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Memories of the Ryde Buccaneers

Thursday, 16 September 2021 16:38

Alan Garnett joined the Ryde Buccaneers in 1964, second generation, after being introduced by a family member.

He had to wait four months to ‘get in’, as in those days membership of the group was limited to 150!

"You had to turn up three out of the last four times or you got taken off and put back at the bottom of the list."

Alan, a blacksmith by trade, helped to make the 14-foot-high Galleon Float, even basing it around his own car one year.

Alan told the New Carnival Company:

"Well, they (The Buccaneers) began in 1934. There was Archie Curville, Wally Diamond and SL Burdon. S.L Burdon had a parrot that used to sit on his shoulder, and you can imagine what parrots do down your back! Wally Diamond only had one leg, so he had a proper ‘peg leg’ made. Poor old Wally used to keep falling over on the Galleon, so I made him a thing that screwed down to the floor with a piece of pipe in it, and he used to stick his leg in it.

"The first time we used it …we all got off the galleon and there’s a voice from the top saying ‘Oi! I can’t get me bl**dy leg out! And we all got up there to pull his leg out of this thing.

"Yeah, fun you know, they were fun times." 

The Ryde Buccaneers raised thousands of pounds for local charities over the years. The group stopped doing carnivals in the late nineties – just before Pirates of the Caribbean.

Alan was ‘cut up’ when it finished. He said:

"It would have been cool for the kids to have been a pirate – and I would probably still be doing it now."

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