Hi Kukulz,
I think we can break the question down into a couple of parts.
1. Was there a "river pirate kung fu?" I'd guess probably not, at least in the sense of having a structured school with long sets and a lineage. While I'm quite sure they trained together, the thing is, on a boat, there isn't much room. That limits the kinds of things you can do with any weapon, which negates the need for a training school. I'd guess that a lot of the pirate's blade work was sort of like the Nepalis and their khukuris. They're always using their blades for whatever is needed, so they're naturally adapt at basic combat (i.e. they can hit whatever they swing at, because they use their blades daily for all sorts of things, and that gives them a high level of basic practice).
2. A lot of riverside villages would have had a resident martial artist to help train the village/clan militia (this was the situation in China for centuries), and I'm sure some of those people trained pirates. Possibly, some of those martial artists were current or former pirates themselves. I'd also bet that there was a lot of communication between the pirates and the martial artists, and they'd talk about what did and didn't work in various situations, possibly even train together. As I noted above, I don't think it quite rose to the level of a pirate kung fu school though.
Best,
F
|