What are they trying to recover from the ocean? Sadly, it’s not a sunken pirate ship loaded with treasure. It’s not even a shipping container, as some social media reports speculated.

Pirates have seized dozens of ships in the Indian Ocean, many of which have been released after their owners paid tens of millions of dollars in ransoms.

Yes, as remarkable as it might seem, the pirate Blackbeard’s most prized ship apparently had reading material written by other sailors, and Royal Navy officers at that. Now, that’s not to say ...