NO LANDLUBBERS ALLOWED: Gabriella Mandarino, 9, and brother Dominic, 7, are experienced pirate campers. Glenn Matsumura

Every summer, as students clear out and the Farm is taken over by summer camps for swimming, tennis and math, the fencing team hosts arguably the most creative session of the season—Stanford Pirates Camp, a weeklong day camp for young Blackbeards-to-be. Each camper pays $395, much of which goes to cover the camp’s costs and counselors’ salaries. The remaining booty helps the team pay for travel and equipment. For one week campus becomes the Seven Seas, cars become ships and a hearty “Argh!” is the greeting of choice for 85 children ages 6 to 10. Kids dive headfirst into the role-playing, and each year the camp has a lengthy waiting list. Catherine D’Arcey, director of several summer sports camps, chalks up Pirates Camp’s popularity to its quirkiness. “It’s really a very different camp,” she says. “We do really silly things.”

Swashbuckling school included.
While campers still take part in summertime staples like scurvy scurvy scalawag (duck duck goose) and lacrosse (with plastic jewels instead of balls), Pirates Camp also includes real-life swordplay. With their fencing team counselors running the ship, campers have daily fencing practice, complete with masks, foils and protective body suits. “Suiting them up takes half of the time,” says former head counselor Nina Acuña, ’06. “It’s like herding sheep and putting them in jackets.” Campers love it—D’Arcey estimates that up to a quarter of the kids go on to pursue fencing more seriously.

And what might we call ye?
Counselors are referred to as “captains” and come up with pirate aliases for the week. Acuña calls herself Sealbreath McGee, a name she found through an online pirate name generator. Not all of the camp’s leaders need fancy names, however. “They introduce me the first morning as the Pirate Mom,” D’Arcey says.

Captain Hook, fashionista.
Becoming a pirate means finding the perfect outfit. For captains, eye patches, beaded hair, hoop earrings and horizontally-striped shirts are musts. Counselors try to top one another by braiding their hair, wearing eyeliner or growing real beards. Campers are supplied with pirate accessory kits that includes earrings, eye patches, fake mustaches and bandanas. Some of the more fashion-forward hearties bring additional dress-up items from home.

Not all that glitters is gold, but kids will still hunt for it.
Treasure hunts, by far the favorite activity at camp, range from the rudimentary to the elaborate, but all are heavy on creativity. Erik Lehnert, ’07, gave his group of preteens complicated quests requiring GPS systems and code-breaking skills. Acuña convinced her 7-year-olds that a mythical evil pirate had knocked one of her fellow counselors unconscious and stolen treasure from him. “We had him tie himself to a tree somewhere with an empty treasure box,” she says. “The kids were fired up to retaliate.”

Why argh you talking like that?
Learning the lingo is essential. Lehnert estimates he growls “Argh!” at least a hundred times a day. “It’s a pretty impressive noise,” he says. While most counselors find it easy to slip back and forth between pirate jargon and everyday English, a few get caught between worlds. “I keep saying ‘yar’ for six months afterwards,” says Acuña. “I answer my phone that way.”

Why pirates?
This week is about imagination and fun, and D’Arcey limits the camp to an age span where credulity and adventure-lust mix in just the right proportions. “This is an opportunity for kids to play for an entire week,” she says. “Hopefully they’ll learn something, but the goal is that at the end of the week they’ll have those silly grins on their faces from having a totally relaxing, fun time.”