Why “me” instead of “my” in pirate speech?

I don’t understand the usage in constructions like “Spare meself, me ship, me crew” in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.

Is it a dialect or “bloody pirate’s speech” or what?

Solution 1:

Regarding the use of me for my, the OED writes in sense II. 10. of me:

Used colloq. and dial. (also Austral. and N.Z.) as a poss. adj.

The origin of this use is probably the unstressed form of the possessive adj. (see my poss. adj.^{1 β}), but it is now apprehended as a levelling of functions under a single inflexional form.

And under my, we find this very interesting entry:

my /maɪ/, unstressed /mɪ/, poss. adj.

Also 2-6 mi, (4 mii, 6 mye), 9 dial. moy, etc.
β. (unstressed forms) 3-6 (also 9 in representations of Irish speech) me, 8 m’, 9 dial. ma, etc.

Notice in particular the unstressed pronunciation of my as /mɪ/ listed above.

In other words, unstressed my as a possessive adjective was once, and to some extent still is, pronounced as though it were me. It simply means my when so used, and is sometimes still used in reported speech to represent dialect pronunciation.

Solution 2:

The "bloody" I know not of, in this context at least [ :-) ] , but the use of 'me' for 'my' in Pirate's putative Parlance is very time hounoured - dating back to at least my childhood, which is probably more distance than that of the childhood of the average list member - and probably a century or two prior to that.

Searching for "me" when used to mean "my" is a challenge which Google is not well designed to rise to, but use of a common (allegedly) pirate's term will suffice.

"Shiver me timbers" - 1,090,000 hits

"Shiver my timbers" - 89,500 hits

While a sample size of one falls short of the test for being definitive (by a few orders of magnitude) it is a good demonstration of the universality of the term.