On Monday, November 13, 2006, a friend and I visited the Mariners' Museum in Newport News, Virginia, where several of my Robert Newton photos are on display as part of the Swashbuckler: The Romance of the Pirate exhibit. The exhibit started this past July and runs through mid-March 2007. We were given the "VIP" tour by Marc Nucup, assistant curator and coordinator of the exhibit, who knowledgeably and patiently answered our numerous obscure questions about pirates and sailing. Cynthia Verser from Collections Management and Josh Graml, a researcher at the museum's library, were also very helpful. (It was a huge thrill for me to turn the pages of an original 1729 printing of Captain Charles Johnson's A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates—or A General History of the Pirates for short—in the library, while the display includes original editions of The Buccaneers of America by Alexander Exquemelin and The Pirate by Sir Walter Scott, the inventor of the historical novel. It's amazing how well those old books have held up compared to the kind they mass-produce today. The leather-bound covers showed their age, but the paper looked brand-new!) I highly recommend the exhibit—which contrasts the romantic image of the pirate we've come to know from the movies and literature with genuine pirate facts and artifacts—to all pirate enthusiasts and Robert Newton fans. As you can see from the photos below, Robert Newton figures prominently in the exhibit, so clap on sail, me hearties, and make all speed to Newport News before March!

~Susan

Click here for more information about the exhibit.

All photos on this page are copyright © 2006 by Susan D. Ciriello; all rights reserved.
(Sorry about the quality; my real camera broke just before the trip, and I had to buy a cheap one at the last minute, which apparently doesn't like slow film, even with a flash!)