TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums British Virgin Islands Dick Swain..

Just heard the extremely sad news that Dick Swain has sailed into the sunset. For those of you lucky to have met this real life pirate at " Myetts"s during happy hours..you are truly blessed. My first meeting with him became a chapter in my book..loved this guy, his spirit, his smarts and his sense of humor..Sail on "Insane" Dick Swain..

Dick was an amazing person. He was VP sales for a major plumbing supplier, Kohler in Wisconsin and I think he knew everybody. He even remembered my father down here in Macon, Ga because he was a golfing buddy of a local plumbing distributor.

Dick was a true gentleman. Enjoyed spending his kids inheritance.

He was one of a kind!

Am very grateful I got to meet him!!! Loved his attitude about spending his kid's inheritance!!! You can tell he got a lot of enjoyment in his "sunset" years. Sail on CGB pirate!

I cannot post the short chapter from my book because my old comuter died here with the book locked in..if anyone has the chapter " Yes, I am a pirate" from " Manpot's Tales of the Tropics" I would love you to post it here..no copyright problem from me , just want to share what a special person Dick was..TKS

“YES HE IS A PIRATE

You could tell the guy was a pirate...He was sitting in a beachfront bar in the Caribbean…drinking rum…oh, and yeah, he had a jaunty eye-patch.
With a parrot on it...”

“Every happy hour I saw this man in one of my favorite watering holes on Tortola…It's a bar and restaurant called "Myett's" where the trade winds blow...and seem to blow in a good mix of locals, tourists and just plain wacky characters. Every time I saw the "pirate" he smiled and said "Hi"...

Finally we started to talk...

"Tell me the tale of the eye-patch", said I after buying him another Mount Gay...And the tale he told was an inspiration…

A genetic disease had attacked his left eye leaving him almost totally blind in that eye...and then had started to attack his other eye. The only hope, his doctor told him, was a radical operation...followed by an even more radical recovery period.

For six weeks after that operation he would have to keep his head forward…perfectly still...twenty four hours a day...seven days a week.
In pitch darkness.

Our "pirate" had the operation and then told me how he learned to sleep leaning forward…in fact live his whole life for those six weeks hunched forward... He could not move and he could not see.

Finally, he told me, came time for him to return to his doctor's office to have the bandages removed. The doctor warned him not to hope for too much...Even if he had vision in that one eye it might be very fuzzy, said the doctor, "maybe just shadows and shapes."

Slowly, he said, the bandages were unwrapped...but he was terrified to open that eye. He might be blind...He might never see again...He might be confined to a life of "shadows and shapes."

As a tear welled in the unpatched eye our "pirate" said he opened his good eye...and in the words of Johnny Nash yelled " I can see clearly now..."

"I kissed the doctor...I kissed his assistant...and I bawled like a baby", he told me," then I decided to enjoy every single moment of the rest of my life."

At 75 years of age our "pirate" bought his ticket to the BVI's swearing to take in every spellbinding site in that spectacular technicolour you only seem to find in the tropics.

At that moment the sun started to set over Jost Van Dyke.

My "pirate" buddy and I toasted that spectacular scene and he grinned like a five year old.

To me the sunset was beautiful…to him it was a miracle...

The “pirate's" name is Dick Swain...we dubbed him “Insane” Dick Swain. Since that incident he has endured a bout with stomach cancer but now he vows to return to Tortola for more and more months every winter.

Last winter he had the remains of his hair braided with beads. People would laugh and have their pictures taken with him with his pet, wooden, parrot Marty, perched on his shoulder.

We hope to watch many...many ...more sunsets with a true...brave...pirate...”



Excerpt From: Boyes, Malcolm. “Manpot's Tales of the Tropics.” Malcolm Boyes. iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright..

I had the great pleasure of meeting this "pirate". He was a great guy and a real joy to talk to him.

RIP Dick Swain.

Thanks so much for posting this...

Met him several times at Myett's. A true "pirate" whose spirit will surely sail on! RIP Dick Swain.