Pirates!

Yo, ho, ho and a bottle of rum, me hearties. Pirates: The Captain Kidd Story opens at Museum of London Docklands on 20 May and breezes along over the school summer holidays until 30 October. Avast, captain mums; ye museum curators are after ye gold (title link). A little known fact about London is that it was the place of execution for captured pirates. So there is a wealth of documents, paintings, maps and engravings to illustrate this major exhibition, as well as interactive displays. Above is a heavily cropped and recoloured version of Jean-Leon Gerome Ferris's The Capture of the Pirate Blackbeard, which depicts the battle between Edward Teach (Blackbeard) and Lieutenant Maynard in Ocracoke Bay in 1718. CLICK for a BBC slide show.