Pirates for Everyone!

Aye, maties, it's that time a year again. The Gasparilla Pirate Fest is today in Tampa, FL. The Tampa Bay Times has a nice piece on the festival highlighting the growing diversity of the festival.

Formerly a Mardi-Gras-style event for white people with privilege, the Fest is now growing into something for everyone, from the suburbs to the "gritty" neighborhoods, to the rural surrounding areas. The article describes the various groups involved:

Time — and even Gasparilla — changes. After the big brouhaha over Ye Mystic Krewe's all-white, all-male membership, they admitted a few black members. Today you have more than 50 krewes in the pirate party: a krewe for "women of spirit and wit," krewes of sailboaters and riverboat gamblers, the Krewe of Buffalo Soldiers, a krewe in kilts. There's even Ye Notorious Krewe of the Peg Leg Pirate, with a core mission of helping amputees and their families.

It's fitting for a pirate festival to be diverse, because most pirate crews were more diverse than their Naval and otherwise reputable counterparts. Since pirats pledged allegiance to no nation, many nationalilites could be represented on their crews. Pirates had even been known to capture slaving ships and invite the enslaved people to join their crew as equal members.

So if yer near Tampa today... hell if you're near Tampa you're probably already at the fest, so read the nice article tomorrow...

Happy Birthday, Black Sam

Today is the 320th anniversary of the birth of "Black Sam" Bellamy, nicknamed the "Prince of Pirates."

Bellamy was born in England, became a sailor, and sailed to Cape Cod. There he met a girl so fair: Maria Hallett. She was so fair that he decided to scour the coast of Florida looking for shipwrecks to bring her treasure. When he couldn't find any, he turned pirate.

He first joined Benjamin Hornigold's crew on the Mary Anne. In 1716, Bellamy took command of the Mary Anne. He later captured a better ship, the Sultana. Bellamy was known for his mercy and generosity. When he captured the 300-ton slaving ship, the Whydah Galley, he gave its captain the Sultana. The Whydah Galley was laden with ivory, gold, and silver. Evidently he had finally captured enough for his lady love, for he sailed back to Cape Cod.

Tragically, he never saw Maria again. The Whydah Galley was caught in a storm off the cape, wrecked, and went under the tide. Nine men from Bellamy's fleet made it ashore, and all but two were captured.

Bellamy himself went down with the Whydah Galley. The ship and some of its treasure were recovered by treasure hunters in 1984. Many of the artifacts are on display at the Expedition Whydah Sea Lab & Learning Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. There is also currently a travelling exhibit with Whydah artifacts called Real Pirates: The Untold Story of the Whydah from Slave Ship to Pirate Ship. It just moved to The Field Museum in Chicago & the show opens on Wednesday.