“What’s a pirate’s favorite kind of cookie?”/“Ships Ahoy!”

A pirate riddle is:
 
Q: What’s a pirate’s favorite kind of cookie?
A: Ships Ahoy!
 
The Chips Ahoy! cookie pun has been cited in print since at least 2003.
 
         
Wikipedia: Chips Ahoy!
Chips Ahoy! is a brand of cookie, baked and marketed by Nabisco, a subsidiary of Mondelēz International, that debuted in 1963. It is widely sold in the United States, Latin America (where its name in some countries is “Choco Chips”), South Africa, Canada, Latvia, Spain, Portugal, China, Indonesia, Taiwan, United Kingdom and many more regions. It is marketed in varieties of 1 ounce (28 g) mini-sized cookie packages to around 48 ounces (1,400 g) packages of standard-sized cookies. It is the third best-selling cookie in the United States after Oreo, also a Nabisco-branded cookie, with an average of US$619.4 million in sales per year. By the 1980s, several different varieties of the cookie snack were being baked and shipped to grocery stores: chewy, sprinkled, and striped. In Indonesia, Chips Ahoy! was relaunched in September 2015 after the product was discontinued in that country in the early 2010s.

Nabisco says the name is “a reference to the nautical term, Ships Ahoy!”. The words “Chips Ahoy!” also feature prominently in a story appearing in Chapter 15 of “The Uncommercial Traveller”, by Charles Dickens. Dickens relays a childhood tale of a girlfriend, named Chipselle, who is taunted by a bully who tormented her endlessly with, “Chips Ahoy!” There is also a 1956 American animated theatrical short titled Chips Ahoy.
   
Karma-Lab Forums 
Pirate Jokes
kahrayzee
26-Jun-03, 04:15 PM
(...)
what’s a pirate’s favorite kind of cookie?
ships ahoy
 
DVD Talk Forum
“International Talk Like a Pirate Day” 9/19/03 Arrr!
minifigg
9-15-03 07:52 PM
(...)
what’s a pirate’s favorite kind of cookie?
ships ahoy
   
Big Footy
Official Jokes thread - for those who like to laugh!!
ScouseCat, Sep 19, 2003 #488
(...)
What’s a pirate’s favorite kind of cookie?
Ships ahoy
 
The 914 Forums
Talk like a Pirate day!
GWN7
Sep 29 2004, 05:44 PM
(...)
10
what’s a pirate’s favorite kind of cookie?
ships ahoy
   
22 April 2005, The News-Press (Fort Myers, FL), “Pirate Jokes,” Gulf Coasting, pg. 27, col. 5:
Q: What’s a pirate’s favorite kind of cookie?
A: Ships Ahoy.
   
Google Groups: rec.crafts.textiles.quilting
More Pirate Jokes
frood
9/19/05
What’s a pirate’s favorite cookie?
Ships Ahoy
   
Google Books
The Book of Pirates
By Christine Lampe
Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith
2010
Pg. 193:
What’s a pirate’s favorite kind of cookie?
Ships Ahoy.
 
My Town Tutors
Pirate Jokes: Top Pirate Jokes
Posted on September 1, 2015 by Kathryn Schreiber HOLBROOK, MA
(...)
37. What’s a pirate’s favorite kind of cookie?… ships ahoy
 
Twitter
hotboxcookies‏
@hotboxcookies
YAR! National Talk Like a Pirate Day! What’s a pirates Favorite kind of cookie? Ships ahoy! #cookie #Piratejokes
3:30 PM - 19 Sep 2017