Drain the Sunken Pirate City (2017) - full transcript

For 300 years,
the pirate city of Port Royal has...

... lay hidden at the
bottom of the Caribbean Sea.

The city was devoured by the sea.

But now a new investigation
will empty the sea.

Pull the plug out of the Caribbean Sea...

... and reveal what was called
the world's most sinful city.

It was the largest pirate
center of all time.

We unveil outstanding new evidence...

... for the incredible disaster
that destroyed the city.

An earthquake,
a tsunami and deadly quicksand

It was a scene of total devastation.



A city that was considered so sinful
that it deserved the wrath of God.

Port Royal was like Sodom
and Gomorrah in one.

A group of researchers
with advanced tools...

... is now tackling the
mysteries of Port Royal.

How did the disaster go?

Why did the city
sink in minutes?

We drain and showcase the most
infamous pirate city of all time...

... like it's never been seen before.

Imagine being able to empty the sea.

Pull the stopper out of the sea
to see what is on the bottom.

Now powerful new technology
can do just that.

Digital photos and sonar...

... gives us outstanding new
knowledge about the sunken ruins.

With the new information, we can study
the declining world of Port Royal.



In the 17th century, Port Royal
was on the south coast of Jamaica

an English stronghold in the
heart of the Spanish Empire.

It dominated the
future Kingston Harbor

from the end of a long headland.

In the movie "Pirates of the Caribbean",
Jack Sparrow visits Port Royal.

The city became fat on the piracy
and had up to 8,000 inhabitants.

The new world's
fastest growing city.

But it was also known as the
most sinful city in the world.

It had more bars
and brothels...

... than any other English colony.

The port itself is very loose.

It is now worse than Sodom and
filled with all kinds of fornication.

On June 7, 1692,
Port Royal was hit by a disaster.

A huge earthquake wiped out
2/3 of the city from the map

and lowered it to the bottom of the sea.

Now the archaeologist Jon Henderson,
an expert on sunken cities...

... use new technology to discover
how the disaster happened.

Port Royal sank so fast
that it took its secrets.

This is a sunken city
but also a disaster site.

It sank so fast that
it lasted a moment.

It's called New World Pompeii.

It's under water so we can detect it.
It's rare.

With advanced technology,
Jon will rediscover the sunken city...

... and create an accurate,
digital, model of the ruins.

It will show how the city was
torn to pieces in 2 minutes.

Jon's finds will be used to apply
for World Heritage status...

... to reinforce the
importance of Port Royal...

... and preserve the
ruins for the future.

If it succeeds...

... the information allows us
to drain the sea virtually.

We can scale away millions
of liters of water...

... and finally bring the sunken
city of Port Royal to light again.

I read about Port Royal as a boy.

Reading about a sunken pirate
city is of course exciting.

That's something exciting
for me right now.

The sunken city is just outside
the fishing village of Port Royal.

But exactly where?

To study the ruins,
Jon must first find them.

The most mysterious thing
about Port Royal is...

... is that no one is completely
sure of what is there.

But traces of the 300-year-old
city still remain.

This is a pretty solid wall.
It's a house wall.

It shows where a house was located.

It's just a fragment
of the lost city.

Most of it is hidden under several
meters of sediment and dead coral.

Think about what might be down there.

Hundreds of buildings with
intact content under the coral.

To reveal the true
scale of Port Royal...

... Jon needs the
latest search equipment.

He wants to reveal the secrets
of the hidden buildings...

... and show more than you
can see with the naked eye.

It is a difficult place to work
because the visibility is quite poor.

That is why it has never been mapped.

Sometimes you do not see the hand
in front of you when you dive.

The abysmal sight made
previous surveys difficult.

So Jon has taken the help of the
most powerful digital technology.

This technique has never
before been used in archeology.

It is the first time.

It can bring the place to life
and create a 3D model of it.

The autonomous surface
craft, ASV, uses sonar...

... to measure variations
in bottom height.

This is the first
mission across the site.

The conditions are absolutely perfect today.

ASV can mark walls and
boundaries in the sunken city...

... so that Jon can
create a 3D model.

So it would be good to see if
we can see the buildings in 3d.

But what did the
lost city look like?

Another technology can show us that.

An autonomous underwater vehicle,
AUV, takes thousands of pictures...

... with the technique of photogrammetry.

Together, the two drones can
let us visualize the city...

... in high resolution
for the first time.

They will unlock a new
vision of Port Royal...

... and reveal clues about the
disaster that destroyed the city.

This is no easy task.
Visibility is often abysmal.

And you work in the mouth of
a heavily trafficked port.

We should reach the central part now.

But after just a few
hours, it's really bad.

A motorboat wanders
into the mapping area.

We're trying to find the drone.

We do not know where it is.
A boat went through and hijacked the line.

So one of our guys
is out there looking.

A boat drove into our AUV.

It turned off the antenna.

They find the damage more
severe than they thought.

It's as bad as it could get.
We've lost the drone.

The photo mapping is incomplete.

And the accident knocked out equipment
worth half a million dollars.

-We can write it off completely.
- We can not replace it.

Not now. We'll be back.
It's pretty sad.

The first survey, with ASV,
was successful at least.

The team gets data
about the sea depth...

... which helps them
map the ruined city.

Here we have the flat part
where the city remains.

It's a promising start but only
half of the data they need.

Jon may return to complete the
photo mapping of the houses.

When you dry up the sea, you see how
Port Royal became a power factor.

It all depends on the situation.

Just at the entrance
to Kingston Harbor.

When you drain the sea here...

... you see one of the world's
largest natural harbors.

16 km long and 3.2 km wide, it is
large enough for hundreds of ships...

... which protects against
the hurricane-whipped waters.

The long headland on which Port
Royal was built was even better.

We will see the tongue
extending out into the harbor.

The steep sides made it
perfect for anchoring ships.

There is deep water
so big ships...

... can quickly get
very close to the beach.

It may seem like a
perfect place for a port.

But the land tongue of loose sand...

... would lead to the
downfall of Port Royal.

The main problem is that there
is no stable bedrock here.

So if there is a shake in an
earthquake, you are bad out.

I doubt anyone realized
it was that bad.

Seven months after the photogrammetry
equipment was destroyed...

... Jon Henderson is back.

Now the photographer Simon
Brown will do the job...

... and photograph
the sunken city.

The visibility is so poor that Simon
has to go very close to the ruins...

... and take thousands of pictures.

Just three days later,
the photos were put together...

... to a 3D image of what
lies beneath the surface.

-Okay, Simon. Show what you have.
-That was not easy.

But we saw a lot of building five.

Building Five may have
been a grand family home.

Now there is only one room left.

And it shows with
incredible detail.

This looks amazing.

We can see the wall and
the yard next to it.

You can see the fire
pit and the low walls.

It's great.
We can see individual bricks.

You can show this and then
people see what's down there.

I did not think it
would be so good.

Jon's mission now yields
outstanding results.

Outstanding photographs reveal
important evidence of the seabed.

The cornerstones of sunken homes.

To this we can add sonar
data about the seabed.

In 3d we see the sunken
city in relief...

... and we're seeing Port Royals'
borders for the first time.

This is the remaining 5.2
acres of the lost city.

You can see how big
the sunken city was...

...for the first time.

With the information,
we can recreate Port Royal's buildings.

We can pull the plug out of
Kingston's natural harbor.

Drain the sea from
the sunken city...

... and lift Port Royal out
of its water-soaked grave.

Sunlight can light up
its streets once again.

For the first time in 300
years, we can reconstruct

what was there.

We can shed light on the disaster
that destroyed Port Royal...

... drowned hundreds of
houses and their mighty fort.

The clues to its sinfulness...

...
are still hidden in the dark.

We drain the sea around the
sunken pirate city of Port Royal.

For the first time we can
see it in its entirety

since an earthquake lowered
it into the sea 300 years ago.

Now we can see if it really was
the most sinful city in the world.

Since the 1950s, there have been
three archeological expeditions

searched through Port
Royal's underwater ruins

to expose its pirate past.

And in the 1980s, a team found part
of the city's structure itself.

During the 10 years we excavated
five buildings almost completely.

My most exciting excavation.

Now we can use science
to map discoveries.

From three archaeological
excavations...

... all over the sunken city.

Thousands of relics
from a lost world.

All are clues that tell the
story of Port Royal's last days.

It is a disaster site so
the preserved object...

... which was used at a
certain moment in time.

Each item provides insight into the
17th century Caribbean pirate world.

They give us snapshots
of everyday life.

From pewter tableware
to Chinese china...

...
and signs of personal wealth.

The archaeological finds from Port
Royal show how rich the city was.

Usually, cities in the New World
are poor copies of cities in Europe.

But Port Royal can actually be
compared to Europe's capitals.

But how did Port Royal become so rich?

The city was built on the fortunes
of stolen Spanish treasures.

In the 1650s,
England and Spain were at war.

The English territory of
Jamaica in the Caribbean...

... was surrounded on all
sides by the Spanish Empire.

From Florida through Mexico
and to South America.

Port Royal on the south coast of Jamaica...

... started as a small
British imperial outpost.

But Fort Charles' size shows how
important the city soon became.

This fort was built to defend
Kingston's harbor entrance.

Here you could accommodate 500 ships.

To gain the upper hand
over the Spaniards

the English took the help of pirates.

In 1657, the governor of Port Royal
actually invited the pirates...

... to act as a kind
of defense force.

For the British state, pirates who
took looted Spanish goods could...

...
to English ports be an asset.

Pirates got permission,
hijacker letter...

... to plunder Spaniards
at sea and on land.

They came to be called
buccaneers or hijackers.

What happened in Port Royal
was state-sanctioned piracy.

And in Port Royal,
in the middle of the Caribbean...

... the hijackers were
in the perfect position.

They were within striking distance
of the major waterways to Europe.

The Spanish goods must be
transported past Port Royal.

So it was a bit like having a fox
in the middle of the hen house.

That made Port Royal the
global capital of piracy.

Pirate treasures looted
from Spaniards...

... is said to remain in
Port Royal to this day.

A silver communion tableware is said to
have been looted from Panama in 1671.

These are exactly the kind of
things that interested pirates.

Silver, gold and everything that
was valuable were taken by raids...

... and then arrived in Port Royal.

The merchants, the pirates and
the local taverns became rich.

That was what Port Royal lived on.

According to the agreement, the English
krona took a quarter of the change.

The rest the pirates
divided among themselves.

After one of the first
buccaneer expeditions, 1659...

... brought the fleet home a
fortune worth $ 75 million.

The Spanish wealth that reached
Port Royal in waves was colossal.

A huge influx of cash

transformed the fortified outpost
into a rapidly growing city.

WELCOME TO PORT ROYAL

Archaeologists have
mapped the sunken city...

... using historical
descriptions and maps.

So Jon walks the streets
of today's Port Royals...

... to match them with
the underwater ruins.

We know, from the maps,
that the modern fishing village...

... has the same streets
now as in the 17th century.

So the main street
Queen Street...

... extends down there to the sea.

It continues in the sunken city.

Archaeologists know
that Queen Street...

... extends just over 90
meters straight into the sea.

When we map the city,
we see its size.

A dense network of streets
covering more than 20 hectares.

Everything is protected by three
impressive coastal forts facing the sea.

Inside the walls
was Port Royal...

... as densely populated
as 17th century London.

If you visited Port Royal during
the heyday, you saw a city...

... which was packed with
people in a small area.

Clues on the seabed
show that...

... the architecture
was similar to London.

They had the same density
of brick buildings...

... with 3-4 floors,
steep, tarred roofs...

... very narrow but deep plots
with front and backyards.

In the drained city you can see as many
as 2,000 bricks and wooden houses...

... penetrated along the
streets of Port Royals.

There lived a population here...

... which would reach
8,000 at its peak.

But the narrow, narrow,
streets would be a death trap...

... when the earthquake hit them.

It is a closed and very
overcrowded peninsula...

... where people live close to each
other in houses with 2-4 floors.

When the earthquake came,
there was nowhere to flee.

By the 1670s, Port Royal had
become the Las Vegas of its time.

It was almost like a border town...

... during the gold rush
stuck in 17th century America.

And people came here
to get rich quick.

With the promise of such riches...

... merchants and artisans
flocked to the city.

Some became the equivalent
of millionaires overnight.

There's a story about
a pilsner buccaneer...

... who gave the city's most beautiful
prostitutes a thousand pounds...

...
to strip before going to bed.

But where was Port Royal the
most sinful city in the world?

Outstanding discoveries show...

... how Port Royal got its reputation.

A building on Lime Street
contained important clues.

More than 60 artifacts.

And all were bottles.

Building 1 in Port Royal
was obviously a tavern.

We found more than 60
bottles in the back room.

Still sealed.

Archaeologists had discovered

-one of Port Royal's
many water holes.

According to records,
there were hundreds of taverns here.

Maybe as many as one
in ten residents.

Jon dives over the remains
of the sunken tavern.

Here the pirates spent much
of their money on alcohol.

It is difficult to imagine the
immorality and drunkenness.

The Buckanjars put their fortune on
rum, wine and women.

A typical buccaneer put a lot
of money into entertainment.

And there was a lot of
fun in Port Royal...

... in the form of
alcohol, good food and sex.

Port Royal became notorious
for its immorality.

These taverns can just as
easily be called brothels.

VISITORS TO PORT ROYAL

There were so many prostitutes
and prostitutes...

... that it is virtually
impossible to civilize the city.

In the world of the 17th century...

... Port Royal seemed
ripe for God's wrath.

Some people thought that the city deserved
to be wiped off the face of the earth.

But no one predicted...

... the triple catastrophe
that would hit the city.

Traces of the disaster
remain on the seabed.

We drain the sea
around Port Royal...

... and reveals the most infamous
pirate city of all time...

... to shed new light on a
disaster that drowned the city...

... in an incredible apocalypse.

Among thousands of clues
from the bottom...

... there is shocking evidence
of when the earthquake occurred.

A pocket watch from the 17th century.

Its hands have long
been rusted by the sea.

A closer analysis of the find
shows something interesting.

When it was x-rayed,
we saw that it stopped at 11:43.

We know, from historical sources,
that the earthquake fell before noon.

Some have interpreted it...

... like the clock stopped
when the earthquake struck.

But what powerful natural
forces triggered the quake?

To find the answer,
we do not just drain Port Royal...

... without all of Jamaica
to reveal the source.

It is hidden in the dark hundreds
of meters below the surface.

When you drain the sea around Jamaica,
you see huge furrows at the bottom.

They are fault lines that run
in an east-west direction.

The faults are part of the boundary
between two plates in the earth's crust.

The North American plate and the
Caribbean plate in the south.

Both are in constant motion.

It is a place where the movements
of the plates are stopped...

... and tensions are rising.

It is thus an earthquake area.

And Port Royal is in
the middle of that area.

And what happened in 1692...

... was that the tensions that gradually
built up over a long period of time...

... was released in an earthquake.

When the stresses in the
earth's crust release...

... it sends a powerful seismic
pressure wave into the environment.

June 7, 1692.

Doomsday is upon us.

In the churches the prayers of the
day were held, work began at dawn.

People lived their everyday lives.

At a speed of 8
km per second...

... the seismic pulse
travels towards Port Royal.

It is known that a man would
drink sherry with the governor.

No warning was given.

Port Royal's alleys and
houses were full of people

The quays were full of merchant ships.

The first sign was a bang...

... and a low rumbling among
the mountains to the north.

Our sources indicate that the
earthquake came in three pulses.

The real killer
was what awaited.

SURVIVOR WITNESS

The quakes were so violent
that people were overthrown.

Abysses were opened in the ground.

The ground shook and we
saw the floor stones rise.

The ground rolled and rippled
like waves on a troubled sea.

People ran for their
lives from falling bricks.

But the city did not
offer secure protection.

It was the worst possible situation.

Tall brick houses
along narrow streets.

So you had to choose between
the street or the houses.

Pure lottery.

The earthquake was just the beginning.

It does not explain why
Port Royal sank in the sea.

The city sank for a
completely different reason.

Behind Fort Charles is evidence
of the terrible forces...

... under the sandy streets of Port Royal.

The building is called the "funny house"...

... because of the
funny feeling in it.

The house is sloping and
the floor remains...

... so you get strangely
disoriented when you enter.

"Funny House" is one of the
few surviving houses...

... from an earthquake in 1907.

Something similar
happened here in 1692.

But in 1692 the earthquake
was even stronger.

Here the house sank about 5.5 meters...

... straight down in the sand
while people were left in them.

The climax of the Port Royal earthquake
was something extraordinary...

... which we very rarely see.

The buildings that
shook and collapsed...

... began to sink into the
ground and people with them.

Researchers call it liquidation.

For the people of Port
Royal, it was hell on earth.

The sandy ground where they built
their houses became a deadly seesaw.

In a liquid operation,
you have sand with a lot of water in it.

When it is shaken, it becomes a
mourning, solid ground becomes liquid.

These rare images show the horrors
of the liquidation action...

... in Niigata,
Japan on June 16, 1964.

The energy from a huge earthquake
separated the sediment in the earth...

... so that water could
rush to the surface.

Earth turned into quicksand
that sucked down the city.

Port Royal's unfortunate
people had no idea...

... that solid ground
could become liquid dead.

Just minutes into the earthquake,
the second disaster came...

... when the ground cracked...

... and water and
sand rushed forth.

The longer the ground shook,
the more liquid the sand became.

Grand villas,
churches, taverns...

... and even the Port
Royals fort sank like rocks.

The houses that have been the
most beautiful and magnificent...

... sank for a moment into the
ground to never be seen again.

Some were caught
half in the sand.

PORT ROYAL FARMERS

The earth swallowed them up to
the neck and then closed again...

... and hugged them to death with
their heads above the ground.

Many of them eat the dogs off.

Many perished in the quicksand.

But here's an incredible
story of survival.

The French merchant Lewis Galdy
was sucked into the ground.

He was thought to be dead. But in an
aftershock he was spat into the sea.

He swam to the nearest boat.

Afterwards he became
a very religious man.

Overall,
2/3 of Port Royal fell.

The disaster took 2,000 souls
and hundreds of buildings.

The remaining ruins are
incredibly well preserved.

The most fascinating thing I found...

... was how to
lower a building...

... 4.6 meters from
its place of origin...

... without a single floor
stone being disturbed.

And the stones were not even
bricked, they were just laid.

But here they were now, completely
intact, but at a depth of 4.6 meters.

You get a sense of how
it has sunk in one piece,

The walls and
courtyards are intact.

It gives a very spooky feeling.

It was reported that the city
sank in just a few minutes.

But the chaos was not over for it.

The drained city shows traces
of the third disaster...

... who was on his way.

Port Royal was swallowed by
the sea in a matter of minutes.

Survivors saw their
families, homes and city...

... sink under the waves.

We have mapped the disaster
area with advanced technology.

Thousands of archeological
finds have been found here.

Each tells something about the
moments before the fall of Port Royal.

People who cook at home.
Preparing lunch.

Taverns were filled
with thirsty customers.

In the drained city we find
incredible evidence...

... because the earthquake gave
Port Royal one last killing blow.

On the seabed lies the
skeleton of a large ship.

She's in the middle of the
ruins of a house on Lime Street.

Why is there a ship on a floor
behind a building in Port Royal?

The strange discovery was excavated
by Donny Hamilton in the 1980s.

Now Jon wants to know what it tells
us about Port Royal's doomsday.

This is a floor plan of
buildings five and four.

We found timber that turned
out to be the ship's keel.

It was the building near the ship
that surprised Donny the most.

Why was that wall not intact
like the other houses?

The first thing we saw was that A, B,
C and D should form a straight line.

But everything has been pushed forward.

The wall is not just offset.
It has been broken to pieces.

And another wall was bent.

This is a collision site.

It is unusual to see exactly
what happened so clearly.

But how could a ship
in the harbor...

... have hit a house
in the middle of town?

Could the ship's identity
solve the mystery?

In the sources,
Donny's team found a possible candidate.

An English warship
of 23 meters.

She resembled this ship
and was named HMS Swan.

We knew from the records that Swan was
in port at the time of the earthquake.

And she fits in with the
dimensions of the wreck.

It turned out that on June
7, 1692...

... HMS Swan lay at the quay
in Port Royal for maintenance.

All clues point
to a conclusion.

The ship that lay at the quay
60 m from this building...

... had now been let down on the building.

That is clear
evidence of a tsunami.

The tsunami was the third
disaster to hit Port Royal.

A witness says that the sea
receded before the wave came.

It was a wave similar to those
that devastated Japan in 2011...

... and Thailand in 2004.

The tsunami could explain
what happened to HMS Swan.

We can now, for the first
time, show her last journey.

Without ballast,
HMS Swan floated like a cork...

... on the mighty wave that
crashed over Port Royal.

She was thrown over
the drenched city...

... was washed down
Queen Street...

... before she crashed into
a house on Lime Street.

She broke through its walls
with considerable force.

Archaeologists have mapped
out the fate of Port Royal.

But you have one last mystery...

... who can shed light on
how the disaster happened.

One of Port Royal's largest
buildings seems to be missing.

Fort James.

From maps we know that Fort James
was at the harbor entrance...

... so it should be visible
on the underwater map.

It surprised us that we
did not find any height...

... where you expect
something as big as a fort.

We can accept that it dropped
but when you see the maps...

... so it seems to have
disappeared completely.

Something else happened
during the disaster...

... who can explain Fort
James' disappearance?

The size of the building only
makes it more mysterious.

It was, like Fort Charles,
a strong defense...

... for England's largest
settlement in the New World.

So what other brutal forces
may have destroyed...

... its mighty fortress walls?

To find out, Jon wants to search
for remnants at the bottom.

I want to go down in that area...

... and look for something
that may belong to the fort.

If Jon finds anything,
Simon Brown should...

...
photo map the area properly.

We are looking for large
blocks with straight sides.

Anything with a uniform shape.

Jon follows up on rumors of
large boulders on the seabed.

He starts in deeper water...

... beyond the known
boundaries of the sunken city.

The location of Fort James
has always been a mystery.

We hope that with new technology...

... should get an impression of where
the remains of the fortress are...

... and what happened to the fortress.

All remnants can be clues...

... until the end of the disaster
that wiped out Port Royal.

You quickly make a discovery.

One of the marker buoys has come up.
I heard Jon found something.

Could it be Fort James?
The missing part of the city?

The earthquake that sank Port Royal does
not explain why a large building...

... seems to be missing on the seabed.

But Jon Henderson may have
found the remains of Fort James.

So it's time for Simon
to explore the place.

If they released buoys...

... so they have probably found
something they think is important.

Down here we have huge
blocks of bricks and mortar.

You can see that they are handmade.

They have quite sharp edges.

And they have some right angles.

The blocks do not seem to be a
natural feature of the seabed.

So the team documents
and maps the discovery.

Can that explain how
the fort went down?

They are all over the bottom.

They are large and massive
lumps of brick and mortar.

Fort James is in pieces all
over the seabed down there.

It is as if the building
has sunk and broken.

Jon has located Fort
James for the first time.

This is not where it
should be at the bottom.

And there is very
little left of it.

What does it reveal
about the disaster?

This is one of the parts...

... which we believe
was part of Fort James.

This is a picture of
a large piece of wall.

A remnant of the mighty fort.

Unlike other buildings,
it is not intact.

How come it was
smashed to pieces?

At the earthquake it slid
down into the harbor.

It had the whole weight
of the city behind it.

It began to break.
Spirit houses sank straight down.

But the fort was pushed over
even before the tsunami...

... which then broke it.

The destruction of Fort James indicates
that it was more than a tsunami.

It was the earthquake's
final and cruel whim.

And that again was due to
Port Royal's location...

... in Kingston's harbor.

The irony was that they were in a
port, a protected place

which protected ships from storms
but became fatal at the quake.

Kingston's harbor intensified the tsunami.

Imagine that the wave rushed into
the bay and could not get out.

In the bay, the tsunami
bounced against all beaches...

... and sent more waves towards
the north side of the sunken city.

They broke up Fort James and
spread it over the bottom.

It's like taking a bathtub and
shaking it so that it splashes.

It only exacerbates the devastation.

Port Royal had been devastated
by an earthquake, quicksand...

... and several tsunami waves.

The disaster cuts off the
city from the mainland.

All that was left was
a devastated island...

... and thousands of dead bodies.

For many days afterwards a large
number of corpses floated...

SURVIVAL TESTIMONY

... around the whole harbor.

They caused such a stench...

... that the dead seemed to
want to destroy the living.

When the news of the
disaster reached Europe...

... it seemed like God had finally
punished the sinful pirate city.

When the news reached the homeland...

... many thought that the English-speaking
world was the most sinful city...

... got what it deserved.

It was seen as divine revenge and
as an appropriate punishment...

... for the sinful Port Royal.

Through this awfulness,
God causes them to reform their lives.

PORT ROYAL RESIDENTS

For there are no more
wicked people in this world.

Port Royal never regained
its former glory.

The pearl of the Caribbean
trading towns had been wiped out

If the earthquake had
not occurred here...

... the city could have developed
like Manhattan or Hong Kong.

But in the end, it was Port Royal's
life-threatening situation...

... on a fault line and
quicksand that sealed its fate.

The truth was that the English
built the city in the wrong place.

It was a tragedy,
a catastrophe, caused by man.

Not by nature or God.

Jon Henderson's work is
the first complete survey

of the sunken pirate city.

It can provide a place on the
UNESCO World Heritage List...

... which can protect
the place from nature.

The sea regains its place again.

It has swallowed it
once and wants it back.

But thanks to science and
incredible computing...

... the history of
Port Royal lives on.

The most infamous pirate
city of all time...

... was beaten to pieces
by a huge earthquake...

... and sucked into the sea
by life-threatening quicksand.

The last blow was dealt
by several tsunami waves.

A triple disaster that ended...

... in the most
sinful city on earth.