working with various emerging social media entities (still largely through facebook and instagram platforms) to promote parties and to collect footage for “content”. Barstool is the entity that has obviously grown and evolved most from this time to become a household name, but there were others with ridiculous names and ideas (“I’m Schmacked” springs to mind) in those times. The companies would sponsor and kids would promote a particular party, and produce content of college kids raging, engaging in risky drunken behavior, and if the young women at the party dressed in revealing or risqué costumes, it was all the better for the number of views and likes and shares that the posted content would get.

This era was the tail end of Sara Jayne Steen’s PSU presidency, and the University was already experiencing large rounds of layoffs and turnover, budget cuts, etc. But they had definitely started to pay attention to Pirate Party and it was the start of the now commonplace police supervision of the party, and an awareness of its existence by the Dean of Students office.

The final pertinent and seminal event that happened in 2014 took place a few weeks after Pirate Party in the neighborhoods surrounding PSU’s sister school/mortal enemy Keene State. This was the year that the town’s traditional Pumpkin Festival, and the college students tradition of using that tradition as an excuse to throw a big party, resulted in huge crowds of out of town students flocking to Keene and the pushing back against police attempts to break up or at least contain the party resulted in the infamous/ludicrous “Pumpkin Fest Riot” which made national news (photo of overturned car with 3 kids on top of it was EVERYWHERE the next day) and turned into a bit of an embarrassment for the USNH system. The stage had been set.

2016- across the river

After continued growth, in 2015 increased police presence including State Troopers, and an attempt to have the party out into the street was rebuffed by law enforcement, 2016 saw a very large and raucous crowd. It was becoming a destination event.

Early in the party that day, several young demagogues and antagonizers were trying to push the party into the middle of North River St, and were being pushed back by law enforcement. Eventually the party surged into the roadway and a few Rum bottles went flying. That was all it took for Chief Patridge to decide to shut down the party. The combined police forces (Holderness, Plymouth, PSU, and State Troopers) cleared the house, driveway, and street of all partygoers. A parade of pirates marched across the Pemi and back to the student neighborhoods where the event finished up in the yard of 10 Pleasant St.  It has not returned to the Holderness side of the river since that day.

The following years

Admittedly, the next few years are a blur. The crowds continued to grow, as did the police and PSU staff presence. The party definitely wound up in the Interlakes Properties area sandwiched between Russell and Winter Streets, and on Webster Terrace, and was it on Edmunds Court one year? Or was that one of the final gasps of Spring Fling? They all merge together in my mind, a blur of spilled beer and ruffled white shirts, vomit, eye patches and fishnet stockings, flare ups of drunken outbursts and occasional violence squashed by police.

The party had entered the local lore enough that some of the local thrift stores would throw together “pirate outfits” to purchase the week before. There were breakfast sandwich specials encouraging pirates to fill their bellies at the start of the day.  A local mom asked me if it was appropriate for her daughter and friends (high school juniors) to attend……I SHIT YOU NOT!

Covid/Post Covid

There was no party in 2020, as people (even college students) were still adhering to social distancing guidelines and limiting the number of people at gatherings.

But in 2021 the Pirate Party roared back with a vengeance.  Students were already spread across Russell St near Gould Terrace by a little after 8:00 am. There was a DJ set up. It quickly grew into the largest one yet.

The Plymouth Police had just had a changing of the guard that very week, and I don’t know if there was a miscommunication, or the thought was that it wasn’t going to be very big post Covid, but there was almost no outside police supervision. The Plymouth and PSU Police were on the scene. There was not a strong presence of troopers or sheriff’s deputies as there had been for the previous 5 events.  As such, the party raged on for OVER 8 HOURS, in the middle of a public roadway.  Eventually, a group of landlords and property managers, sick of spectating and guarding their properties all day, gathered up brooms, rakes, and trash cans and slowly moved the front lines of tiring pirates back, and back again, cleaning the street as they went. The party finally trickled out.

In 2022, a more coordinated and pre-emptive effort by most of the same landlords pushed the party further down Russell St towards Crawford St, where it was less disruptive to local traffic flow. And there was again a strong presence of all sorts of uniformed officers. But the party was a very long duration event with a DJ again. Instead of the landlords and their push brooms, this party was eventually broken up by cops marching in riot gear.

In 2023, the landlords, backed by the police and the new Plymouth town manager, managed to get out ahead of the pirates and not let a large crowd gather in any of the usual spots. This resulted in the Pirate Party flaring up within PSU’s own student apartment neighborhood. Certainly this was an outcome that was viewed as a success by the landlords, and the town. PSU seemed a bit ambivalent. And the student body had a mixed bag of reviews……lots of students, once they move off campus, either consciously or unconsciously, never really “hang out” on campus anymore. They go to class, and that’s it…..their social lives exist off campus. So it felt like they were regressing and being babysat (note: they have been babysat for more than a decade of pirate parties at this point).

There are almost always reports of large amounts of damage in the dorms and sexual assaults and other negative outcomes in the aftermath of Pirate Party. I can’t confirm, but certainly giving a safe space for a very large group of 18-23 year olds to consume vast quantities of alcohol for 5-8 hours seems like a recipe for such results.

Where will it be this year? How will it play out? Can the authorities shut it down? There is always gossip and conjecture as the day gets closer. Much of the organization of the party is loose and done in secrecy. There always will have to be at least a bit of spontaneity and reactionary decision making. And PSU and local authorities can only predict so much.

Regardless, have fun and be safe. Be respectful and not entitled. Clean up after yourselves. And be ready to adapt to change, as it is the only constant in a pirate’s life.