The Pirates Lost City (Documentary)

now in search of history explores hidden treasure salvaged from the wickedest city on earth experience the violent fury of a Buccaneer raid and meet Blackbeard the scourge of the Caribbean [Music] the pirate is among the oldest and most familiar of images in literature the movies and our imaginations terrifying figures of Menace and violence gleaming cutlasses dripping with gore remorseless brutes with cold murder in what passed for their hearts can't do you imagine what it must have been you're a simple sailor you just want to get home safely suddenly a ship comes up alongside there is a madman on the deck motivating another group of madmen all armed to the teeth you really don't want to fight you really would rather just put your sword down and pray for the best unfortunately the best was usually death there was more to the pirate life however the submerged ruins of an extraordinary City Port Royal have given up clues to the true nature of the Buccaneers who once lived here in this submerged time capsule archeologists are painstakingly piecing together the true picture of the Pirates of the Caribbean [Music] portroyal was the pirate capital of the world a layer of thieves gamblers prostitutes and slave traders the dregs of the earth it sat on the end of a tongue of land which formed the South Side of Kingston Harbour Jamaica [Music] from its founding by the British in 1655 until its catastrophic destruction less than 40 years later Port Royal was a wide-open town where anything was possible and everything could be had for a price [Music] it just was a crazy wild city every clergyman that came there whether it was a Catholic or Protestant or Jewish rabbi they just freaked that they couldn't believe of the lawlessness that went on in the place so it was like 50 times worse than Dodge City and probably a fun place I wish I would have been there [Music] portroyal is the Sodom of the new world the majority of its population of pirates cutthroats whores and some of the vilest persons alive I felt my presence there was of no use and I could preach the Word of God elsewhere among a better sort of folk Reverend Caleb Matthews portroyal 1666 [Music] as remarkable as the city itself is the story of its creation for Port Royal was deliberately founded as a pirate stronghold by the English crown [Music] economically speaking it was much more important to the economy of England than Boston was to the economy of England almost all of the gold and silver going to England at this particular point in time was coming in through Port Royal [Music] since the time of Christopher Columbus the Spanish had dominated the Americas [Music] countless ships sailed forth from the new world laden with treasure bound for Spain [Music] the English encouraged pirates to loot the Spanish of the treasures which the Spanish themselves had stolen from the native peoples of the Americas [Music] in return the crown would receive a large percentage of the spoils as with the English merchants of Port Royal who financed the pirating expeditions for centuries since the catastrophe which destroyed it the full extent of Port Royal was unknown evidence uncovered through underwater excavations at Port Royal has revealed that Port Royal was much larger than historians had imagined at its height Port Royal boasted over 7,000 people and its deepwater Harbor sheltered hundreds of ships it was discovered that far from being an obscure outpost in the Caribbean Port Royal was actually the biggest city in the new world [Music] the artifacts that have been recovered from the sunken city indicate that it really was a place of vast wealth the China where the puter where the silver incredible indicating that the merchants of Port Royal the people of Port Royal spent their money on tremendous luxury the thousands of wine casks and rum bottles that litter the ruins of Port Royal our Testament that of all the pirate's appetites none was more voracious than the thirst for hard liquor in fact one of the Pirates favorite drinks was kill devil rum said to be so powerful even the devil could not survive it thinking it might enhance their virility the Pirates even mixed gunpowder into their potent drinks [Music] there may have been a practical reason for their heavy drinking beyond sheer debauchery about one out of every five rooms in the entire town we're supposedly used to serve drink of some sort but then you have to put that into context because at this particular point in time there is no fresh water at Port Royal and any of the water this local is brackish so this time appeared people didn't drink water you drank liquor [Music] Port Royal was filled with a profusion of taverns brothels and gambling dens but recent archaeology has also uncovered evidence of many wealthy homes vast warehouses and shops it seems the Pirates of Port Royal were a much more diverse group than the bloodthirsty brutes of story and legend [Music] we really can't stereotype pirates they were attracted to an independent life and in fact in a world where one was condemned to remain in the little box one was born into it was literally the only way of beating the system so sons of poor families in the hinterland made their way to coastal towns looking to go to the New World [Music] despite its appeal a pirate's life was as short as it was brutal if he did not die in battle an outlaw Buccaneer could expect to end his days on the gallows though extremely hazardous many took up the pirate life in hopes of a big payoff anyone who wanted thought they can make a quick buck and not get hung in the process would become a pirate and so you you have people from all stations in life though they were undeniably killers and thieves contrary to the popular myths many of the Pirates of Port Royal and elsewhere were pious god-fearing men [Music] there were a lot of churches and even a synagogue in Port Royal so whilst there was on the one hand the wickedness of Port Royal there must have been a certain amount of of attempt for redemption it was said that one devout pirate captain went so far as to shoot a disrespectful crewman during a shipboard prayer meeting why would people who claim to believe in God turned to piracy in fact religious hatreds were used to justify piracy in the Caribbean the French Dutch and English pirates were Protestants and were motivated by religious hatred to attack the Spanish who were Roman Catholic the lure of gold was probably a strong motive to encourage so many to embark on a life of robbery and plunder often Pirates were a far cry from the characters of popular fiction even Royal Navy sailors would leave the security and dignity of Navy life deserting their warships for the precarious world of The Buccaneer there were British sailors who escaped the harshness of life aboard a British ship which was pretty miserable I mean it was so miserable that they wouldn't even let these guys go ashore when and go back to port there sometimes they were on ships for a couple years at a time life in the Royal Navy was brutal an officer's casual command could condemn a sailor to be flogged to death [Music] pirate life was radically different and democratic on pirate ships physical punishment was rare and could be imposed only by a majority vote pirates were partners they called themselves the Brethren of the coast before their ships even left port the captain and crew signed an agreement which governed the equal distribution of captured prizes its numerous bylaws controlled behavior aboard ship as well as promises to work together as a community for shared goals these agreements were known as the ship's articles there are some uncanny resemblances between the Pirates articles and our Bill of Rights for example pirates elected their leaders they deposed their leaders when they were not successful the fact that slaves were brought in to piracy and they became freemen was another manifestation of this same underlying thing [Music] buccaneers severely wounded in battle were not left to fend for themselves in fact their partners in crime had already made provisions to take care of them the concept of workman's compensation started with pirates the men who were especially good were much sought after not only did they get a piece of whatever pie they were gonna be dividing but also should something happen and a man then lose a limb and I or something he was to be recompense pirates were ever alert to opportunity if they chanced upon a vulnerable ship they would attack immediately however most of their fighting took place on land the public perception of piracy is two ships battling out on the high sea and this did happen on occasion but primarily pirates more often attacked coastal towns and RAM sacked them and looted them and captured the important people of the town and held them for ransom the greatest land battle ever fought by pirates was captained by Britain's most notorious pirate Henry Morgan historians agree he was a brilliant leader and tactician he might have been Admiral of the fleet if he had chosen another life [Music] Morgan's exploits also led to one of the great pirate legends the fabled lost treasure [Music] on December 18th 1670 with an army of over 2,000 pirates and in command of over 50 vessels Morgan sailed from Port Royal in a series of ferocious attacks he savaged the major cities of the Spanish mane culminating in the looting of Panama City a wealthy Spanish stronghold as they went into battle Morgan's men fought armed to the teeth the weapons fired single bullets you wanted to carry a bunch of them when you were involved in those combat you carried a sword when the pistols weren't any good anymore you carry the debt when the sword was until anymore if your leg had been blown off by grapeshot yell or a peg leg if your AR had been put out by a pike you wore a patch when pirates were successful in their raids what became of their plunder according to popular legends the Buccaneers buried their treasure in fact they almost never did this tails are told to this day of one fabled buried treasure in Panama City Morgan was looking for the town's prized possession a golden altar the crowning glory of its church whether or not Morgan ever stole that remains a puzzle but the story has entered the realm of myth one of the greatest mysteries of portroyal is where is this golden altar and where are the great golden statues that the Buccaneers went after on the Spanish mane and no one knows every island in the Caribbean has a story about Morgan's treasure to date it's never been found I don't care where you go they'll tell you Morgan buried his treasure he didn't have a treasure to bury he brought it all back to Panama he divided it up with his people he paid his sponsors off the governor got his year the King of England got a share so there's no envy morgan treasure Morgan went to extreme measures to protect his secrets he insisted that he be buried in a secret place so that he couldn't be dug up and for any reason give clues to where the whereabouts of his famous treasure as grave is still unknown [Music] like Henry Morgan's treasure most pirate loot was ephemeral in fact most pirates died penniless if Buccaneers did come back to port with ill-gotten gains it would usually be squandered within just a few days the merchants were the ones primarily benefiting from the action of the Pirates so whatever profits the Pirates might have been making would be spent rather quickly in Port Royal and his taverns as house of prostitution and then the merchants would eventually end up with it the interesting thing is they're all pirates even the merchants were pirates I find some rulers made out of Ebony wood and bronze even the rulers were wrong so I'm sure these were rulers being used to sell cloth or something in a merchant shop you know even the scales for weighing I found the little scales for weighing gold weights and everything like that the weights Rob everybody was a correct everybody was cheating you know a bunch of thieves I tell you they're all thieves the days of this rollicking wide-open City were numbered for those who had inflicted such terrible violence on so many others were themselves about to suffer a violent catastrophe [Music] by the year 1692 the pirate city of Port Royal was the richest town in the new world at 7,000 people it's population rivaled that of London all this was about to end abruptly many people thought of Port Royal as the Sodom of the new world traveling preachers even prophesy that God's wrath would strike the depraved pirate town just as in the Bible he smote Sodom and Gomorrah [Music] shortly before noon on June 7th 1692 disaster struck the massive earthquake shook the town to its foundations more than two-thirds of Port Royal sank into Kingston Harbor within a matter of minutes but it was only the beginning from the sea massive walls of water waves 30 feet high slammed into what was left of the devastated city you have the building sinking down in the harbor then you have a series of waves coming from the mainland of Jamaica hitting Port Royal bouncing off hitting the mainland and so you have an oscillating wave and so essentially you have the largest English town the New World two-thirds of its sinking almost totally out of sight beneath the waters of present-day Kingston Harbour we continued running up the street whilst on either side of us we saw the houses some swallowed up others thrown in heaps the sand in the streets rose like waves lifting up all persons that stood upon it and at the same instant we saw a flood of water breaking in and rolling those poor souls over and over Port Royal merchant 1692 the tidal waves created as much damage and death as the earthquake Port Royal was built on sand when the earthquake struck the water table underneath liquefied the soil turning the very ground they stood on into quicksand there's a lot of local stories dating from impact accounts dating from that time period of people being buried up to their neck and then the ground closing back up on them and there's even you know stories of dogs coming along and eating the heads of the dead individuals even those dead and buried before the earthquake were not spared you had the coffins of recently buried individuals floating around and of course you had all the victims of Port Royal itself around 2,000 people were killed immediately in the earthquake many people thought the destruction of Port Royal was the punishment of God but others found opportunity in the catastrophe drunken mobs roamed the streets murdering survivors and looting what was left of the pirate lair the dead were floating all over the place there was it was absolute chaos even before the bodies were fully removed there were people who were diving down into the remains of the sunken city to take out what they could find most of the buildings had sunk in areas too deep for Salvage perhaps the waters of Port Royal hold the remains of fabulous pirate treasures still waiting to be found if someone were to do you know excavation is extensive enough there would be material that could be bullion gold most likely in some part of the city in 1966 using methods undreamed-of 300 years earlier archaeologist Robert marks began a two-year excavation of Port Royal among his discoveries a treasure chest containing 1200 silver coins the true pirate treasure however may not be gold and silver but the insight we are granted into the day-to-day life of the vanished pirates so we know the pirates of the merchants and all these people lived in Port Royal Bay the things that we found we know the crockery the things that they brought to the things that they captured the foods that they ate you know they're the diseases that they had from the bones we I even found fabrics they found simple silks from China so it made the life come true you know I read all these books about pirates but when I'm down there on the bottom of excavating even though it was pitch black most of the time as I grab this I could say okay god I wonder which guy use this pistol I think the real treasure of Port Royal today certainly is the archaeological significance of what was the wealth and the lifestyle of the 17th century in the New World it's a story of what was this fascinating collection of people that came from all over the world with all kinds of desires and practices and to be able to understand this is the real treasure port although portroyal had been devastated in 1692 the pirate spirit could not be extinguished by mere earthquakes and tidal waves by the year 1710 Port Royal was again the haunt of some of the most disreputable characters the world has ever known [Music] some of these guys are just incredible I mean they would cut people's hearts out and make them eat it as their die you know or cut somebody's heart out and make somebody else II didn't cut some of these years off there was a pirate named Roche Brazil y'know and he became a Dennison at Port Royal rush Basel Yana would take a big flagon out and go up and down the street with his Cutlass and a pistol and in the tankard under his arm trying to get people to drink with him and if they refused his invitation he would like as not would shoot at them or have at them with his knife [Music] once again the Pirates of Port Royal terrorized the high seas sometimes they resorted to clever schemes to mask their identity and lure nearby ships closer in a diabolic masquerade crew members dressed up as women and stood in full view on deck the unsuspecting vessels thought they were just ordinary passengers on an innocent ship usually pirate dress was more mundane like other sea men of the time they wore garments of heavy wool since they had no change of clothing pirates were frequently dirty and ragged while aboard ship on shore however pirates often scandalized observers by wearing expensive clothing reserved for the aristocracy they were fobs they were dandies they used their dress their wealth - - to buy fancy dress and they used it in fact as an intimidating factor that made them more visible there could be other reasons to explain the flamboyant dress of some of the Pirates crewmen and officers sailed as a team and many formed strong attachments that sometimes matured into love [Music] there obviously were wonderful Queens among the Pirates because they loved to dress and they would steal the silks the statins the wonderful things that came from the Orient and they would get up the most incredible feminine garment sometimes the Pirates reveled in bloody combat adventure and glory a man's world through and through or was it howling like banshees the pirate pair came raging out of the cannon smoke flashing their cutlasses and singeing the air with shrill olds and curses only by the largeness of their breasts did I know them to be women mrs. Dorothy Thomas 1720 there were several women pirates Anne Bonny and Mary read to female pirates who operated out of Jamaica our history's most famous and well they ought to be because they far out shown the men they sailed within in skill and courage both of these fearsome women sailed from Port Royal with Captain John Rackham to conceal their identity they wore men's clothes some believe that Mary Reed was brought up as a boy because her mother had lost an infant son before Mary's birth [Music] of the two pirates Mary was the more experienced she was in the army as a man and so she signed on as a seaman and that's how she found her way to the Caribbean she and Anne became a good team they were in the thick of it once they signed on for this they participated fully they they were no shrinking violets [Music] [Music] in both the cases of an Bonny and Mary read they had actually lived and worked ashore as boys so when they went to sea it was the natural thing for them to do there's no question that women are fully capable of dealing with the the work aboard a ship how could two women hide their femininity on a ship full of men the women probably were able to hide their sexes because of the loose baggy clothing they wore men had long hair in those days most of the Pirates were pathetically young so I think it's not inconceivable to imagine these two women who must have found little nooks and crannies on the ship to do whatever a woman had to do that would have indicated she was female the adventure ended for the two women in October of 1720 they along with Rackham and the rest of his crew were captured and tried for piracy Rackham and the men were executed the next day he was captured hung and then put in a cage outside the entrance into Port Royal Harbor and it seemed left his body just the decay out there the deterrent a deterrent against other pirate activities when Anne and Mary were convicted the judge asked if there was any reason why they should not be hanged [Music] when they were asked how they pled they both said I plead my belly my lord they were both pregnant and Mary Reed died in prison Anne Bonny sentence was commuted what happened to her we don't know [Music] and Bonnie mysteriously disappeared from Port Royal some say she traveled to Charleston South Carolina where she moved in with her parents Ann and Mary had led astonishing lives at least the equal of the most imaginative fiction [Music] by the year 1720 the great age of piracy was drawing to a close [Music] pirate life flee doomed by a twist of history as the British colony of Jamaica grew its vast sugar plantations produced well far exceeding the plunder brought to England by the Pirates [Music] the British the very power which had created the Pirates now determined to destroy them [Music] Port Royal was established with a full blessing of the English government and they encouraged the Buccaneers but at a certain point it became apparent they were going to have to deal with the Buccaneers and the Pirates in a different way because you could not hope to establish agricultural colonies with farmers and have a place like Port Royal [Music] the Navy was dispatched to capture imprison and hang renegade pirate gangs the Buccaneers had to be eliminated to make way for a plague which would haunt the new world for generations slavery [Music] Fantasia from required vast amount of human labor and this was the beginning the origin really of the horror of the slave trade of the 17th 18th and early 19th centuries [Music] as the great age of piracy came to an end the myth-making began in 1720 for Daniel Defoe the author of Robinson Crusoe wrote a history of piracy in the new world his book would forever change the way the general public imagined Buccaneers for in this popular work which many have taken for a definitive history Defoe skillfully combined fact with fantasy his greatest creation was Blackbeard this beard was black in an extravagant length he would twist it with ribbons and turn them about his ears the time of action he wore a brace of pistols and stuck lighted matches under his hat which made him look fierce and wild and altogether worse than a fury from hell Daniel default general history of the Pirates 1724 Defoe's Blackbeard transformed his vessel into an imitation of hell he lived with 14 wives each of which he shared with his brutal companions and went into battle with explosives twisted into his beard in fact Dafoe invented these anecdotes which are not found in official records or newspaper stories of the time yet Blackbeard did exist his real name was Edward Teach unlike the superhuman character presented by Dafoe teach had a brief career and only took a few prizes there is no evidence that he ever harmed his crew or captives his death however was sensational he was finally caught after a valiant battle by an English expedition that went after him and after fierce hand-to-hand combat his head was stricken from his body carried on the English ship back where it was exhibited as a trophy [Music] from Defoe's exaggerated accounts of Blackbeard to Long John Silver of Treasure Island from Peter Pan's Captain Hook to the motion picture acrobatics of Douglas Fairbanks the pirate has acquired mythical qualities in fact no one ever sang yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum or said shiver me timbers no one ever walked the plank or drew cryptic maps where X marked the spot of a fabulous buried treasure [Music] these were all things that crept into the popular imagination the question really is why what under lay that what allowed us to sort of forgive if you will what was this violent life and condone it and and romanticize it [Music] perhaps it is because pirates fulfill the fantasy forbidden to the rest of us they lived freely to what they wanted and feared no one and it is such bold characters as these who inspire us to go in search of history [Music] you

Channel: DocSpot

Views: 317,847

Rating: 4.6912279 out of 5

Keywords: Pirates, City, Lost, Treasure, Pirate, Blackbeard, History

Id: 09LPjSkzyNY

Length: 42min 1sec (2521 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 07 2018