The exhibition will run from the 29th March 2025 until the 4th January 2026.
The Royal Maritime Museum will invite visitors to discover the truth behind pirate life in its major exhibition heading to the museum this spring.
Opening in March, the display will trace the changing depictions of pirates through the ages to reveal the reality behind the fiction with focus on real life pirates including:
Throughout the exhibition, there will be examination of the different perspectives of pirates from comical characters like Captain Pugwash and Captain Hook to anti-heroes like Long John Silver and Captain Jack Sparrow.
Covering theatre, film and fashion the exhibition brings together material from early literature on piracy in the eighteenth century to 1980s fashion. The exhibition will show nearly 200 objects including loans from the National Archives, V&A and BFI.
The first section of the exhibition will be titled ‘The Pirate Image’ , which will explore opular culture and why pirates generate such fascination. Much of what people perceive about pirates comes from Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, the novel that popularised myths such as walking the plank, pet parrots and hiding treasure. The exhibition will show how these tropes have been incorporated into a range of characters. One of the highlight loans for this section will be a selection of original illustrations from the comedy animation Captain Pugwash.
Meanwhile other loans will include: the costume worn by Orlando Bloom in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and a Vivienne Westwood ensemble from the 1981 ‘Pirate’ collection.
The exhibition will then move onto delving into the tales of specific pirates focusing on the so-called ‘golden age’ of piracy from the 1680s to the 1720s. A key text informing this period was A General History of the Pyrates by Captain Charles Johnson which narrates the lives of famous piratical figures. First published in 1724, it was an instant hit. Little is known about Johnson but it is now believed that he is an alias for the newspaper printer Nathaniel Mist (d. 1737). The National Maritime Museum has one of the world’s most comprehensive collections of the A General History of the Pyrates thanks to Philip Gosse the son of Edmund Gosse, a lifelong friend of Robert Louis Stevenson. Inspired by Stevenson, Philip began to acquire a pirate library, later purchased by the Museum. The exhibition will use the collection to reveal how Johnson’s various editions fed into and responded to popular ideas of pirates across Europe tracking how illustrations of pirates became more elaborate and theatrical to appeal to the public.
Meanwhile, ‘Global Pirates’ highlight objects include a hanging captured from a junk in the fleet of the Chinese pirate Shap Ng-tsai, who was active in the mid-nineteenth century.
The exhibition will follow the global history of piracy from the South China Sea to the coast of North Africa and explores the issues of modern piracy facing seafarers today.
To book tickets visit: https://www.rmg.co.uk/whats-on/national-maritime-museum/pirates