Booty Call

There’s probably not a single nine-year-old boy in America who hasn’t dreamed of finding pirate treasure, but so far, Barry Clifford is the only one who’s managed to make that dream come true. “It was sort of one of those old Cape Cod folk stories, and my uncle used to...

By Jef Otte

March 17, 2011

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There’s probably not a single nine-year-old boy in America who hasn’t dreamed of finding pirate treasure, but so far, Barry Clifford is the only one who’s managed to make that dream come true. “It was sort of one of those old Cape Cod folk stories, and my uncle used to talk about it all the time,” Clifford recalls of the story of the Whydah, a pirate ship that was said to have sunk off the coast some 300 years ago. “It was something that always resonated in my subconscious.”

The Whydah, of course, is the ship that yielded the bulk of the artifacts in the Real Pirates exhibit currently on display at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, and Clifford is the guy who found the wreck back in 1984. “This is the only confirmed pirate treasure ever found,” Clifford notes with understandable pride. “A lot of people get it confused with Spanish galleons or other recovered shipwrecks, but this is the only actual pirate ship. So if you want to see some pirate treasure, the only place in the world to see it is Denver.”

At 7:30 p.m. tonight at the museum, 2001 Colorado Boulevard, Clifford will discuss his search for the Whydah, as well as his recent expedition to L'ile aux Forbans –- the island Robert Louis Stevenson wrote about in Treasure Island –- that will be the subject of a History Channel special in May. “They’ll get a little preview of that,” he promises.

Tickets are $18 ($15 for members); for more information, call 303-370-6000 or go to www.dmns.org.
Tue., March 22, 7:30 p.m., 2011

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