I bet most of you 'lubbers are thinking by the title of this entry that it has nothing to do with pirates, etc, but you would be wrong. A Pink is a ship with a very narrow stern. It comes from the Dutch fishing boat or pincke and in the 17th and 18th centuries, pinks were often used as cargo ships to run between islands and thus were the targets of pirates.
Captain Edward Low, a notoriously cruel pirate of the 18th century, took a French pink as a prize once and made it his ship. He renamed her Rose Pink.
Another meaning of pink, according to Webster's College Dictionary, is to pierce with a rapier or the like; to stab. So that also is a piratical (or swashbuckling anyway) meaning to the word.
Isn't it amazing that pink and pirates are related?
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