Say “ahoy” at a participating Long John Silver’s on Sept. 19 and you get a free piece of fish or a Chicken Plank. Show up dressed as a pirate and you get a whole two-piece basket.
Today is Talk Like a Pirate Day, and Long John Silver’s is paying people in fish to play along.
Walk into a participating location on Saturday, Sept. 19, talk like a pirate at the counter, and you’ll walk out with a free piece of hand-battered fish or a Chicken Plank. A decent “arr” is the whole price of admission.
Want more? Dress the part.
Anyone who shows up in a pirate costume gets a free two-piece fish or chicken basket. The chain is also handing out temporary pirate tattoos in three designs while supplies last.
How do you get free food at Long John Silver’s on Talk Like a Pirate Day?
There are two levels to the deal, and the company’s Sept. 10 announcement doesn’t list a purchase requirement for either one.
Talk like a pirate: one free piece of fish or one Chicken Plank
Dress like a pirate: a free two-piece fish or chicken basket
The fine print is short. The offer is good at participating restaurants only, so call your local store before you load everybody into the car. The tattoos are while supplies last, and a Saturday lunch rush could clean those out fast.
You don’t need the app, either. Long John Silver’s plugged its Seacret Society rewards program in the same announcement, but signing up isn’t part of the pirate deal.
Laura Ellis, the chain’s chief marketing officer, called the day “one of our favorite Long John Silver’s traditions.”
What counts as talking like a pirate?
Nobody is handing out grades. A loud “ahoy, matey” should get it done. So should “arr,” “shiver me timbers” or asking the cashier where they buried the tartar sauce.
The costume bar is pretty low too. An eye patch, a bandana and a plastic hook are about as pirate as most of us can pull off on short notice.
Kids probably have this handled already. Anyone who went through a Jack Sparrow phase has a hat in a closet somewhere.
And the math favors dressing up. The costume turns one free piece into a two-piece basket, which is the difference between a snack and lunch.
Why do pirates say “arr”? You can thank a Disney movie
Here’s some trivia to bring to the counter.
Real pirates didn’t leave any recordings behind, so nobody knows exactly how they talked. The voice everybody does today mostly traces back to one actor.
Robert Newton played Long John Silver in Disney’s 1950 Treasure Island, the studio’s first fully live-action feature. Newton leaned hard into his own West Country accent from Dorset, England. He rolled his R’s, growled his lines and turned “arr” into a personality.
It stuck. More than 75 years later, his performance is still the voice most people reach for when somebody says “talk like a pirate.”
That same character gave the restaurant its name. Long John Silver’s opened in 1969 in Lexington, Kentucky, and it’s named after the scheming ship’s cook from Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1883 novel.
So in a roundabout way, Disney helped write the script for today’s free lunch.
Where did Talk Like a Pirate Day come from?
The holiday started as an inside joke between two friends in Oregon, John Baur and Mark Summers, who dreamed it up in 1995 during a racquetball game.
For years, almost nobody outside their circle knew about it. Then humor columnist Dave Barry wrote about it in 2002, and it went national pretty much overnight.
Now it shows up on calendars, in classrooms and in plenty of marketing plans. A fish chain named after a fictional pirate was always going to show up for this one.
Is the Long John Silver’s free fish deal good all day?
The company’s announcement lists the offer for Sept. 19 and doesn’t set a cutoff time. The tattoos are the only thing flagged as limited.
Still, not every restaurant has to take part. Franchise locations can skip national promotions, which is why that “participating” label matters. A 30-second phone call beats a wasted drive.
If you miss it, the next Talk Like a Pirate Day lands on Sept. 19, 2027. Plenty of time to work on your “arr.”
Article compiled with the help of the Pirates & Princesses newsroom.
Pirates and Princesses is your destination for Disney news, theme park updates, and the pop culture you love. From Disney cruises and travel tips to Disney fashion, food, collectibles, and movie news, PNP covers it all. Visit us at piratesandprincesses.net for daily coverage. Follow PNP on Facebook and Instagram, and listen to the Pirates & Princesses podcast on Apple Podcasts and YouTube.
Hat Tips:
Long John Silver’s via PR Newswire (Sept. 10, 2026), offer terms, tattoo details and the Laura Ellis quote
The Lexington Times (Sept. 10, 2026), return of the chain’s annual Sept. 19 promotion
History.com, Robert Newton’s Treasure Island performance and the West Country roots of the pirate accent
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