LIKE MOST of my friends, I spent more than a few idle hours as a boy daydreaming about being a pirate on the open seas.

With movies about daring swashbucklers feeding our young imaginations--largely positive ones with impressive stars as the lead pirate--many a third-grade lesson was missed because my head was out on the high seas.

In those daydreams, wielding one of those curved swords while maneuvering my 90-gun warship alongside a treasure-laden vessel, I was able to solicit surrender just by out-sailing them.

My daydream would shift quickly to a lush Caribbean island where I'd munch mangos for the remainder of my days in a beautiful, crew-built beach-side villa.

Monday night in the Northern Neck town of Reedville, I found out that things didn't really work that way for the raiders of the high seas.

At least, not for many of them.

That was the word from Donald G. Shomette, a maritime expert from Dunkirk, Md., who delivered a talk largely derived from his book, "Pirates on the Chesapeake."

The author, who'll be seen this summer on the History Channel's documentary on modern piracy, shared details of the "heyday of piracy" on the Chesapeake from 1609 to 1807. He spoke as part of a lecture series presented by the Reedville Fishermen's Museum.

Shomette is the author of 14 books and a well-known maritime archaeologist. And he debunked quite a few myths.

Like the one so many of us acted out with an old, rickety board in our backyards.

"There is no record, historical information, or anecdotal evidence that anyone was ever made to walk a plank," said Shomette, who never felt the need to pull out the eyeglass and pirate's hat props he had tucked away in his speaker's lectern.

Shomette told the audience that many of the pirates who plied the waters of the New World started out as privateers, owners of private ships fighting under the auspices of one crown or another.

When wars waned or when gold-laden ships began flowing from Spanish settlements in South America, many privateers took the path of using using the warship's might to appropriate treasure, ships and men.