Drain the Oceans (2018–…): Season 3, Episode 5 - Pirate Ships of the Caribbean - full transcript
Uncovering the long-lost shipwrecks of legendary captains reveals why the Caribbean, more than all other seas, became famous for pirates.
Tropical, beautiful and deadly.
The Caribbean, for centuries
home to adventurers, heroes and villains.
The Caribbean has hundreds of islands
and deadly reefs and yet,
what made it all the more frightening
was that it was a lawless place.
Above all other seas,
the Caribbean is famous for pirates.
Pirates of the Caribbean.
How can you not be excited
about pirates and pirate ships?
Everyone's intrigued
by this golden age of piracy.
For years, archaeologists
have searched in vain for pirate ships.
Now the discovery of rare evidence
is unearthing
the true story behind the most famous
pirate names of all time:
Blackbeard, Captain Kidd and Henry Morgan,
allowing us to drain
this ultimate pirate sea
and uncover
buried archaeological treasure.
This is the Caribbean coast of Panama,
on the estuary of the Chagres River.
In 1671,
British born buccaneer,
Captain Henry Morgan,
arrives here
with a giant fleet of 36 ships,
packed with nearly 2,000 pirates.
Morgan has spent years
raiding the coast of the Spanish Main,
Spain's colonies in the Americas.
But the Chagres Estuary is the mother lode
because all of the riches
of the Spanish Empire
passed through here.
Spain is depending on bullion supplies
to keep its economy going,
and it's there to be stolen.
Here, in these
crocodile infested waters,
Henry Morgan pulls off
the greatest pirate raid of all time.
Documents prove the attack took place,
but for centuries
no hard evidence has ever been found
on the sea floor.
Now, almost 350 years later,
could this newly discovered shipwreck
be the crucial breakthrough?
Archaeologist, Frederick Fritz Hanselmann
is on a mission.
For the past ten years, he's been
scanning the seabed and reef here
for evidence of Morgan's raid.
For an archaeologist,
Panama's a phenomenal place to work.
It all happened here
and especially piracy.
He's teamed up with
maritime archaeologist, James Delgado,
who's studied Caribbean piracy
for decades.
Pirates loved the Caribbean
because there were so many places to hide.
You could tuck into
a tiny little key or an island
or you could come to the coast of, say,
Central America and hide out there.
It was the perfect place for pirates.
It's this secrecy
that makes finding hard
evidence of pirates extremely difficult.
Outlaws prefer to leave no clues,
but Fritz and Jim have found one lead:
a letter by Henry Morgan himself,
describing how his men attack and overrun
the fort overlooking the Chagres River,
the Castile San Lorenzo.
Morgan's letter also recounts
that after the battle,
he had to abandon five vessels,
including his flagship, the Satisfaction.
I had the ill fortune to cast away
the ship I was in and four more.
No one has ever found
the Satisfaction,
but Fritz and Jim are determined to try.
These are treacherous waters,
full of swirling tides,
shifting sands and the deadly Lajas Reef,
and mud washed down out of the jungle
buries any clues
that may remain on the sea bed.
But despite the challenges,
Fritz has conducted a series of surveys
using specialized scanning equipment
and identified some promising targets.
Could one of them be part
of Henry Morgan's pirate armada?
There's only one way to find out.
The water empties from the river mouth,
taking with it centuries of silt and mud,
revealing something astonishing.
There on the reef, preserved by the mud,
the hull of a ship.
Over 50 ft long and 22 ft wide,
the size and shape
typical of a 17th century galleon,
fitting the period of Henry Morgan's raid.
And there's more.
All down the centre, rows of boxes.
Could they be chests full of treasure?
Despite the risk of crocodiles,
Fritz decides to take a closer look.
We're gonna splash on this site,
take a look at the shipwreck
and see what we've got on our hands.
He locates the boxes
and some have objects still inside.
When you look at it
and you say, "You know what,
the cargo hold is full,
has all these wooden chests,
has all these crates."
In the lab,
Fritz makes another discovery.
These are cargo seals
and these would have been used
to mark bales of silk.
Silks are precious cargo,
a good prize for any pirate,
as are these,
heavily encrusted sword blades.
Were they once wielded
by a fearsome buccaneer?
And if you look closely,
you can see part of the blade is exposed.
Then, in a rusted mass,
Fritz identifies the remains of other,
more everyday items.
Shoes for the mules bringing the gold
and silver to be shipped back to Spain.
Not something
a pirate would risk his life for.
A vessel loaded with swords,
wooden chests, wooden barrels,
is basically going to be a supply ship.
It's likely not a pirate ship,
so Fritz digs into Spanish records
and finds a name,
the Encarnación.
A merchant vessel packed with goods
to restock Spain's colony in Panama,
including crates full of mule shoes.
Fritz has not unearthed evidence
of Henry Morgan's famous raid,
but he has shown exactly why this region
attracted pirates like him.
The Chagres River
forms part of the shortest crossing point
from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans,
making it the hub
of all Spanish imperial trade routes,
funneling out the gold, silver
and other treasures
mined or looted by the Spanish Empire.
We are at the mouth
of the Chagres River which was,
to all intents and purposes,
the original Panama Canal.
While it doesn't completely
cut across the Isthmus,
it goes enough of the way
so that you can bring their treasure down,
put it on a boat and take it out to ships
waiting right here
at the moth of the river .
All of this explains
why Henry Morgan came here
with his pirate fleet.
But his ships are still missing.
Fritz continues his survey
and, on a different part of the reef,
picks up a new target.
Could these mysterious pieces of wreckage
finally lead him
to one of Morgan's long lost pirate ships?
For centuries, there's been
no hard archaeological evidence
for Henry Morgan's raid.
No pieces of eight,
no secret map marked with an "X."
Just a letter, written by Morgan himself,
stating that he lost five ships.
Now, Fritz Hanselmann's
latest underwater scanning
has given us the data we need...
to part the pirate seas.
The seaward side of Lajas Reef
is now exposed,
and on it lie remarkable relics.
Scattered on the bottom are eight cannon
and all of them
look to be different sizes.
Could these be the actual weapons used
by Morgan and his band of buccaneers?
So, this is British, that's British,
that is potentially French.
Now that we're in the lab
and we're seeing everything cleaned off,
the sense that's emerging
is a group of guns
from the same time and a mix of guns,
not only in terms of size
but in terms of nationality.
If it's a naval ship
or it's a naval ordnance,
they're gonna be more standardized,
they're gonna be more similar in size,
whereas a pirate
is gonna make use of anything
that they can get their hands on.
The mismatched weapons
fit the profile of a pirate
and their sizes do to.
Small cannon like these
aren't big enough to sink a ship,
but that's exactly why pirates like them.
They wanna disable it
so they're able to take the goods,
take the treasure.
Some literature describes these guns
as murderers because they're smaller,
they're used for antipersonnel,
they're used more like a shotgun
to take out multiple people above decks,
to clear off the deck
so that they can capture the ship
rather than sink it.
We're looking at a 17th century version
of Grand Theft Auto, just using ships.
It's a promising clue.
Next, Fritz and Jim make out
a faint mark on one of the cannon.
A mark that hints
at something very exciting.
This particular gun has markings
of a foundry in England,
so this is a British falconet that
was made in the mid to late 17th century.
The date fits perfectly
with Henry Morgan's raid.
This gun was loaded,
still had the ball in it,
which means they sailed in
with this thing ready to go.
You're not expecting
to find an English gun
on a Spanish reef in the 1600s
unless they've come there
to have some mischief.
The best fit we have for these is that
these are from Morgan's ships.
At last,
a genuine pirate relic,
almost certainly left behind
by Captain Henry Morgan himself.
But if Morgan's cannon are here,
what happened to his ships?
The way the weapons are scattered
across Lajas Reef may offer another clue.
Fritz returns to Morgan's letter.
I gave orders for the fleet
to follow me into the harbor.
A tropical storm is building,
so Morgan seeks the safety
of a sheltered cove,
but it's too late.
Lashing seas drive Morgan's own flagship
straight onto the reef.
A ship is not like a car
where you can slam on your breaks
and avoid a collision,
so Morgan runs his flagship,
the Satisfaction, aground
and four other ships follow suit
with a pile-up on Lajas Reef.
As the ships wreck,
the cannons are thrown loose.
Timbers are cracking,
the hull is breaking like a walnut
squeezed in a vice.
The masts have fallen,
rigging, ropes are snapping,
men are jumping or falling off
and the sides of the ship
where these would be attached,
they're likely just coming right down
and so things are raining down
on the bottom,
all over the reef, rolling and tumbling.
It's now clear,
Morgan's ships were shattered,
their wooden remains vanished over time.
But 350 years later,
Fritz has found his cannon.
According to Morgan's letter,
most of his men scrambled to safety.
Undeterred by the loss of his ships,
Morgan then does something
even more audacious.
This seaborne buccaneer
launches a land invasion,
marching his men across the narrow strip
of land towards the Pacific coast,
to ransack Spain's colonial capital,
Panama City,
leaving it a smoking ruin.
The result is,
utter shock in the Spanish court.
It's as if a bomb has gone off in Madrid.
Panama has fallen.
But why does a pirate,
famous for hit and runs,
want to destroy Spain's main city
in the Americas?
Fritz discovers a 17th century document
that reveals Henry Morgan's true purpose.
The English call Morgan
not a pirate but a privateer,
an admiral
working for the English King Charles,
contracted to attack
and rob Spanish colonies.
Morgan recruits hundreds of pirates
from around the Caribbean
to help him in his raids,
splitting the profits with King Charles.
And so, when they're robbing,
they're not just robbing,
they're acting as an agent
of the English crown.
Making Henry Morgan
a very rich and powerful man.
I believe Henry Morgan is perhaps
the most successful pirate
or privateer ever, for the simple fact
that he actually retired
and enjoyed the spoils of his wealth.
Across the Caribbean,
other privateers
follow in Morgan's footsteps,
serving their king
while getting rich quick.
In a sea where no one country
has overall control
and with fleets of treasure ships,
this turns the Caribbean
into a paradise for pirates.
And yet, throughout the whole region,
all that remains
are rare and tantalizing clues.
But now, what can this
remarkable wreck site
reveal about another legendary pirate?
Charlie Beeker of Indiana University
has spent a lifetime
on the trail of a buccaneer,
every bit as infamous as Henry Morgan.
Captain William Kidd.
You think of Captain Kidd
and you've really gotta think about
the probably the most infamous
of all pirates we have.
The inspiration
for countless books and movies,
William Kidd was one of the Caribbean's
most successful raiders.
His exploits make him rich,
famous and feared.
Charlie is on the hunt
for Kidd's last ship,
a mysterious wreck that
has eluded historians for over 300 years.
Called the Quedagh Merchant,
it was a pirate super-ship
with a towering stern castle
and covered with intricate carvings.
Some believe it might have been stuffed
with treasure
when it disappeared in 1699
off a small island near the south coast
of the Dominican Republic.
Charlie is on his way
to the last known location
of Kidd's famous flagship.
There is a shipwreck here,
we know that.
Whether or not it's Captain Kidd,
we'll see, but we'll take a look at it,
try and get some footage of it.
Do our first preliminary assessment
of what we think might be there.
This close to the shore,
Charlie fears the waves
may have destroyed key evidence
to link this wreck to Captain Kidd.
But even from the surface,
he can make something out.
Well, you know,
if it's Captain Kidd's shipwreck,
there's been people looking
for this site for 300 years.
It'd be really quite exciting
to see what we've got.
Cannons, lots of cannons.
Finding 17th century cannons
at the site
encourages Charlie
to gather more information
scouring the seafloor for clues.
And by using the data he collects,
it's possible for us
to drain this rocky shore,
to reveal an extraordinary wreck site,
one that's survived
centuries of breaking waves.
Among the relics, more cannon,
carefully stacked almost seven feet high.
Beneath them,
flukes of three large anchors poke out
and another smaller pile of cannon,
making 26 in total.
This ship was certainly well armed,
but did it belong to Captain Kidd?
Charlie needs more evidence
so he heads to a local archive.
Buried deep in the files,
he finds an account
written by Captain Kidd himself.
This is William Kidd's
signature.
It says here there are 20 some cannons
in the hold.
Uh, we have 25, 26 cannons on the site.
It's a close match
but to be certain that he's found
Captain Kidd's infamous pirate flagship,
Charlie needs something more conclusive.
And then he makes a stunning breakthrough.
The rocky shore of an island
near the Dominican Republic,
maybe the final resting place
of the Quedagh Merchant
commanded by the infamous pirate,
Captain William Kidd.
So is it?
Returning to the drained
Caribbean seafloor,
the two cannon piles give a clue
to where the ship's hull would have been.
Buried beneath the canon pile
and preserved in the seabed,
precious clues,
surviving fragments of wood.
It's such a rare discovery
that Charlie Beeker hopes
it can help him close this case
and name the wreck.
What's unusual about the hull was
it's single plank, just exterior only.
The fragment
from the wreck's hull
reveals it was all joined together
with an interlocking tongue
and groove technique known as rabbeting.
I knew we had it. I knew we had
a very unique constructed vessel.
It may not mean much to the
to the layman, but I have to tell you,
that's not how we build ships in Europe,
it's not how we build ships
anywhere in the Americas
in the 17, 18, 19th century.
The workmanship
is extremely precise
and labor-intensive,
so where has this mystery ship come from?
Charlie examines the fragment
more closely.
Most exciting,
this piece that was brought up is teak.
Teak is the most durable
and water resistant species of wood,
but in the 17th century,
its most likely origin is India,
some 8,000 miles away.
What is an Indian ship
doing in the Caribbean?
Charlie digs deeper into the story
of the Quedagh Merchant.
Back in the archives,
he finds that, just like Henry Morgan,
Captain Kidd was a privateer,
working for the English king in 1698.
His mission,
to prey on foreign vessels
in the Indian Ocean.
There, Kidd spies an unusual ship,
the Quedagh Merchant.
It had a very high stern castle,
very ornate, lots of carvings on it.
This wasn't a European-built vessel,
this was something built in India.
Kidd sees the vessel
is flying a foreign flag,
making her fair game
for a British privateer.
He captures her
and discovers she is full of treasure,
silks, sugar and gold.
He likes this beautiful, powerful prize
so much
that he decides to use her
as his own flagship
and so he sails her back to the Caribbean.
But then,
his fortunes change dramatically.
He and his men
were claimed to be pirates.
In the first stop he finds,
the governor says,
"Oh, you're being accused
of being a pirate"
and he says, "Why am I a pirate?"
Because he's working
for the English king,
Captain Kidd believes the captured ship
is a legal prize.
What he doesn't know
is that the treasure on board
belongs to a nobleman in the court
of the Indian Mughal Emperor.
Kidd's theft triggers a crisis
that threatens Britain's trade
along the African and Indian coasts.
That means he is now a very big problem
to powerful people in London
and a wanted man.
And he's sailing around the Caribbean
in this really foreign ship
from the Indian Ocean,
so it's not like he's inconspicuous.
Kidd decides to leave his ship
in the hands of a merchant
and heads to Boston to clear his name.
But there he's arrested
and sent to London.
By now he's a pawn
in an international power game
and expendable.
Found guilty of piracy,
he's sentenced to death.
When they hanged him up
the first time, the rope broke.
He lands on the ground, and of course,
I would think that might be
a sign from God or someone else
that maybe we ought to talk about this.
No, they just strung him up a second time
and then took a gibbet
and put is body into a steel cage
and hung that up to warn everyone else
not to turn pirate.
But what happened
to the beautiful prize
that cost a pirate his life,
the Quedagh Merchant?
The drained wreck site
contains one final piece of information.
On some of the wood, tiny burn marks.
Charlie pieces this together
with the matching number of cannon,
the last known sighting of the ship
and its unique teak construction
to confirm that this really
is Captain Kidd's ship
and discover its fate.
Even before Kidd's trial,
the merchant looking after his ship
starts to panic.
The beautiful Quedagh Merchant
is now a floating liability.
And so, not wanting to share Kidd's fate,
he takes off what treasure he can
and sets her ablaze.
She drifts gently down wind,
before settling
into her final resting place.
Charlie has his own pirate prize.
Captain Kidd's famous flagship
positively identified.
So to actually find a pirate ship
and prove a pirate ship,
it doesn't get any better than that.
I mean, this is the real thing.
With her towering stern castle,
intricate carving and 30 guns,
the Quedagh Merchant was an irresistible,
but deadly temptation.
Kidd's fate marks a sea change
in Caribbean pirate history.
Eventually, they cease giving
these privateering commissions
but what happens is
you have a large group of men
who are used to making
a certain amount of money,
having some income,
having some coin in their pocket
and all of a sudden,
they can't do that anymore.
They're not gonna go back
to being normal sailors,
getting paid lousy wages.
They're gonna become pirates.
The fall of Captain Kidd
heralds the golden age of piracy
as dozens of ex privateers
now go way beyond the law,
inspiring countless legends,
from Long John Silver to Jack Sparrow.
A character reminiscent of the most feared
and famous pirate of them all,
the infamous Edward Teach,
better known as Blackbeard.
And now, archaeologists may be about
to solve an enduring mystery.
What happened to his flagship,
the Queen Anne's Revenge,
the most feared pirate ship of them all.
June 10th, 1718.
The Queen Anne's Revenge,
one of the most terrifying pirate ships
of all time,
is prowling the Atlantic coast
of North America.
She's fresh from one of the most
daring raids in pirate history,
blockading the port of Charleston,
South Carolina,
when, out of nowhere, she runs aground.
The captain orders, "abandon ship."
He leaves some of his crew
on a nearby island, then disappears.
A few months later, he is dead.
His name, Blackbeard.
The way Blackbeard has been portrayed
in movies and TV shows
has shaped our idea
of what a pirate looks and sounds like.
Ahhaarr.
I like to think of Blackbeard kind of
as the Jimi Hendrix of the pirate world.
He changed the face of piracy forever.
Blackbeard captured dozens of prizes,
sank tons of ships
and really terrorized the Caribbean.
Even in his own lifetime,
Blackbeard is a living legend.
Contemporaries describe him as tall,
with a long frock coat
packed with pistols,
blazing eyes and a giant beard,
stuffed with burning cannon fuses
which fizzle as he walks.
After 300 years of mystery and legend,
what can this strange pile of metal reveal
about the fate of Blackbeard and his ship?
In 1996, in Beaufort Inlet,
North Carolina,
a professional diving company
called Intersal
comes across something unexpected.
They picked up a disturbance
in the Earth's magnetic field
and so, when they picked
that target up, the divers
were sent down to see what created
that signature on the magne-tometer.
They ask a team
of archaeologists to investigate.
Among them, Dr. Lisa Briggs.
If I'm honest,
it's kind of terrifying to dive on.
The water is really murky,
it's a sand tiger shark breeding ground.
As Lisa searches
through the murky waters,
she discovers unusual looking shapes
on the seabed.
The first thing you're confronted
with is this massive pile of artifacts,
but it's covered in sea urchins
and lots of marine life
and you really have to try to interpret
what it looked like in the past.
Could these mysterious objects
be from the Queen Anne's Revenge?
Using the dive scans made by Lisa
and the team of investigators,
we can now drain away these murky waters
to reveal a monster.
A mysterious pile of jagged metal,
made of several cannon and at least
two giant anchors stuck together.
Nearby, scattered about,
even more cannon, at least 24 in all.
Across the whole site,
metal balls of various shapes and sizes.
We're talking
hundreds if not thousands of cannon balls.
This ship, it was armed to the teeth.
It had dozens of cannons,
it had swivel guns on the decks
and it had over a quarter
of a million pieces of lead shot.
This is the kind of weaponry
you'd expect
from the Caribbean's most fearsome pirate,
though it's not conclusive evidence
that this is Blackbeard's ship.
But on the wreck site,
there's another clue.
A distinctive wooden structure, and on it,
remarkably preserved, markings.
A V and an I,
which in Roman numerals
is a five and a one, which is six.
This is a common marker
for the depth of the stern post.
The stern post
is the piece of wood
at the back of the ship
that holds the rudder.
The number corresponds to its height.
When we actually
measured it though,
we realized that this did not equate
to six English feet,
this equated to six French feet.
In the 18th century,
the French and English
don't agree on anything,
even the length of a foot.
So, the stern post and probably
the majority of the vessel
was constructed in France.
Its French origins
are a key piece of evidence.
Naval records reveal
that Blackbeard's ship
began its life as a French frigate
called La Concorde.
We have archival evidence
form the captain of La Concorde
who was making a case
to his boss and said,
"Hey, I'm really sorry I lost the ship
but this very terrifying pirate,
Blackbeard, took it from me."
The location of the wreck,
the overwhelming fire power
and the confirmed French origin
all point to one conclusion.
I'd say with probably a 99% accuracy
that this is the Queen Anne's Revenge,
this is Blackbeard's ship.
After 300 years,
the most famous pirate ship of them all
has been found.
And the archaeological evidence allows us,
for the very first time,
to reconstruct Blackbeard's flagship
in all her fearsome glory.
She was a fast sailing warship,
a French light frigate,
designed for speed.
And by the time Blackbeard
got hold of her,
she literally would have been bristling
with guns.
This is a ship to strike fear
into all who sailed the seas.
So why does Blackbeard
abandon her and her crew?
The answer lies in British archives.
In 1718, with piracy
plaguing the Caribbean,
the authorities launch a crackdown.
Blackbeard steers clear
and heads north to escape.
But in the end, he realizes
he can run but he can't hide.
Continuing to operate a vessel the size
and with the reputation
of Queen Anne's Revenge,
he saw the writing on the wall.
For all her firepower,
the Queen Anne's Revenge is too small
to take on the might of the British Navy
and yet too big to lie low.
Lisa concludes that is why
Blackbeard runs her aground.
This was a deliberate act,
not only getting rid of a ship
that could have gotten him busted
further up the coast, but to keep
a larger share of the treasure to himself
and get rid of over 100 pirates
in the process.
But Blackbeard
can't shake the pirate life.
Six months later, he's back,
hoping for one final pay day
and this time the Royal Navy makes sure
they do track him down and kill him.
With the death of Blackbeard,
the golden age of piracy
is drawing to a close.
Over 900 miles to the southeast,
on a remote reef
in the Turks and Caicos Islands,
can these abandoned anchors
help explain how Caribbean piracy
finally ends.
To the southeast of Blackbeard's
former pirate stronghold in the Bahamas,
is the remote archipelago
of the Turks and Caicos Islands.
Michael Pateman is a historian
who's become fascinated by a local legend
about an 18th century shipwreck
on a reef far out to sea.
Everyone talks about this
is the most fascinating wreck to see.
This is the best wreck in the Caribbean.
What was the ship,
what was it doing there, how did it wreck?
Who, who was on this ship?
The wreck
is nearly two hours away.
It's a risky journey.
This is hurricane season
and the weather could change at any time.
It can be perfectly calm
in the harbor
but we go out there and it's rough
and it's very isolated.
Michael arrives at a spot
around seven miles southwest
of the remote Big Sand Cay.
The swell keeps down just enough.
Forty feet beneath the waves,
to one side of a jagged ridge of corral,
are giant anchors.
Nearby, a cluster of cannon.
But with no surviving hull,
it's impossible to know what ship this is.
Using Michael's scan data
to drain this remote reef,
reveals a stunning underwater landscape,
rich with clues.
To the side of an outcrop of coral,
at least 28 cannon in a rough line.
A large pile of rectangular objects
is ballast.
To the other side of the rock, anchors.
Each of these measure 15 ft in length
and weigh 4,500 pounds.
The ship wrecked here
must have been large.
And what's more, the cannon
all seem identical to each other.
To Michael's eye, the wreckage
is at least 200 years old.
He consults
the Turks and Caicos government records
in the archives of the National Museum.
They confirm that in 1790,
a vessel sinks in exactly the spot
where this wreck is located.
The casualty of a great storm.
She belongs to the British Royal Navy
and her name is HMS Endymion.
HMS Endymion is 115 ft long.
Navy designers have managed to fit in
not one but two gun decks,
doubling the number of cannons
she's able to carry to an impressive 44.
She's unusually powerful
for a ship of her class.
She's not meant
to fight in the line of battle,
she's meant to operate in shallow waters
and operate against
relatively small vessels.
She's a fast, well armed
trade defense vessel.
She was the policeman on the beat.
In other words,
Endymion was a pirate stopper.
In the 60 years since Blackbeard,
Britain's Royal Navy
has become more powerful.
Beating other European powers
for control of the seas,
it's now on a mission to stamp out piracy.
Well, the Endymion
is just a perfect example
of how the British controlled the seas
in the Caribbean.
So you can just see this powerful vessel
sailing around, escorting ships,
attacking pirates if there were pirates.
Michael's research
can now reveal
what caused the British Navy ship to sink.
On August 23rd, 1790,
HMS Endymion is sailing alone
in the open sea,
after protecting merchant ships
from pirates,
when she hits this uncharted reef.
But there are plenty of others
ready to take her place.
Endymion was just one of dozens of vessels
the Royal Navy had at its disposal,
all ready to take on
the pirates of the Caribbean.
To lock this place down,
you've got to exert overwhelming force.
You've got to show
that you can out-pirate the pirates.
It's the end
of the pirate's paradise.
Gone are the land grabs of Henry Morgan
and the hit and run antics
of Captain Kidd and Blackbeard.
Now, the Caribbean's lawlessness
is replaced
by the rise of the British Empire
and then the emergence
of the new United States of America.
So, the Caribbean
stopped being such a lawless environment
really after the European powers
stopped fighting each other.
Fire!
The golden age of piracy
is over.
But we've still not seen the last of them.
As long as there's crime,
there's going to be crime on the water.
Any place where you have people
passing through, isolated, vulnerable,
then a pirate's going to be there.
The Caribbean, for centuries
home to adventurers, heroes and villains.
The Caribbean has hundreds of islands
and deadly reefs and yet,
what made it all the more frightening
was that it was a lawless place.
Above all other seas,
the Caribbean is famous for pirates.
Pirates of the Caribbean.
How can you not be excited
about pirates and pirate ships?
Everyone's intrigued
by this golden age of piracy.
For years, archaeologists
have searched in vain for pirate ships.
Now the discovery of rare evidence
is unearthing
the true story behind the most famous
pirate names of all time:
Blackbeard, Captain Kidd and Henry Morgan,
allowing us to drain
this ultimate pirate sea
and uncover
buried archaeological treasure.
This is the Caribbean coast of Panama,
on the estuary of the Chagres River.
In 1671,
British born buccaneer,
Captain Henry Morgan,
arrives here
with a giant fleet of 36 ships,
packed with nearly 2,000 pirates.
Morgan has spent years
raiding the coast of the Spanish Main,
Spain's colonies in the Americas.
But the Chagres Estuary is the mother lode
because all of the riches
of the Spanish Empire
passed through here.
Spain is depending on bullion supplies
to keep its economy going,
and it's there to be stolen.
Here, in these
crocodile infested waters,
Henry Morgan pulls off
the greatest pirate raid of all time.
Documents prove the attack took place,
but for centuries
no hard evidence has ever been found
on the sea floor.
Now, almost 350 years later,
could this newly discovered shipwreck
be the crucial breakthrough?
Archaeologist, Frederick Fritz Hanselmann
is on a mission.
For the past ten years, he's been
scanning the seabed and reef here
for evidence of Morgan's raid.
For an archaeologist,
Panama's a phenomenal place to work.
It all happened here
and especially piracy.
He's teamed up with
maritime archaeologist, James Delgado,
who's studied Caribbean piracy
for decades.
Pirates loved the Caribbean
because there were so many places to hide.
You could tuck into
a tiny little key or an island
or you could come to the coast of, say,
Central America and hide out there.
It was the perfect place for pirates.
It's this secrecy
that makes finding hard
evidence of pirates extremely difficult.
Outlaws prefer to leave no clues,
but Fritz and Jim have found one lead:
a letter by Henry Morgan himself,
describing how his men attack and overrun
the fort overlooking the Chagres River,
the Castile San Lorenzo.
Morgan's letter also recounts
that after the battle,
he had to abandon five vessels,
including his flagship, the Satisfaction.
I had the ill fortune to cast away
the ship I was in and four more.
No one has ever found
the Satisfaction,
but Fritz and Jim are determined to try.
These are treacherous waters,
full of swirling tides,
shifting sands and the deadly Lajas Reef,
and mud washed down out of the jungle
buries any clues
that may remain on the sea bed.
But despite the challenges,
Fritz has conducted a series of surveys
using specialized scanning equipment
and identified some promising targets.
Could one of them be part
of Henry Morgan's pirate armada?
There's only one way to find out.
The water empties from the river mouth,
taking with it centuries of silt and mud,
revealing something astonishing.
There on the reef, preserved by the mud,
the hull of a ship.
Over 50 ft long and 22 ft wide,
the size and shape
typical of a 17th century galleon,
fitting the period of Henry Morgan's raid.
And there's more.
All down the centre, rows of boxes.
Could they be chests full of treasure?
Despite the risk of crocodiles,
Fritz decides to take a closer look.
We're gonna splash on this site,
take a look at the shipwreck
and see what we've got on our hands.
He locates the boxes
and some have objects still inside.
When you look at it
and you say, "You know what,
the cargo hold is full,
has all these wooden chests,
has all these crates."
In the lab,
Fritz makes another discovery.
These are cargo seals
and these would have been used
to mark bales of silk.
Silks are precious cargo,
a good prize for any pirate,
as are these,
heavily encrusted sword blades.
Were they once wielded
by a fearsome buccaneer?
And if you look closely,
you can see part of the blade is exposed.
Then, in a rusted mass,
Fritz identifies the remains of other,
more everyday items.
Shoes for the mules bringing the gold
and silver to be shipped back to Spain.
Not something
a pirate would risk his life for.
A vessel loaded with swords,
wooden chests, wooden barrels,
is basically going to be a supply ship.
It's likely not a pirate ship,
so Fritz digs into Spanish records
and finds a name,
the Encarnación.
A merchant vessel packed with goods
to restock Spain's colony in Panama,
including crates full of mule shoes.
Fritz has not unearthed evidence
of Henry Morgan's famous raid,
but he has shown exactly why this region
attracted pirates like him.
The Chagres River
forms part of the shortest crossing point
from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans,
making it the hub
of all Spanish imperial trade routes,
funneling out the gold, silver
and other treasures
mined or looted by the Spanish Empire.
We are at the mouth
of the Chagres River which was,
to all intents and purposes,
the original Panama Canal.
While it doesn't completely
cut across the Isthmus,
it goes enough of the way
so that you can bring their treasure down,
put it on a boat and take it out to ships
waiting right here
at the moth of the river .
All of this explains
why Henry Morgan came here
with his pirate fleet.
But his ships are still missing.
Fritz continues his survey
and, on a different part of the reef,
picks up a new target.
Could these mysterious pieces of wreckage
finally lead him
to one of Morgan's long lost pirate ships?
For centuries, there's been
no hard archaeological evidence
for Henry Morgan's raid.
No pieces of eight,
no secret map marked with an "X."
Just a letter, written by Morgan himself,
stating that he lost five ships.
Now, Fritz Hanselmann's
latest underwater scanning
has given us the data we need...
to part the pirate seas.
The seaward side of Lajas Reef
is now exposed,
and on it lie remarkable relics.
Scattered on the bottom are eight cannon
and all of them
look to be different sizes.
Could these be the actual weapons used
by Morgan and his band of buccaneers?
So, this is British, that's British,
that is potentially French.
Now that we're in the lab
and we're seeing everything cleaned off,
the sense that's emerging
is a group of guns
from the same time and a mix of guns,
not only in terms of size
but in terms of nationality.
If it's a naval ship
or it's a naval ordnance,
they're gonna be more standardized,
they're gonna be more similar in size,
whereas a pirate
is gonna make use of anything
that they can get their hands on.
The mismatched weapons
fit the profile of a pirate
and their sizes do to.
Small cannon like these
aren't big enough to sink a ship,
but that's exactly why pirates like them.
They wanna disable it
so they're able to take the goods,
take the treasure.
Some literature describes these guns
as murderers because they're smaller,
they're used for antipersonnel,
they're used more like a shotgun
to take out multiple people above decks,
to clear off the deck
so that they can capture the ship
rather than sink it.
We're looking at a 17th century version
of Grand Theft Auto, just using ships.
It's a promising clue.
Next, Fritz and Jim make out
a faint mark on one of the cannon.
A mark that hints
at something very exciting.
This particular gun has markings
of a foundry in England,
so this is a British falconet that
was made in the mid to late 17th century.
The date fits perfectly
with Henry Morgan's raid.
This gun was loaded,
still had the ball in it,
which means they sailed in
with this thing ready to go.
You're not expecting
to find an English gun
on a Spanish reef in the 1600s
unless they've come there
to have some mischief.
The best fit we have for these is that
these are from Morgan's ships.
At last,
a genuine pirate relic,
almost certainly left behind
by Captain Henry Morgan himself.
But if Morgan's cannon are here,
what happened to his ships?
The way the weapons are scattered
across Lajas Reef may offer another clue.
Fritz returns to Morgan's letter.
I gave orders for the fleet
to follow me into the harbor.
A tropical storm is building,
so Morgan seeks the safety
of a sheltered cove,
but it's too late.
Lashing seas drive Morgan's own flagship
straight onto the reef.
A ship is not like a car
where you can slam on your breaks
and avoid a collision,
so Morgan runs his flagship,
the Satisfaction, aground
and four other ships follow suit
with a pile-up on Lajas Reef.
As the ships wreck,
the cannons are thrown loose.
Timbers are cracking,
the hull is breaking like a walnut
squeezed in a vice.
The masts have fallen,
rigging, ropes are snapping,
men are jumping or falling off
and the sides of the ship
where these would be attached,
they're likely just coming right down
and so things are raining down
on the bottom,
all over the reef, rolling and tumbling.
It's now clear,
Morgan's ships were shattered,
their wooden remains vanished over time.
But 350 years later,
Fritz has found his cannon.
According to Morgan's letter,
most of his men scrambled to safety.
Undeterred by the loss of his ships,
Morgan then does something
even more audacious.
This seaborne buccaneer
launches a land invasion,
marching his men across the narrow strip
of land towards the Pacific coast,
to ransack Spain's colonial capital,
Panama City,
leaving it a smoking ruin.
The result is,
utter shock in the Spanish court.
It's as if a bomb has gone off in Madrid.
Panama has fallen.
But why does a pirate,
famous for hit and runs,
want to destroy Spain's main city
in the Americas?
Fritz discovers a 17th century document
that reveals Henry Morgan's true purpose.
The English call Morgan
not a pirate but a privateer,
an admiral
working for the English King Charles,
contracted to attack
and rob Spanish colonies.
Morgan recruits hundreds of pirates
from around the Caribbean
to help him in his raids,
splitting the profits with King Charles.
And so, when they're robbing,
they're not just robbing,
they're acting as an agent
of the English crown.
Making Henry Morgan
a very rich and powerful man.
I believe Henry Morgan is perhaps
the most successful pirate
or privateer ever, for the simple fact
that he actually retired
and enjoyed the spoils of his wealth.
Across the Caribbean,
other privateers
follow in Morgan's footsteps,
serving their king
while getting rich quick.
In a sea where no one country
has overall control
and with fleets of treasure ships,
this turns the Caribbean
into a paradise for pirates.
And yet, throughout the whole region,
all that remains
are rare and tantalizing clues.
But now, what can this
remarkable wreck site
reveal about another legendary pirate?
Charlie Beeker of Indiana University
has spent a lifetime
on the trail of a buccaneer,
every bit as infamous as Henry Morgan.
Captain William Kidd.
You think of Captain Kidd
and you've really gotta think about
the probably the most infamous
of all pirates we have.
The inspiration
for countless books and movies,
William Kidd was one of the Caribbean's
most successful raiders.
His exploits make him rich,
famous and feared.
Charlie is on the hunt
for Kidd's last ship,
a mysterious wreck that
has eluded historians for over 300 years.
Called the Quedagh Merchant,
it was a pirate super-ship
with a towering stern castle
and covered with intricate carvings.
Some believe it might have been stuffed
with treasure
when it disappeared in 1699
off a small island near the south coast
of the Dominican Republic.
Charlie is on his way
to the last known location
of Kidd's famous flagship.
There is a shipwreck here,
we know that.
Whether or not it's Captain Kidd,
we'll see, but we'll take a look at it,
try and get some footage of it.
Do our first preliminary assessment
of what we think might be there.
This close to the shore,
Charlie fears the waves
may have destroyed key evidence
to link this wreck to Captain Kidd.
But even from the surface,
he can make something out.
Well, you know,
if it's Captain Kidd's shipwreck,
there's been people looking
for this site for 300 years.
It'd be really quite exciting
to see what we've got.
Cannons, lots of cannons.
Finding 17th century cannons
at the site
encourages Charlie
to gather more information
scouring the seafloor for clues.
And by using the data he collects,
it's possible for us
to drain this rocky shore,
to reveal an extraordinary wreck site,
one that's survived
centuries of breaking waves.
Among the relics, more cannon,
carefully stacked almost seven feet high.
Beneath them,
flukes of three large anchors poke out
and another smaller pile of cannon,
making 26 in total.
This ship was certainly well armed,
but did it belong to Captain Kidd?
Charlie needs more evidence
so he heads to a local archive.
Buried deep in the files,
he finds an account
written by Captain Kidd himself.
This is William Kidd's
signature.
It says here there are 20 some cannons
in the hold.
Uh, we have 25, 26 cannons on the site.
It's a close match
but to be certain that he's found
Captain Kidd's infamous pirate flagship,
Charlie needs something more conclusive.
And then he makes a stunning breakthrough.
The rocky shore of an island
near the Dominican Republic,
maybe the final resting place
of the Quedagh Merchant
commanded by the infamous pirate,
Captain William Kidd.
So is it?
Returning to the drained
Caribbean seafloor,
the two cannon piles give a clue
to where the ship's hull would have been.
Buried beneath the canon pile
and preserved in the seabed,
precious clues,
surviving fragments of wood.
It's such a rare discovery
that Charlie Beeker hopes
it can help him close this case
and name the wreck.
What's unusual about the hull was
it's single plank, just exterior only.
The fragment
from the wreck's hull
reveals it was all joined together
with an interlocking tongue
and groove technique known as rabbeting.
I knew we had it. I knew we had
a very unique constructed vessel.
It may not mean much to the
to the layman, but I have to tell you,
that's not how we build ships in Europe,
it's not how we build ships
anywhere in the Americas
in the 17, 18, 19th century.
The workmanship
is extremely precise
and labor-intensive,
so where has this mystery ship come from?
Charlie examines the fragment
more closely.
Most exciting,
this piece that was brought up is teak.
Teak is the most durable
and water resistant species of wood,
but in the 17th century,
its most likely origin is India,
some 8,000 miles away.
What is an Indian ship
doing in the Caribbean?
Charlie digs deeper into the story
of the Quedagh Merchant.
Back in the archives,
he finds that, just like Henry Morgan,
Captain Kidd was a privateer,
working for the English king in 1698.
His mission,
to prey on foreign vessels
in the Indian Ocean.
There, Kidd spies an unusual ship,
the Quedagh Merchant.
It had a very high stern castle,
very ornate, lots of carvings on it.
This wasn't a European-built vessel,
this was something built in India.
Kidd sees the vessel
is flying a foreign flag,
making her fair game
for a British privateer.
He captures her
and discovers she is full of treasure,
silks, sugar and gold.
He likes this beautiful, powerful prize
so much
that he decides to use her
as his own flagship
and so he sails her back to the Caribbean.
But then,
his fortunes change dramatically.
He and his men
were claimed to be pirates.
In the first stop he finds,
the governor says,
"Oh, you're being accused
of being a pirate"
and he says, "Why am I a pirate?"
Because he's working
for the English king,
Captain Kidd believes the captured ship
is a legal prize.
What he doesn't know
is that the treasure on board
belongs to a nobleman in the court
of the Indian Mughal Emperor.
Kidd's theft triggers a crisis
that threatens Britain's trade
along the African and Indian coasts.
That means he is now a very big problem
to powerful people in London
and a wanted man.
And he's sailing around the Caribbean
in this really foreign ship
from the Indian Ocean,
so it's not like he's inconspicuous.
Kidd decides to leave his ship
in the hands of a merchant
and heads to Boston to clear his name.
But there he's arrested
and sent to London.
By now he's a pawn
in an international power game
and expendable.
Found guilty of piracy,
he's sentenced to death.
When they hanged him up
the first time, the rope broke.
He lands on the ground, and of course,
I would think that might be
a sign from God or someone else
that maybe we ought to talk about this.
No, they just strung him up a second time
and then took a gibbet
and put is body into a steel cage
and hung that up to warn everyone else
not to turn pirate.
But what happened
to the beautiful prize
that cost a pirate his life,
the Quedagh Merchant?
The drained wreck site
contains one final piece of information.
On some of the wood, tiny burn marks.
Charlie pieces this together
with the matching number of cannon,
the last known sighting of the ship
and its unique teak construction
to confirm that this really
is Captain Kidd's ship
and discover its fate.
Even before Kidd's trial,
the merchant looking after his ship
starts to panic.
The beautiful Quedagh Merchant
is now a floating liability.
And so, not wanting to share Kidd's fate,
he takes off what treasure he can
and sets her ablaze.
She drifts gently down wind,
before settling
into her final resting place.
Charlie has his own pirate prize.
Captain Kidd's famous flagship
positively identified.
So to actually find a pirate ship
and prove a pirate ship,
it doesn't get any better than that.
I mean, this is the real thing.
With her towering stern castle,
intricate carving and 30 guns,
the Quedagh Merchant was an irresistible,
but deadly temptation.
Kidd's fate marks a sea change
in Caribbean pirate history.
Eventually, they cease giving
these privateering commissions
but what happens is
you have a large group of men
who are used to making
a certain amount of money,
having some income,
having some coin in their pocket
and all of a sudden,
they can't do that anymore.
They're not gonna go back
to being normal sailors,
getting paid lousy wages.
They're gonna become pirates.
The fall of Captain Kidd
heralds the golden age of piracy
as dozens of ex privateers
now go way beyond the law,
inspiring countless legends,
from Long John Silver to Jack Sparrow.
A character reminiscent of the most feared
and famous pirate of them all,
the infamous Edward Teach,
better known as Blackbeard.
And now, archaeologists may be about
to solve an enduring mystery.
What happened to his flagship,
the Queen Anne's Revenge,
the most feared pirate ship of them all.
June 10th, 1718.
The Queen Anne's Revenge,
one of the most terrifying pirate ships
of all time,
is prowling the Atlantic coast
of North America.
She's fresh from one of the most
daring raids in pirate history,
blockading the port of Charleston,
South Carolina,
when, out of nowhere, she runs aground.
The captain orders, "abandon ship."
He leaves some of his crew
on a nearby island, then disappears.
A few months later, he is dead.
His name, Blackbeard.
The way Blackbeard has been portrayed
in movies and TV shows
has shaped our idea
of what a pirate looks and sounds like.
Ahhaarr.
I like to think of Blackbeard kind of
as the Jimi Hendrix of the pirate world.
He changed the face of piracy forever.
Blackbeard captured dozens of prizes,
sank tons of ships
and really terrorized the Caribbean.
Even in his own lifetime,
Blackbeard is a living legend.
Contemporaries describe him as tall,
with a long frock coat
packed with pistols,
blazing eyes and a giant beard,
stuffed with burning cannon fuses
which fizzle as he walks.
After 300 years of mystery and legend,
what can this strange pile of metal reveal
about the fate of Blackbeard and his ship?
In 1996, in Beaufort Inlet,
North Carolina,
a professional diving company
called Intersal
comes across something unexpected.
They picked up a disturbance
in the Earth's magnetic field
and so, when they picked
that target up, the divers
were sent down to see what created
that signature on the magne-tometer.
They ask a team
of archaeologists to investigate.
Among them, Dr. Lisa Briggs.
If I'm honest,
it's kind of terrifying to dive on.
The water is really murky,
it's a sand tiger shark breeding ground.
As Lisa searches
through the murky waters,
she discovers unusual looking shapes
on the seabed.
The first thing you're confronted
with is this massive pile of artifacts,
but it's covered in sea urchins
and lots of marine life
and you really have to try to interpret
what it looked like in the past.
Could these mysterious objects
be from the Queen Anne's Revenge?
Using the dive scans made by Lisa
and the team of investigators,
we can now drain away these murky waters
to reveal a monster.
A mysterious pile of jagged metal,
made of several cannon and at least
two giant anchors stuck together.
Nearby, scattered about,
even more cannon, at least 24 in all.
Across the whole site,
metal balls of various shapes and sizes.
We're talking
hundreds if not thousands of cannon balls.
This ship, it was armed to the teeth.
It had dozens of cannons,
it had swivel guns on the decks
and it had over a quarter
of a million pieces of lead shot.
This is the kind of weaponry
you'd expect
from the Caribbean's most fearsome pirate,
though it's not conclusive evidence
that this is Blackbeard's ship.
But on the wreck site,
there's another clue.
A distinctive wooden structure, and on it,
remarkably preserved, markings.
A V and an I,
which in Roman numerals
is a five and a one, which is six.
This is a common marker
for the depth of the stern post.
The stern post
is the piece of wood
at the back of the ship
that holds the rudder.
The number corresponds to its height.
When we actually
measured it though,
we realized that this did not equate
to six English feet,
this equated to six French feet.
In the 18th century,
the French and English
don't agree on anything,
even the length of a foot.
So, the stern post and probably
the majority of the vessel
was constructed in France.
Its French origins
are a key piece of evidence.
Naval records reveal
that Blackbeard's ship
began its life as a French frigate
called La Concorde.
We have archival evidence
form the captain of La Concorde
who was making a case
to his boss and said,
"Hey, I'm really sorry I lost the ship
but this very terrifying pirate,
Blackbeard, took it from me."
The location of the wreck,
the overwhelming fire power
and the confirmed French origin
all point to one conclusion.
I'd say with probably a 99% accuracy
that this is the Queen Anne's Revenge,
this is Blackbeard's ship.
After 300 years,
the most famous pirate ship of them all
has been found.
And the archaeological evidence allows us,
for the very first time,
to reconstruct Blackbeard's flagship
in all her fearsome glory.
She was a fast sailing warship,
a French light frigate,
designed for speed.
And by the time Blackbeard
got hold of her,
she literally would have been bristling
with guns.
This is a ship to strike fear
into all who sailed the seas.
So why does Blackbeard
abandon her and her crew?
The answer lies in British archives.
In 1718, with piracy
plaguing the Caribbean,
the authorities launch a crackdown.
Blackbeard steers clear
and heads north to escape.
But in the end, he realizes
he can run but he can't hide.
Continuing to operate a vessel the size
and with the reputation
of Queen Anne's Revenge,
he saw the writing on the wall.
For all her firepower,
the Queen Anne's Revenge is too small
to take on the might of the British Navy
and yet too big to lie low.
Lisa concludes that is why
Blackbeard runs her aground.
This was a deliberate act,
not only getting rid of a ship
that could have gotten him busted
further up the coast, but to keep
a larger share of the treasure to himself
and get rid of over 100 pirates
in the process.
But Blackbeard
can't shake the pirate life.
Six months later, he's back,
hoping for one final pay day
and this time the Royal Navy makes sure
they do track him down and kill him.
With the death of Blackbeard,
the golden age of piracy
is drawing to a close.
Over 900 miles to the southeast,
on a remote reef
in the Turks and Caicos Islands,
can these abandoned anchors
help explain how Caribbean piracy
finally ends.
To the southeast of Blackbeard's
former pirate stronghold in the Bahamas,
is the remote archipelago
of the Turks and Caicos Islands.
Michael Pateman is a historian
who's become fascinated by a local legend
about an 18th century shipwreck
on a reef far out to sea.
Everyone talks about this
is the most fascinating wreck to see.
This is the best wreck in the Caribbean.
What was the ship,
what was it doing there, how did it wreck?
Who, who was on this ship?
The wreck
is nearly two hours away.
It's a risky journey.
This is hurricane season
and the weather could change at any time.
It can be perfectly calm
in the harbor
but we go out there and it's rough
and it's very isolated.
Michael arrives at a spot
around seven miles southwest
of the remote Big Sand Cay.
The swell keeps down just enough.
Forty feet beneath the waves,
to one side of a jagged ridge of corral,
are giant anchors.
Nearby, a cluster of cannon.
But with no surviving hull,
it's impossible to know what ship this is.
Using Michael's scan data
to drain this remote reef,
reveals a stunning underwater landscape,
rich with clues.
To the side of an outcrop of coral,
at least 28 cannon in a rough line.
A large pile of rectangular objects
is ballast.
To the other side of the rock, anchors.
Each of these measure 15 ft in length
and weigh 4,500 pounds.
The ship wrecked here
must have been large.
And what's more, the cannon
all seem identical to each other.
To Michael's eye, the wreckage
is at least 200 years old.
He consults
the Turks and Caicos government records
in the archives of the National Museum.
They confirm that in 1790,
a vessel sinks in exactly the spot
where this wreck is located.
The casualty of a great storm.
She belongs to the British Royal Navy
and her name is HMS Endymion.
HMS Endymion is 115 ft long.
Navy designers have managed to fit in
not one but two gun decks,
doubling the number of cannons
she's able to carry to an impressive 44.
She's unusually powerful
for a ship of her class.
She's not meant
to fight in the line of battle,
she's meant to operate in shallow waters
and operate against
relatively small vessels.
She's a fast, well armed
trade defense vessel.
She was the policeman on the beat.
In other words,
Endymion was a pirate stopper.
In the 60 years since Blackbeard,
Britain's Royal Navy
has become more powerful.
Beating other European powers
for control of the seas,
it's now on a mission to stamp out piracy.
Well, the Endymion
is just a perfect example
of how the British controlled the seas
in the Caribbean.
So you can just see this powerful vessel
sailing around, escorting ships,
attacking pirates if there were pirates.
Michael's research
can now reveal
what caused the British Navy ship to sink.
On August 23rd, 1790,
HMS Endymion is sailing alone
in the open sea,
after protecting merchant ships
from pirates,
when she hits this uncharted reef.
But there are plenty of others
ready to take her place.
Endymion was just one of dozens of vessels
the Royal Navy had at its disposal,
all ready to take on
the pirates of the Caribbean.
To lock this place down,
you've got to exert overwhelming force.
You've got to show
that you can out-pirate the pirates.
It's the end
of the pirate's paradise.
Gone are the land grabs of Henry Morgan
and the hit and run antics
of Captain Kidd and Blackbeard.
Now, the Caribbean's lawlessness
is replaced
by the rise of the British Empire
and then the emergence
of the new United States of America.
So, the Caribbean
stopped being such a lawless environment
really after the European powers
stopped fighting each other.
Fire!
The golden age of piracy
is over.
But we've still not seen the last of them.
As long as there's crime,
there's going to be crime on the water.
Any place where you have people
passing through, isolated, vulnerable,
then a pirate's going to be there.