Real Pirates

On the way home from Tennessee at the end of August, we spent the night in Cincinnati.  In the hotel we noticed an advertisement for the Real Pirates exhibit at the Cincinnati Museum Center.  It looked great, so we delayed the continuation of our journey the next morning and went to the exhibit.  It was well-worth-it.

From the museum web site:

When the Whydah sank in 1717, it was believed that nearly four-and-a-half tons of treasure, her captain—notorious pirate Sam Bellamy— and 143 others went down with her. Real Pirates: The Untold Story of the Whydah from Slave Ship to Pirate Ship is an exhibit that uses the actual artifacts recovered from the wreck site of the Whydah to tell the compelling story of the first fully authenticated pirate ship ever found in American waters.   

Real Pirates takes visitors on a virtual journey aboard the mighty Whydah. Each of the 12 exhibit galleries represents a chapter in the ship’s biography, from its initial use as a slave ship to its takeover in the Caribbean by pirates to its demise in one of the worst nor’easters ever to hit Cape Cod.

From a review at azcentral.com:

The exhibit includes more than 200 of those artifacts, including the ship's bell and anchor, pirate clothes, muskets, cannons, swords, gold and silver coins, jewelry from the Akan people of Ghana, tableware, gaming tokens and clay pipes.

Even without the "Disney" touch, "Real Pirates" is highly theatrical, Lach says, beginning with a film on the ship and its two captains (slave ship captain Lawrence Prince and pirate captain Sam Bellamy). Another gallery tells the story of piracy and the slave trade and how they were the economic engines of the Caribbean.

A re-creation of a pirates' tavern shows daily life, and a reconstruction of part of the Whydah shows life aboard the ship, above deck where the crew worked and below where the slaves were housed.

Still another gallery re-creates Captain Bellamy's capture of the Whydah, while others show the treasure galley and the ocean floor as it looked when Clifford discovered the wreck. The exhibit even recreates the 1717 storm - complete with wind machines and sound effects full of crashing waves - that sank the ship.

Here are a couple photos from outside (no photos of the exhibit allowed):