Pirates!

OK so, last week I promised you pirates. Here's the thing. I wasn't supposed to be taking pictures. I didn't hear that at the beginning of the tour and apparently all my friends thought I was just flaunting the rules and didn't say anything. So I'm going to cheat just a tiny bit and post JUST ONE.



I didn't want to skip the pirates entirely because the reason I wasn't paying attention at the beginning was because I was SO EXCITED when I found out this was not just any pirate exhibit. This is stuff brought up from the Whydah shipwreck! The Whydah started out as a slave ship before being captured by pirates, so the exhibit covers the slave trade quite a bit. There are lots of artifacts from the shipwreck, as well as all the details they could piece together about the crew, and a pretty cool bit at the end about concretions and some of Barry Clifford's pioneering techniques in identifying objects inside concretions without breaking them apart.

I already knew a little about the Whydah beforehand because I read one of Clifford's other books, Return to Treasure Island and the Search for Captain Kidd. He found the Whydah a few years before the Captain Kidd expedition, so it is mentioned quite a bit. There are a couple books on Amazon about the Whydah expedition itself, Expedition Whydah: The Story of the World's First Excavation of a Pirate Treasure Ship and the Man Who Found Her, which I intend to read shortly, and the book that goes with the exhibit, Real Pirates: The Untold Story of the Whydah from Slave Ship to Pirate Ship.

The Real Pirates exhibit continues through August 6 at the St Louis Science Center. Admission is $16, but you can get a combo deal with the Omnimax (regular price $9) for $22. I recommend Hubble!