If you happen upon a pirate on the Wilmington Riverwalk one evening, don’t be alarmed. He’s not here to pillage or plunder; he’s here to give a new spin on Cape Fear history as part of the new Pirates on the Cape Fear walking tour.
“We have a rich pirate history here on the Cape Fear coast,” said Justin LaNasa, owner of Hardwire Tattoo and the man behind Pirates on the Cape Fear.“For as long as I’ve known, we’ve had ghost tours, haunted pub crawls and historical tours of downtown, but I saw this gap in the history; essentially everyone was ignoring the pirates.”
In April, after months of planning, LaNasa opened Pirates on the Cape Fear.
For the tour to be authentic and successful he needed a pirate. But not just any pirate. He needed a pirate who knew the legends and lore; a pirate who looked and sounded the part; a pirate who could spin a tale and keep his audience hanging on every word.
That pirate was Ben Cortez, known to his audiences as Don Juan Cortez. With his big gold hoop earring, tri-cornered hat, sash, belt and breeches, he looks the part. The black beard completes the look, but his voice – booming and with just enough pirate patois – seals his role as swashbuckler.
“Ben’s the perfect guide for this,” said LaNasa. “He knows his history, he knows the stories, he knows how to entertain an audience and kids love him.”
For LaNasa and Cortez, kids are a key to Pirates on the Cape Fear as they have two separate pirate-themed activities for families.
The first, the walking tour where Don Juan Cortez tells of pirate sloops hiding behind Topsail Island, using the shoals off Bald Head Island to wreck ships, and ships ducking into the river to avoid patrols, follows the Riverwalk. From the information booth at the foot of Market Street, Cortez leads his groups down to the southern end of the Riverwalk near the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge, then up Nun Street and back to the information booth via South Front Street.
The Pirate School, the other activity Pirates on the Cape Fear offers, takes kids from the information booth to the grassy area in front of the Coast Guard Cutter Diligence at the foot of Princess Street. There he teaches kids how to be pirates. They sing sailing songs, learn to tie a few knots, practice swordplay (safely, of course) and practice chores sailors would have performed onboard a pirate ship. And there are plenty of kid-appropriate pirate stories.
Participants in both the walking tour and Pirate School have the opportunity to have their picture made with Cortez at the end of their tour, and kids have the opportunity to change into a pirate costume for their photo. LaNasa said he’s posting many of the pictures on the Pirates on the Cape Fear Facebook page, although a portable photo printer allows him to print a copy on the spot.
LaNasa also uses a mobile wifi hotspot to provide Internet access to an iPhone he uses to process credit card payments with a Square credit card reader.
“The Square is really cool,” LaNasa said. “It’s easy to use and lets us take credit cards here at our station rather than having people walk a half-block up Market [Street] to our credit card machine in Hardwire [Tattoo].”
On a recent Tuesday afternoon, Cortez led a tour of six women down the Riverwalk where he, and they, told pirate stories.
Visiting Wilmington as part of a Teachey family reunion, the ladies offered up that they could be related, however distantly, to the dread pirate Blackbeard, who was known to use the name Edward Teach (among others). Cortez showed his mastery as a storyteller and on the fly changed the focus of his tour from a general pirate history to specific stories of Blackbeard’s 18-month reign of terror off the coast of North Carolina.
As he led them along his path, he explained Blackbeard’s partnership with “The Gentleman Pirate” Stede Bonnet, and outlined his capture and Blackbeard’s death. Along the way he told of Wilmington’s hidden tunnels once used to smuggle contraband on and off pirate and black market ships, and to transport “men pressed into service” onto pirate ships in the river or just offshore.
Back at the information booth, Cortez answered more specific Blackbeard questions from the Teachey ladies and posed for pictures with kids on the Riverwalk, staying in character the whole time.
“We’re glad the tour is catching on,” LaNasa said. “I’ve had the idea for a while but I finally found the time and the people to pull it off.”
According to LaNasa, the response has been quite good. Monday through Thursday they take reservations for tours and have only missed a few nights since the tourist season started in earnest (and some of those were due to weather), but on the weekend, Cortez leads two tours each night, one at 7:30 p.m. and one at 8:30 p.m. with photos and costumed photos available before the early tour and after the late tour.
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