MOSI shelves exhibit plans for Whydah pirate ship

Dec. 5--TAMPA -- A controversial exhibit featuring artifacts from a former slave ship, the Whydah, will not premiere at Tampa's Museum of Science and Industry next May as planned.

The museum said in a two-sentence news release that the exhibit is still in the conceptual phase and that museum leaders believed, "there is insufficient time to effectively review how the sensitive history of this particular exhibition will be treated."

A coalition of black civil rights groups opposes the exhibit, which will focus on the Whydah's time after its capture by pirates. Coalition leaders feel the museum is seeking to cash in on the ship's controversial past while de-emphasizing Africans' suffering under slavery.

The head of the company that is designing the exhibit said pressure from civil rights groups had nothing to do with the cancellation.

John Norman, president of Arts and Exhibitions International, said artifacts that were excavated from the wrecked ship this summer have to be treated to remove salt from the metal so they don't deteriorate.

"Usually it takes about a year to develop an exhibition," Norman said. "We just do not have enough time to get it developed for this summer."

Norman said artifacts from the shipwreck that include cannon and a 10-foot-high anchor would not be ready to travel for six to nine months.

He said he informed MOSI of the decision several days ago. It was unclear from the brief press release whether MOSI might exhibit the ship's artifacts at a later date. Museum officials said MOSI President Wit Ostrenko was out of town and could not be reached Monday.

Civil rights leaders said they hope the museum drops the exhibit from further consideration.

"I think based upon all the controversy and ambiguity that surrounded it, the best thing to do is drop the whole issue," said Sam Horton, president of the local NAACP branch.

An attempt in 1993 to build a commercial exhibit around the ship's artifacts in Tampa's Garrison Channel fizzled after black activists complained they were not consulted. Norman said his group was not involved in that project.

James Ransom, who opposed the 1993 project and the latest plan, said the exhibits insult black people because they romanticize a ship that spent most of its time conveying Africans to slavery in the New World. The ship wrecked in 1717 off Cape Cod. The wreckage was discovered in 1984.

"We have to recognize that MOSI is a facility that needs to make money to operate," Ransom said. "But it's counterproductive to insult African-American people in order to make money."

Archaeologist Barry Clifford, who excavated the ship, said the exhibit should be embraced by blacks because it will tell how former slaves were "democratically elected" to positions of leadership on pirate vessels. He said one-third of the pirate crew that captured the Whydah were blacks.

"In the 18th century, there were very few choices for Africans, especially former slaves," Clifford said. "A pirate ship afforded them some form of freedom."

Clifford said that a ship once captained by Blackbeard, now on exhibit in North Carolina, was a former slave ship.

Norman said it's too early to tell where the exhibit will go now that Tampa is out of the picture, but he said the controversy will not stop the Whydah artifacts from being displayed in other cities.

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