April 2, 2009

By Lindsay Key '11MFA

Five history students studying pirates in Associate Professor Bill McCarthy's research seminar class recently traveled with McCarthy to the Outer Banks History center in Manteo to conduct research for their upcoming papers.

"One of the site's collections is dedicated to pirates, so the venue was useful for us," explained McCarthy. "Pirate records are few, by definition, but the center has collected nearly every published work extant. it also houses a collection of popular works and documentation of local commemorative events that is particularly useful in lilluminating the popularization of the topic-- a key component of any work on pirates."

McCarthy said that the collection of North Carolina Colonial Documents in the museum was also useful in providing local contexts for the activities of pirates, social history, and criminal proceedings.

The Pirates seminar, arguably one of the most popular classes at UNCW, is composed of senior history majors and graduate students. As a final project, students are asked to complete a 25 page source-driven paper on some aspect of pirating. In the past, students have chosen to write about the defiant deaths and strange diets of pirates.

The weekend trip, which also included visits to the Roanoke Adventure Museum and History Park, the Wright Brothers Memorial, the Bodie Island Lighthouse, the Hatteras Lighthouse, and a small museum at Ocrocaoke, was organized with the intent of fulfilling the department's applied learning initiative.

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