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  • James Mante holds his son Lucas as they stare into...

    Steve Heaslip / Associated Press

    James Mante holds his son Lucas as they stare into a treasure chest full of silver coins on display at the Whydah Pirate Museum.

  • Rowan Daray, left, Sam Bellamy and Axel Wicks greet visitors...

    Steve Heaslip / Associated Press

    Rowan Daray, left, Sam Bellamy and Axel Wicks greet visitors outside at the Whydah Pirate Museum in South Yarmouth, Mass. For the past 10 years, a Massachusetts explorer took an exhibit of his findings from shipwrecks on tour. After putting up about $2 million to renovate the former ZooQuarium on Cape Cod, Barry Clifford opened the museum.

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West Yarmouth, Mass. — Barry Clifford stood behind a desk amid a few freshwater fish tanks. In each was an orange-colored mass, which drew the curious stares of small children and some adults. In front of him was another one of these masses.

To his right was an X-ray screen, and to his left were what looked like dental tools laid out on a small towel. These masses are concretions, combinations of rock, sand, clay and other material that can form around metal as it starts to deteriorate in salt water. The concretion in front of Clifford was thought to contain dozens of coins that were once aboard the pirate ship Whydah, a former slave ship that wrecked off the coast of Wellfleet in 1717.

Rowan Daray, left, Sam Bellamy and Axel Wicks greet visitors outside at the Whydah Pirate Museum in South Yarmouth, Mass.   For the past 10 years, a Massachusetts explorer took an exhibit of his findings from shipwrecks on tour. After putting up about $2 million to renovate the former ZooQuarium on Cape Cod, Barry Clifford opened the museum.
Rowan Daray, left, Sam Bellamy and Axel Wicks greet visitors outside at the Whydah Pirate Museum in South Yarmouth, Mass. For the past 10 years, a Massachusetts explorer took an exhibit of his findings from shipwrecks on tour. After putting up about $2 million to renovate the former ZooQuarium on Cape Cod, Barry Clifford opened the museum.

Clifford, 71, has made his living exploring and recovering shipwrecks like the Whydah, and, for the past 10 years, has taken an exhibit of his findings on tour. On June 26, Clifford unveiled his 7,000-square-foot Whydah Pirate Museum off Route 28 in West Yarmouth.

Even on a perfect beach day, people steadily streamed into the museum, which used to be the ZooQuarium. Clifford said he put about $2 million into the property and fit his 20,000-square-foot traveling exhibit into its new home.

Around the corner from where Clifford was working was the beginning of the exhibit — the bell of the Whydah. Black Sam Bellamy was the young captain of the ship and was considered the Robin Hood of the pirate world. Bellamy plundered more than 50 ships aboard the Whydah and became known as the richest pirate in history.

The wealth and multinational arsenal the Whydah accumulated sank long ago in the sand off Wellfleet on the eastern shore of Cape Cod. Only two crew members survived the storm that destroyed the ship. The concretion on display Saturday is one of the pieces found some distance away from the wreckage, an area Clifford says he plans to search more later this summer.

The new museum holds only a fraction of the treasure found by Clifford and his team of divers. Most of it is stored at his laboratory in Brewster.

“We have thousands and thousands of artifacts in Brewster,” Clifford said. “We have enough to keep busy for the next 50 years.”

Near the scale model of the Whydah was an exhibit of pirates enjoying themselves in Captain Black Frog’s Tavern. In front of the exhibit stood Trish Chamberland, her husband, Wayne Woodard, and their 7-year-old son, Steven Woodard, who were visiting from Great Barrington.

“He likes pirates a lot,” Woodard said of his son, adding that the boy liked the new museum better than the former ZooQuarium.

As her grandfather greeted friends and family members entering the museum, 7-year-old Tallulah Clifford was at work on the concretion her grandfather was showing off earlier in the day. Donning a pirate’s cap and a fake pistol, she was whittling away with a toothbrush and another tool and came across a silver coin.

It was her first discovery, said her father, Brandon Clifford. Just as he grew up with the recovery of the Whydah, his daughter is now growing up with the museum, Brandon Clifford said.

“He went to work on it when I was 4,” Brandon said of his father. Brandon is now a field archaeologist and splits his time between Provincetown and Colorado.

James Mante holds his son Lucas as they stare into a treasure chest full of silver coins on display at the Whydah Pirate Museum.
James Mante holds his son Lucas as they stare into a treasure chest full of silver coins on display at the Whydah Pirate Museum.

In the coming years, the museum will continue to expand, with a pirate village planned behind the building, and a new discovery center where people can watch more artifacts as they are recovered. Spaces that used to house tanks in the building’s aquarium days will be used to preserve larger finds like the concretion of seven cannons Clifford recovered recently.

Although he could have made a bigger splash with the museum in a major city, Barry Clifford said he felt it needed to be on Cape Cod.

“It’s the essence of Cape Cod,” he said.

WHYDAH PIRATE MUSEUM, 674 Massachusetts 28, West Yarmouth, Mass., is open Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Friday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Admission is $18.50 for adults, $16 for seniors (age 65 and older), $14.50 for ages 4-17 and free for children 3 and younger; discoverpirates.com and 508-534-9571.