Shipwrecks Found Near The Bahamas Reveal The Real Pirates Of The Caribbean?!
A team of archaeologists and filmmakers have discovered six shipwrecks in and around Nassau Harbor in the Bahamas, three of which are linked to one of the most dramatic chapters in maritime history: the Golden Age of Piracy, a period stretching from the late 1600s into the early 1720s when Nassau on New Providence Island served as the unofficial capital of piracy in the Atlantic and home to some of the most notorious outlaws who ever sailed, including Blackbeard, Calico Jack Rackham, Anne Bonny, and the man known as the King of Pirates, Henry Avery. The New Providence Pirates Expedition, co-directed by marine archaeologist Dr. Sean Kingsley and Bahamian archaeologist Dr. Michael Pateman, received the first-ever official permission to dive within a restricted zone of Nassau Harbor and found exactly what centuries of history had suggested might be there. Inside the harbor, one wreck retained part of its charred wooden hull, ballast stones still pinning the frame to the seabed, a relic of the pirate tactic of burning ships to the waterline to eliminate evidence of the crime of piracy after stripping the vessel of its cargo, cannons, and fittings.
About 22 miles east of Nassau, the team found a second heavily armed vessel that Pateman described as laid out in crystal-clear visibility, and said was equipped with swivel guns, the anti-personnel weapon of choice for pirates, alongside iron cannons, lead musket balls, a large deck cannon, and a grinding stone that was almost certainly used to sharpen swords. Researchers noted that the Caribbean had long carried a reputation as the world's pirate capital, but no sunken ship in the region had previously been identified and documented as connected to the Golden Age of Piracy, making the Nassau discoveries the first physical archaeological link between the harbor and the outlaws whose presence there is recorded extensively in historical accounts. The discoveries are documented in a new Wreckwatch TV series that premiered on June 4th and also features the first historically accurate 3D digital model of what Nassau's Piratetown looked like around the year 1715, a reconstruction based on the archaeological evidence and historical records combined. Kingsley said the settlement would have resembled something far harsher and more desperate than the polished version most people recognize from the movies.
