We're a little bit, but not too much, landlocked here. But I'm willing to be a River Pirate -- I grew up on the Upper River (there's only ONE!) and I'm quite familiar with River Pirates.

Here, I'll prove it with a true story:

The wreckers were out.
        It had been a long time, too, since they had lured steamboats and barges and big motorboats to the shoals and rocks of Triangle Lake. But they were again plying their deadly trade on stormy nights and nobody seemed to be able to catch them.
        Everyone knew how it was done. How a barge, trying for the shelter of Quincy Bay would see through storm-blinded eyes what would seem to be the lights of other boats rocking gently at anchor. And how the storm-tossed barge would turn towards those beckoning lights, hit the rocks and split open, spilling its cargo into the river where it would wash ashore and into the hands of the wreckers.
        The lights of the anchored boats were really lanterns tied to horses, and the horses were then led over gently ground. Seen during a storm it was remarkably deceptive, and lots of rivermen and -women were killed when the wreckers wrecked their craft.
        We had heard about the wreckers, of course. Everyone had. We even talked about them during recess at school. But we were kids, after all, and we were more concerned about our history project.
        I was taking history, Tony was taking history, Ted was taking history. Martha was taking herstory, so she didn't have a project due. But we did, and since it happened that we were all studying the Middle Ages at the same time we decided to do one big project instead of three little ones. Our teachers agreed, as long as we said who did what.
        We talked about lots of things. Ted wanted to build a motte and bailey, but we couldn't find a good place. Tony wanted to make chain mail, but he found that the stamps cost too much. I wanted to illuminate manuscripts, but I looked and looked and couldn't find the right light bulbs for it.
        So after much thought and discussion and reading and arguing and cogitation and arguing and research and arguing we decided to build a trebuchet.
        Most people don't know what a trebuchet is. They confuse it with a ballista or an onager and really get mixed up. And one guy tried to tell us that a trebuchet was something used in mining! Ted told him that he didn't know his trebuchet from a hole in the ground!
        In case you've been confused by people who don't know, a trebuchet is what people in the Middle Ages used to throw heavy rocks a long distance. They did this to try to destroy castle walls (trebuchets weren't used much from inside castles, only from the outside).
        A trebuchet was a long pole mounted in a frame so that it tilted. One end was very close to the pivot point and the other far away. A big, heavy weight, like a bunch of rocks in a basket, were mounted to the short end of the pole. A basket was put at the end of the long part of the pole. The pivot was high up, so when the basket end was down the weight was up high. Rocks or burning logs or maybe dead horses were loaded into the basket. When the rope holding the basket down was released the long end went up while the short, weighted, end went down. When the short end hit the ground the stuff in the basket on the long end went flying off to hit a castle wall or something.
        Ballistae (it's a Latin word) and onagers worked completely differently. You could say that the trebuchet was the long-range artillery of the Middle Ages.
        And we were going to make one!
        Mom said that we could design it at home, but it we were going to make a full-sized, operating trebuchet we had to do it elsewhere. She suggested that we make it so it could be taken apart and moved around, which seemed to be a good idea.
        Naturally, we decided to build it in the Swamp. There were lots of advantages to that, the biggest being that if it didn't work nobody else would know. If it did work we could take it to school and demonstrate it by flinging something heavy.
        Of course, it took several weekends to build, but by the end of October we were ready for a real test.
        It was a day of sometimes rain and sometime nice, that Saturday. Ted and I took our raincoats and Tony had an umbrella. The sky to the northwest was very dark and lightning could sometimes be seen. We wondered if we'd get caught in a thunderstorm, but Tony said that storms to the north would pass us by.
        It was early afternoon when we reached our trebuchet. We pulled off the branches and stuff that we used to hide it and with a lot of work dragged it out to the middle of a clearing.
        "Woof!" said Tony. "That's really heavy."
        "Yeah," agreed Ted and I.
        But there it stood, its twenty-five foot long throwing arm tilted towards the sky.
        We jumped up and grabbed the rope attached to the basket end -- the light, long end -- and pulled it down until it touched the ground. We tied it to a tree and took a rest.
        We discussed what to throw: Ted wanted to throw a bunch of rocks, I wanted to throw some old car parts we'd found, and Tony wanted to throw Ted. We talked Tony out of it, and he agreed with both of us: toss some of each.
        So we gathered some rocks and some old car gears and kept looking at the storm clouds.
        "I guess," observed Tony, " that they're really getting it on the river."
        "Yeah," I agreed. "I wonder if the wreckers and working today?"
        "I hope that if they are they get caught," said Ted. "There's lots of sheriff's deputies and state police and FBI guys and Quincy police and all out looking for those bums!"
        While we were talking we were moving rocks and stuff near the trebuchet. We planned more than one shot!
        Then it happened. One of us -- nobody ever remembered who -- moved a rock and not one, not two, not three -- SIX skunks came out.
        "Oh boy," said Tony.
        "Oh, oh," observed Ted.
        "Oops!" I agreed.
        The skunks started walking toward us, and we backed away.
        "Nice skunky," said Tony.
        "Gooooood skunky," said Ted.
        "Ah, yeah, nice skunky," I said.
        "Err, what'll we do?" Tony asked.
        "I guess keep walking backwards and don't make any sudden moves," I answered.
        And we did. We backed over rocks and bushes and through stickers and places full of water and still the six skunks skulked slowly toward us.
        Ted finally tripped over the arm of the trebuchet. We were sure he was a goner, but he managed to scramble to his feet and keep backing away.
        And the six skulking skunks stepped onto the end of the throwing arm of the trebuchet.
        I don't to this day know why I did what I did next. Both Tony and Ted promised me lots of great things afterwards: money and cake and motorboats and ice cream and money and a real, new car and money and they said that they'd be forever in my debt, but they still haven't paid up.
        And all I did was grab the hatchet and cut the rope holding down the trebuchet's throwing arm.
        The first throw was a real stinker. The six skunks rose into the air on the end of the arm and when the weighted part stopped, off the skunks flew towards the stormy northwest. They flew so fast and so far and so high that we very soon couldn't see them at all.
        Unfortunately, when the big box of rocks we used for a weight hit the ground it broke. The rocks spilled out and the long throwing end, now heavier, fell back to the ground so hard that it broke.
        "You broke the trebuchet!" accused Ted.
        "Saved you from the scandalous stink of six skulking skunks, though," I replied.
        "Right!" said Tony. "We can always turn in our notes. We don't have time to make another trebuchet and we can just report on what we did. It should be worth an 'A'."
        "I wonder," I wondered, "what happened to those skunks?"
        "Probably gave someone a surprise," chortled Ted.
        "I wonder how far we flang 'em?" inquired Tony.
        "Just far enough, thanks to good old Mike. We'll always own him favors for saving us from a stinking," said Ted, and Tony heartily agreed.
        So we walked home, and since we were early we finished writing up our reports on the trebuchet and then helped Mom cook a great supper of car, calamari, catfish, carrots, cake, cauliflower and cool-aid.
        The late news announced the arrest of the wreckers. They had, as usual, been plying their nefarious trade in a humdinger of a storm. A barge loaded with gold dust, the Jezebel Z., was maneuvering closer and closer to the treacherous shoals of Triangle Lake.
        Suddenly the horses bolted when, according to the wreckers themselves, "it started a-rainin' skunks!" The captain of the barge saw the lights he assumed to be in a safe harbor suddenly toss and turn every which way and ordered his vessel back out to the main channel and safety.
        Foiled, the wreckers fled. Blinded by skunk fumes they ran right into the waiting police roadblocks. Arrested, tried and found guilty they were "hung in irons between the tides," the traditional penalty for piracy in Illinois.
        During the newscast Ted, Tony and I were really excited, jumping up and down and yelling "that's where they went!" and "great distance!" Mom asked us to please tell her what it was all about, but we looked at each other and told her the truth: that she'd never, ever believe us.