Pirate Events, Detroit

When a merchant ship wrecks, there are the literal treasures, tens of thousands of gold coins and the hundreds of pieces of silver.

Then there are those treasures that speak of a way of life as old as the USS Republic, a steamship that sank in the Atlantic 143 years ago. They are items like a clear, thick bottle of Mrs. Winslow's soothing syrup (the soothing agent was morphine) and a porcelain ink pot cover depicting a woman and two children that is so perfectly preserved the woman's pinky finger sticks straight up in the air, unbroken.

At the Detroit Science Center's "Odyssey's Shipwreck! Pirates & Treasure" Runs until September 1.