A PIRATE book about a treasure hunt based on real life events has raised more than £2,500 for the Sully-based children’s hospice Ty Hafan.

All of the proceeds from Desmond Mason’s ‘The Scrimshaw of Sable Island – A Tale of Land and Sea’, which is based on real facts and places, have gone towards the charity that helps care for life-limited children.

Self publisher Desmond, of Stanwell Road, has sold more than 700 copies of the book since it was launched last year.

He has featured at various local events dressed as a pirate himself, including the Cider Festival at the Bear’s Head pub and during Carnival Day of the Penarth Summer Festival, in a bid to sell copies of the book.

Desmond, 66, said that he chose Ty Hafan as he thought it would be “an excellent and worthwhile” charity to raise money for.

“I have been there several times and it’s a very impressive facility,” he said.

“It doesn’t get a lot of public funding and it almost relies entirely on donations.”

Desmond, who has worked as a lecturer in English in colleges in London, Cambridge, Africa and North America before recently retiring, added about the book: “I didn’t write it as a children’s book.

“It’s all based on historical facts, with a very little idea that’s fantasy, so I’m hoping that it has a wide appeal to people of all generations.”

The book tells the story of a runaway teen from Bristol that discovers the link between a mysterious carving on a whales tooth and a mass of pirate treasure. He then finds himself caught up in the search for the treasure stolen from Captain Kidd by the infamous pirate Robert Culliford. The book charts his search through the farms and forests of Nova Scotia to the ‘barren darkness’ of Sable Island – ‘Graveyard of the Atlantic’.

Copies of the book are available from the Ty Hafan charity shop on Stanwell Road in Penarth.