Pirates Exhibit at Denver Museum of Nature and Science

First, I want to say: Great exhibit!! I’ve seen all the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and I was amazed about two things. First, how accurate those movies are, and second how much I didn’t know about pirates. When ever you see Johnny Depp in a pirate movie swilling grog, I am the first to think: that’s not how it really was, that’s just Hollywood’s version. But it turns out that pirates did drink a lot and they had many more men on a ship then was needed so that they wouldn’t have to work as hard.
Also, in the movies the pirates always seem to run circles around the Navy ships. You’ll find out in this exhibit why that was true.
Seeing these items that were pulled from the ocean floor by real life treasure hunters is amazing. Being able to touch a doubloon that was on a pirate ship is amazing. Getting the story of these pirates told in a compelling and fun way is amazing. I guess you can see that I thought the exhibit was amazing.
There’s another part to the story that is compelling and is completely left out of the Johnny Depp movies, from what I recall, and that is that the ships were transporting slaves back and forth across the ocean and that many of the ships that were taken over by pirates were slave ships. It’s interesting how the exhibit shows that the pirates were much more integrated than the merchant and navy ships of their day.
It really made a somber impact on those I walked through the exhibit with to see the shackles and whips and other accoutrements of slave transport. I saw children with their pirate hats and swords staring wide eyed at these evidences of the atrocities of the time.
It was a lot different than I expected, and it’s an exhibit you’ll feel like a bilge rat if you miss matey.

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