Fair winds to Capt. Horatio Sinbad, real-life buccaneer of Beaufort’s pirate invasion
Capt. Horatio Sinbad, the professional buccaneer who stormed the Beaufort waters in a homemade pirate ship, blasting cannons for delighted tourists, has died aboard his own vessel after a long life of swashbuckling.
He was 81.
Born Ross Andrew Morpheus, a name he shunned, Sinbad arrived in Beaufort in 1973 and quickly became a fixture in the town’s annual pirate invasion — a reenactment of the real Spanish raids of 1747.
He officially adopted his pirate moniker, wore his white ponytail beneath a tri-cornered hat and lived aboard the Meka II. He answered his shell-shaped telephone with “This is Sinbad,” whenever it rang.
“Everybody wants to be a pirate,” he told The N&O in 2018, “even the older people, somewhere down inside. They’re the first ones who go to see ‘Pirates of the Caribbean.’ They live vicariously through their young children, when their eyes get beamy with, ‘Wow, I need a sword! I need a sword!’ “
The Carteret County News-Times reported Sinbad died on Tuesday night while aboard his ship, adding this tribute from Mayor Sharon Harker:
“He wasn’t just a performer,” Harker said, “he was a storyteller, a community builder and a captain through and through. As the pirates say, ‘Fair winds and following seas, Captain,’ for we know the sea has called you home. Arrr-men.”
‘This Work Will Kill You’
Sinbad daydreamed of pirate life in Michigan as a boy, inspired by the Disney version of “Treasure Island.” He built an 8-foot boat at age 11, sinking it in a suburban lake.
Sitting aboard the Meka II in 2018, Sinbad told The N&O that he ran away at age 16, answering an advertisement in Yachting magazine seeking a hand aboard a Caribbean schooner.
In St. Lucia, he met Capt. Walter Bordeaux, who carried a long knife on his belt and skeptically sized up the skinny teen from Michigan. “Son, do you got a return ticket?” Sinbad recalled the captain asking. “This work will kill you. I didn’t want a pasty white boy. I wanted a sailor.”
He persisted through shoves from surly shipmates and fish heads for supper, earning a promotion to first mate and a pair of nicknames, first “The Barbarian” and then “Sinbad.” He went home to finish high school having stumbled accidentally into a brothel, been served Caribbean rum and fought with his own ship’s captain.
“I was in heaven,” he recalled.
The Right to Plunder
Unsatisfied with his General Motors job, Sinbad started building his own vessel down the length of his Michigan driveway, irritating both neighbors and city inspectors, earning himself a reputation as a local oddity. He cared little that he’d drained his savings constructing a 54-foot boat with eight cannons, and he soon dropped his creation in the Detroit River — launching a new life.
He soon found a home in Beaufort, staging mock attacks on waterfront businesses, firing tennis balls from his shipboard guns while crowds cheered over their plates of shrimp.
In 1975, he applied to President Gerald Ford for a commission making him an official privateer, which never materialized. But President Ronald Reagan played along four years later, granting Sinbad official leave to plunder.
He carried on for decades as the official face of the Beaufort Pirate Invasion, and for the town itself in many ways. But by 2018, Sinbad and his nonprofit stepped away from the festival, complaining that red tape and permit fees had replaced the handshake deals he preferred.
“It’s harder to be a pirate than the old days,” he told The N&O in 2018. “Unfortunately, a lot of that doesn’t last. If you could just keep up kind of a youthful thing, we’d be better off. We’re all pirates.”
In his obituary, Sinbad’s family invites tributes and memorials to www.noebrooks.net. A celebration of life will be held later.
This story was originally published April 7, 2025 at 10:48 AM.