Imgoingboating.com is a new website within the last few months.  It has interesting articles about boating history, long range cruising, drinking and boating safety, famous ships of the world and lots of other related articles.

The article about pirate ships is the kind of article that is likely to be the subject of a school report.  For this reason I think a middle schooler would enjoy frequent visits to this Website.  Older age children and adults will also find interesting information among the many articles.

The famous pirate, Blackbeard got his start as a pirate from Queen Anne of Britain.  His actual birth name was Edward Teach.  It was the practice at that time for nations to pirate other nations ships on the high seas.  We still have this happening today. Terrorists usually do the pirating, however and the consequences are greater.

The sloops were fast and easy to turn.  These were the 1600 pirate ship with 15 cannons and weighing only 100 tons.  They rode high in the water and could run ashore easily.  This made it easy to hide from other ships.  The schooners and brigantines of the 1700’s increased the sloops 20 to 70 manpower by another ten men.  This allowed the additional 25-ton vessel to have 70 to 80 men, plus weapons.  They also had two masts, which made it possible to disguise their purpose.  Some had oars allowing them to move when there was little or no wind.

Articles such as this are fun for school age children.  The Internet is a tool for education as well as to entertain.  Parents need to learn how to use computers and supervise the websites their children habitually visit.  Parents should put imgoingboating.com on their approved list.