The Pirates' House stands on part of the Trustees' Garden, the ten-acre experimental garden laid out on the east edge of James Oglethorpe's 1733 town plan. It was modeled on the Chelsea Physic Garden in London and named for the colony's Trustees. The small Herb House, built to house the garden's gardener, is often called the oldest building in Georgia. Wikipedia dates it to 1734, while some tour accounts give 1753 or 1754. The gardener slept in the hayloft upstairs, and tools were kept below. The larger buildings on either side were built between 1794 and 1871.

As Savannah's port grew, the site became an inn and tavern for sailors near the river. The Savannah Gas Company bought the property in 1948. Mrs. Hansell Hillyer, wife of the company's president, took an interest in the old buildings, and in 1953 Herb Traub and Jim Casey opened the modern restaurant. Today it is one of Savannah's best-known restaurants, with fifteen dining rooms serving Southern food, and it is often described as the oldest bar in Georgia.

Local legend

The Ghost Story

Told here as local lore, the way guides, books and visitors tell it. These are legends, not established fact.

The Pirates' House leans into its reputation. Local lore has always made it a rough sailors' tavern full of seamen, smugglers and men of the Caribbean trade. According to tour tellings, some drinkers who came in for a stiff drink woke up hundreds of miles out to sea. They had been shanghaied, the legend says, drugged and carried through a tunnel from the Rum Cellar down to the river, then sold to captains short of crew. Before the tunnel was sealed, people reported hearing voices and moans from inside it.

Inside the restaurant, staff closing up alone describe the feeling of being watched. Some say they turned to find a seaman in old-fashioned clothes looking straight at them before he faded away. Shadowy figures have been reported moving through the dining rooms, and on quiet evenings people hear heavy boots on the plank floors when no one is walking. Passersby often photograph 'faces' in the old windows. Even Ghost City Tours admits most of these turn out to be reflections and old glass.

Then there is Captain Flint. Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island (1883) has the pirate captain die in Savannah, and local tradition puts his last days, calling for more rum, in an upstairs room here. Some visitors claim to have met his ghost. Pages of the novel have hung on the walls for years, and the legend is a fixture of pub crawls and ghost tours.

Sources

Tips

Popular restaurants fill up at peak times: reserve where the restaurant takes bookings, or arrive early.
Featured on 6 ghost tours; see the links below.

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