'Real Pirates' storm the Nauticus

NORFOLK

About a century after Shakespeare wrote "all the world's a stage," a bunch of pirates in the Caribbean got reality and stagecraft truly confused.

The crew of the Whydah, in the early 1700s, put on a play about a pirate trial for their own entertainment. A few drunken men stumbled in late, just as an actor was being sentenced to death for piracy.

In the actor's defense, they threw hand grenades into the gathering and drew their cutlasses. They broke an actor's leg, cut off the playwright's arm and killed an audience member, according to the catalog for "Real Pirates," a blockbuster Nauticus exhibition opening today in the newly upgraded lower level of the Half Moone Cruise and Celebration Center.

"Real Pirates" purports to present life in the golden age of piracy as it was, rather than through the mythic versions passed down through Hollywood and storybooks. The show presents treasures from what organizers tout as the first pirate shipwreck to be discovered and fully authenticated.

That would be the Whydah, built as a slave ship in 1715 and sunk off Cape Cod as pirates' booty in 1717.

A companion exhibit, organized by Nauticus with the Hampton Roads Naval Museum, could steal some of the Whydah's limelight: "Piracy Today: Terror on the High Seas" features the orange life-boat in which Capt. Richard Phillips was held hostage in April by Somali pirates. It's the same boat we saw over and over on news channels.

The Norfolk museums got the lifeboat because the pirate incident involved Norfolk-based Maersk Line Ltd., and Maersk's president and CEO, John Reinhart, is on Nauticus' board. The public might glimpse Phillips this evening in Norfolk's Grand Illumination Parade, for which he will be grand marshal.

In the past week, the drama of these true pirate stories past and present was mirrored backstage, as dozens of workers scrambled to install a sprawling, 16,000-square-foot exhibition on dead-line.

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Five days before show time, from where project manager Christina Wright sat, it looked like backstage on Broadway.

Brand new exhibition walls resembled unfinished stage sets. Shadows and lights mysteriously shifted as workers made adjustments on nearby displays. A steady parade of workers stopped by and phoned Wright.

"Shackles case still going up outside the bell?" the lighting designer asked. Wright nodded.

She and her team had been going full tilt since Nov. 2, when the 11 53-foot-long trucks carrying the makings of "Real Pirates" began rumbling in to Nauticus.

Wright works for Arts and Exhibitions International, which organized current touring shows on King Tut and Princess Diana. "Real Pirates" was created by her company with the National Geographic Society. Nauticus is the fourth stop for the show, which closed last month at Chicago's Field Museum. The openness of the Half Moone facility impressed Wright.

"You would never know this was a cruise facility," she said.

The city recently paid to adapt the cruise center, upgrading electrical for such major exhibitions, adding light trusses and reusable carpet tiles and widening a loading dock door (to bring in the lifeboat).

The center is adjacent to Nauticus, on the downtown waterfront not far from where the pirate Blackbeard's head was placed atop a pole on the coast of Hampton in January 1719.

When Wright and her crew began installation, the center was just "a big, open, cement floor." Earlier this week, 12 galleries existed, each containing a different chapter of the story.

The show opens with the Whydah's sinking in a powerful nor'easter, told through a video experience that ends with the parting of curtains to reveal a key artifact: the ship's bell, the first item to positively identify the wreck.

(Such a storm was not foreign to Wright, who kept her team working throughout Hampton Roads' nor'easter last week. "I've never had to schedule a museum installation around high tide before," she said.)

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The exhibition delves into the slave trade, because slavery is what fueled the wealth that created the environment for pirates to thrive.

The Whydah - pronounced WI-duh, like a Western pioneer's version of "widow" - made only one slave run from Africa to the Caribbean before Capt. Sam Bellamy and his pirate crew took her over in early 1717.

Throughout the show, four pirates pop up as characters, including Bellamy and a boy named John King who had begged to join their ranks. Also profiled is a free black man of Dutch and African descent and a Miskito Indian, possibly from Nicaragua.

Visitors may board parts of the Whydah re-created at full scale in fiberglass, including the captain's quarters and a deck. Treasure chests will be piled high with genuine loot - gold coins that early last week were still being kept by TowneBank, to be delivered nearer the opening via police escort. Jewelry, pistols, swords and cannon also will go on display.

The treasures were brought up by underwater explorer Barry Clifford and his fellow divers, to whom a section is devoted. Clifford discovered the wreck in 1984, has established a museum for Whydah artifacts in Province-town, Mass., and is still diving for treasure. (What remains of the three-masted ship, however, is still buried deep in sand.)

The sounds of voices and roaring waves, dramatic lighting, giant video screens and walk-in environments conspire to bring the era to life.

"The whole thing is very theatrical," Wright said. "We do our best to help the guests really get a sense of what they're seeing, and really get immersed."

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Rolf Johnson, Nauticus' deputy director, foresees dramatic changes for the city museum with the advent of "Real Pirates," the largest show since the facility opened in 1994.

The high-profile exhibition cost $1.6 million, counting the city's modest expense to adapt the cruise center, Johnson said. By comparison, a show now at the maritime museum, "It's a Nano World," was priced at $60,000.

"I think we have really raised the bar here at Nauticus for exhibitions," Johnson told the staff at a briefing Monday.

Nauticus usually offers a few special programs with its changing exhibitions. For this show, dozens of programs are planned. The museum also is involving more local partners, from The Mariners' Museum in Newport News to Norfolk State University.

With such a high price tag, the show is a risk, Johnson acknowledged, but the excitement of the project has spurred more donations, and he's banking on a combined attendance of 80,000 people, which would make the project at least break even, he said.

Such big numbers are possible, given the show's draw in other markets, Johnson said.

"No more wringing our hands and saying, 'How can we get more people into Nauticus?' Now, we're doing it."

Teresa Annas, (757) 446-2485, teresa.annas@pilotonline.com