It s easy, in elegant diction, to call it an innocent fiction.
Pirates is no exception.
So Dad sends him off with the nursery maid to get him signed up as an apprentice pilot so that he can learn the trade of sea-faring. It has to do with which way the wind is blowing. Ruth decided to stay on as an administrative assistant with the pirates after her little boo-boo. Now, it seems that Fred was born on the 29th of February in 1856. This take would seem to indicate that our pirates are hitting the sherry before noon before the sun was over the yardarm, as it were highly un-seamanlike, even for pirates.