We went to the North Carolina Museum of History yesterday. We parked a couple of blocks away and, as we walked down the mall between the History Museum and the Museum of Natural Sciences, we saw there was a Memorial Day celebration taking place in front of the North Carolina State Capitol Building across the street. We got there in time to watch the Marine Honor Guard march and listen to the National Anthem. It was very nice. There is a pirate exhibit at the History Museum that we wanted to see. When we went to the Outer Banks last year, we found that North Carolina was pretty much pirate central during the 1600’s and 1700’s. Blackbeard sailed his pirate ship Queen Anne’s Revenge along the Carolina coast for a good number of years. We learned lots of interesting things about how pirates lived, their insurance programs ($ for the loss of a limb or an eye), what they ate, how they came to be pirates (often because there were no legitimate sailing jobs when the world was between wars), and all kinds of other minutiae. There were lots of artifacts including what they believe was the silver plated skull of Blackbeard that was used as a drinking mug by some rich folks after his death. From one list, we saw of those sailors for which there is a record 1718 was a very bad year as many seemed to have been hanged that year.
On the way home, we decided the kids might like to make dinner for us so we stopped off at Food Lion to pick up some beef and veggies. Kelly and Christian made a whole mess of sheeshkabobs. They were awesome. After I ate myself silly and took a nap, I did some serious reading to Kelly and Christian from A Patriot’s History of the United States while they worked on their Betty Blonde comics. In the mean time, Lorena decided to reupholster an old chair we had from my college days. She got it about half torn apart and got a little discouraged with the project, but I think it could be really great. I talked to her this morning and she is back on track. I will try to take some before and after pictures of the chair as she works on it.
There’s something magnetic about that pirate stuff. I’m drawn to it, to learn about it, but it gives me chills to think of it actually happening right off our shores.
Lynn
We really enjoyed seeing the pirate exhibits, Lynn, but you could really tell the people involved were from a different time and place. It is kind of fun in the context of the time and place where we now live, but it was definitely very creepy when you got to thinking about what actually happened. They were a very, very rough bunch of people.
H. E. Summey
(Forgive me for re-wording what you have already said)
Pirates were often ex-privateers, who simply weren’t interested in going back to their boring old jobs.