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The best history books are packed with vivid details about characters and events (sometimes prompting readers to say a good history “reads like a novel”). But reconstructing scenes and events from hundreds of years ago when only the scarcest of … Continue reading →

In the days before their fateful sail back to shore for the weekend, Philip Ashton and his five-man crew of Marblehead fishermen had been hauling cod anywhere from ten to more than thirty miles off Cape Sable, at the southern … Continue reading →

More of the pirate Sam Bellamy’s gold may still be buried on the ocean floor off Marconi Beach on Cape Cod. Barry Clifford, the diver and explorer who discovered Bellamy’s shipwrecked vessel, the Whydah, is in the news again this … Continue reading →

The pirates who terrorized the Atlantic in the 1720s were a rebellious group, defiantly rejecting the traditions and authority figures of their time, unleashing their greatest fury on the sea captains they captured. But on several occasions there were rebellions … Continue reading →

When convicted pirates were executed in Boston during the 1720s, their bodies were often buried out on one of the Boston Harbor islands. Two surviving members of John Phillips’ pirate crew were executed near the Boston shoreline in May 1724 … Continue reading →

During a recent visit to the Province Lands Visitor Center in Provincetown, MA, I discovered a nearly century-old video that shows life aboard a working whaleship, the Viola, from 1916. This grainy footage provides a rare glimpse into what it … Continue reading →

When he escaped on the uninhabited island of Roatan, Philip Ashton desperately needed to find food — but he did not recognize many of the tropical fruits growing wild in the woods. He was reluctant to try many of these … Continue reading →