Former pirate hostage turns up to give talk, crowd are dressed as pirates in unfortunate mix-up

Red faces, wooden legs and eye patches all round.

A brilliant case of misunderstanding has happened in Devon. The North Devon Women’s Institute (the UK’s version of the ICA) had booked Captain Colin Darch in to give them a talk about piracy.

The Institute members thought it was to be a general chin-wag about piracy so they all dressed up as pirates to get in the mood.

Unfortunately, Captain Darch was actually captured by Somali pirates in 2008 at sea and he intended to give a talk about the dangers of actual piracy in the modern world rather than a Tresure Island/Pirates of the Caribbean version the audience were expecting.

The North Devon Journal reports that the minutes of the meeting say: “The speaker at the April meeting was Captain Colin Darch, who talked about piracy, embarrassingly the WI all dressed as pirates for the evening not realising that Captain Darch was going to be talking about his experience of being held hostage by Somalia Pirates rather than piracy in general.

"However once this had been gotten over everyone sat down to listen to Captain Darch's story and what a story it was.”

As for Captain Darch, he took the mix-up in good humour.

“Of course I didn’t take offence or mind. It was more like the Pirates of Penzance.

“I must admit I quite enjoy giving talks to groups such as WIs. I am doing quite a few of them and it is a good way to flog my book.

“They were lovely ladies. They made me judge who was the best dressed which was a difficult choice. In the end I decided to choose the one with who had a fluffy parrot on her shoulder. Of course there weren’t any parrots near the real pirates.”