This is the only confirmed pirate treasure ever discovered.
[man] The first heist they made was 30,000 pieces of 8,
and they took over 50 ships.
Right.
And you know where the main wreck is?
Your team is excavating?
You want to see what's out there?
I would love to see what's out there.
Everybody hang on.
I thought this was supposed to be easy.
This is what we call Black Bellamy's Curse.
-Yeah? -Yeah, the closer you get, the further you are.
Sounds about right.
Permission to come aboard?
Hey, Brandon, suit up!
Wait. There are coins sticking out of this everywhere.
-And is this gold? -[man] That's part of a gold bar.
-Look out! Look out! Look out! -Whoa, whoa, whoa!
Yes. Look at that.
That's $10,000 worth of gold right there.
Hey, Barry, I think we got a white shark.
It's starting to head into the area.
Diver one, diver two.
Welcome to Boston, my hometown,
not to mention the home of the American Revolution,
the Red Sox, Dunkin Donuts,
and, surprisingly, pirates.
Now, every kid who grows up here learns that Boston
was once the largest and wealthiest city in the colonies.
But what I do not remember learning
is that in the spring of 1717,
the waters of the Bay State were visited by none other
than Captain "Black Sam" Bellamy.
Bellamy and his motley crew sail through New England,
transporting the largest stolen fortune
in the golden age of piracy.
Bellamy was an English sailor turned swashbuckler,
famous for capturing more than 50 ships
through the threat of force,
but even more famous for not actually using it.
His pirate fleet terrifies enemies into surrender.
But Bellamy shows mercy to those he captures.
He also offers equal shares of the profits to his crew,
which even includes freed slaves.
This earns Sam another nickname,
"The Prince of Pirates."
It's a great story. But is it true?
Was Bellamy antihero or villain?
Model leader or incorrigible scoundrel?
And then there's the real mystery,
the lost location of his incredible stolen fortune,
which Bellamy took to a watery grave.
It happens aboard the mighty Whydah Gally,
a lethally-armed former slave ship,
loaded with more than £20,000 of gold and silver,
along with massive gems, ornate jewelry,
weapons, and some decent Spanish wine.
In short, it's an eye-patch- popping-sum of money
amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars today.
Unfortunately for Bellamy, he'll never get to enjoy it.
That's because, while navigating about 50 miles east of here
along the edge of Cape Cod,
the Whydah sails into an eerie fog.
The Whydah is caught in a savage nor'easter,
where gale force winds and 40-foot waves
throw her into the rocky shoals.
The gally is dashed to pieces,
and more than 180 men, Bellamy among them,
are lost to the sea,
while the Whydah's treasure is strewn
across the sandbars of Cape Cod.
For more than 250 years,
the Bellamy story was a local curiosity,
his treasure seemingly lost forever,
that is until someone decided to find it.
Welcome to Boston's magnificent Public Library.
-[man shushes] -Sorry!
Within the archives of this historic institution
is something you rarely find outside the world of fiction,
an actual pirate map.
This long-forgotten document was originally drawn
by cartographer Captain Cyprian Southack,
who was dispatched to Cape Cod shortly after the wreck
to recover Bellamy's treasure.
And while he didn't find the loot,
he did locate something else.
Here, just off the east coast of Cape Cod,
he made a note,
"The pirate ship Whydah lost."
The map got filed away and forgotten until the early '80s,
when underwater explorer Barry Clifford rediscovered it
and used it to locate the remains of the infamous wreck.
But despite almost four decades of excavation,
just a mere fraction of the Whydah's legendary treasure has been recovered.
Now Clifford's team is following a newly-found debris trail
that may lead to the stern castle,
the rear section of the ship,
which has never been found.
This is a place that could contain unimaginable riches.
And who knows? Perhaps even the remains of Bellamy himself.
There's pirate treasure to be found,
and for once, we know exactly where it is.
Next stop, Cape Cod.
After a quick stop at Dunkin's.
Always caffeinate before an adventure.
The past is all around us.
Oh, this is crazy.
A world of mystery...
-This is a plane. Ha ha! -Yeah.
...danger...
We are about to be underwater.
Wow!
...and adventure.
It's just straight down!
[exclaiming]
I travel to the far corners of the Earth
to uncover where legends end
and history begins.
Let's punch it.
I'm Josh Gates, and this is Expedition Unknown.
My search for the Whydah's treasure feels personal.
After all, this is an adventure in my own backyard.
So I head south of Boston
on the way to New England's summer playground.
All right, well, we are on the road,
and we are about to cross over the famous Sagamore Bridge,
which connects mainland Massachusetts
with the peninsula of Cape Cod.
Cape Cod is Massachusetts distilled down to its essence.
Equal parts quaint, touristy and posh.
Oh, and the oysters are wicked good.
But it's not all smooth sailing around here.
The waters off the Cape are notoriously violent during storms,
and over the last few decades,
the great white population here has exploded,
'causing some beaches to close to swimmers in the summer.
For more on this issue, see a little film called Jaws.
But as I pull into the town of Yarmouth,
I'm focused on another ocean predator. Pirates.
Which are well documented in a remarkable local museum.
Inside, I'm greeted by a replica of the pirate ship Whydah
and even a working lab,
which is here to conserve the jaw-dropping and ever-expanding collection
of artifacts from the wreck of Bellamy's ship.
But the biggest prize,
the ship's stern castle, has yet to be found.
Amidst the booty I meet, the man who found it,
explorer Barry Clifford and his son, Brandon.
Let's go back to the beginning of this journey.
The Whydah was obviously an incredible prize for Black Sam Bellamy.
Why was it an incredible prize for you?
Why did you want to find this ship?
Well, it was a legend that I grew up with as a kid,
and my uncles used to sit around the old fish house
and tell yarns of the old days.
-Yeah. -And my Uncle Bill,
who my other uncles referred to as "Uncle Bull"...
-[laughs] The storyteller. -...would tell the story
of Sam Bellamy
and all the treasure that was lost on the Whydah.
[Josh] Bellamy was born in Devon, England, in 1689.
The story goes that in his mid-20s,
after sailing for the British Navy,
young Bellamy finds himself on the Cape
and head over heels with a young beauty
named Maria Goody Hallet.
Her father, though, won't allow his daughter
to marry a penniless seafarer,
so Bellamy sets out to make something of himself.
And that something turns out to be a pirate.
Learning from the likes of Benjamin Hornigold
and Edward Teach, AKA "Blackbeard,"
Bellamy begins an extraordinarily profitable reign,
pillaging ships in the Caribbean.
But Bellamy shuns violence,
with no record of him ever killing any of his victims.
Through sheer intimidation,
he manages to assemble a fleet of captured vessels,
including a massive slave galley known as the Whydah.
The Whydah is state of the art,
the rocket ship of her day.
With a 300-ton hull and 28 cannons on a hair trigger,
she's still faster than anything else on the water.
Yet Bellamy takes her without a shot,
liberates the poor souls aboard,
and loads her with the combined treasure
from dozens of ships,
a fortune in gold, silver, jewels and textiles.
It is thought that he is returning home to his true love,
Goody Hallet,
and, who knows, maybe a wealthy retirement,
when, on April 26th, 1717,
the Whydah is driven into Cape Cod's
unforgiving eastern cliffs.
The ship is dashed to pieces,
and the Atlantic consumes Bellamy,
his crew and his fortune.
It is Shakespearean.
It's incredible, an incredible story.
How could you not-- any kid not be interested in that?
And I imagine the same is true for you.
You must have been just a kid
when he went looking for the Whydah.
So this was a story you heard as well as a kid.
Yeah, my whole life, I grew up with it.
It's always been there.
And in terms of finding the wreck,
you did have something of a leg up
in that you found this old map that I just saw.
-Yes. -Where was that map when you found it?
It was at the Harvard Map Room and, um, John Kennedy Jr.,
who was my dive assistant on Martha's Vineyard,
and John got us in there somehow.
Somehow. He may have had a couple of strings he could pull
to get you into the Harvard archives, probably.
They wouldn't let me mow the lawn there.
But you got into the archives.
And when you first saw that map,
where you just giddy?
Yeah, it was "Pirate ship Whydah lost" right on the map.
You know, X marks the spot.
What year did you first identify the wreck?
-Well, in '85, we found a massive concretion. -Okay.
And something was coming out of the side of it.
Would you like to see it?
-I would love to see it. -Let's go.
Please.
[Josh] Concretions occur when minerals
build up around sunken relics over centuries,
hiding treasures inside blocks of natural cement.
This is what we found.
-[Josh] The bell. -The ship's bell.
The ship's bell.
It's right on there,
"The Whydah Gally, 1716."
This makes it indisputable.
It's the only fully-confirmed pirate ship
that's ever been discovered.
And that means the treasure...
And the treasure here...
is the only confirmed pirate treasure in the world.
Period. Right here at this museum.
[Josh] The museum is filled floor to ceiling
with recovered artifacts,
including a pirate pistol
and a fragile silk ribbon said to have been a gift
from Goody Hallet to Black Sam himself.
And then there are the coins, thousands of them,
including silver Spanish 8 Reales,
popularly known as pieces of 8.
Yet with all the treasure they found,
the Cliffords haven't sold a single piece,
keeping the entire collection together
as a historical record of the Whydah.
But since Bellamy looted over 50 ships,
this is a mere fraction of what's still out there,
including...
A casket of East Indian jewels.
-That'd be nice. -A hen-egged-sized ruby.
A hen-egg-sized ruby?
-I mean... Amazing. -One of the rumors, yes.
[Josh] The rear of the ship, known as the stern castle,
contained the most valuable treasures,
including the personal possessions of Black Sam Bellamy,
but it has yet to be found.
Now the Cliffords have been using sonar
and following a newly-discovered debris trail like a rainbow,
one that hopefully leads to a pot of gold.
You guys are out there excavating right now?
You want to see what's out there?
I would love to see what's out there.
Turn your pockets inside out. Let's go.
I promise I won't take anything.
Come on, let's go.
The next morning, Barry goes ahead
to prepare the team's research vessel,
while Brandon and I board a support boat
for a ride to the wreck of the Whydah
and hopefully untold treasures.
The trip is far from a straight line, though.
It's like navigating through a maze of sand bars.
[Brandon] It really is.
It's like you make a little bit of an error,
you're going to be up on the sand bank.
To get to the Whydah, Brandon has to navigate
the unique back streets of Cape Cod,
winding channels that lead to the open ocean.
That's a little sketchy.
These breakers are rolling in
from the untamed waters of the Atlantic.
Everybody hold on.
These heavy waves disguise the very same rocks and shoals,
which, 300 years ago,
turned the Whydah into nothing more than a debris trail.
Now, we may be next.
Everybody hang on.
Okay. Just keep a hand on something.
[Josh] I'm crashing through the rough breakers of the Atlantic Ocean
off Cape Cod with Brandon Clifford
as we make our way to the wreck
of the pirate ship Whydah.
We're hoping to locate her missing stern castle,
which once held treasure worth untold millions.
That is, if we can survive these dangerously choppy waters.
Up and over.
There we go.
All right, we're out.
I thought this was supposed to be easy.
And this is what we call Black Bellamy's Curse.
-Yeah? -Yeah. The closer you get, the further you are.
That sounds about right.
The ocean calms down
as we approach the Cliffords' main research vessel.
Permission to come aboard?
[Brandon] Permission to come aboard.
[Josh] This is the Vast Explorer,
currently anchored above where Barry believes
Black Sam Bellamy's stern castle might be waiting.
Welcome to the nest explorer.
Happy to be here. This is a pretty incredible ship you've got here.
Tell me about this vessel.
This vessel was designed for the heart of our operation,
which is to dig down
and find artifacts from the Whydah.
Right. And people need to understand,
this ship is not just sitting on the bottom.
It's under 10 to 30 feet of sand.
-Right. -So how do we get down to the Whydah?
We have a deflector on the on the stern.
[Josh] The Vast Explorer is outfitted
with a massive propwash deflector,
which directs the force
generated by the ship's propellers downward,
gently pushing decades of built-up sand
away from the ocean floor
without damaging any artifacts.
The ship is dialed into place by satellite tracking
and stabilized by large anchors.
So are we in the spot here?
We have seven anchors out right now.
And we have a GPS here. And with that,
we're able to maneuver our way exactly
over where we want to dust.
Okay, well, let's see what's down there.
-All right. -Let's do it.
Using powerful hydraulics,
Barry and the team lower the deflector into place
in front of the ship's propellers,
then spin up the engines.
[Barry] Okay. I'm gonna give it a little bit more juice here.
[Josh] Thanks to seven anchors, we don't move,
but the sand beneath us does.
An underwater camera positioned below the boat
shows us the action on the bottom.
So we've got this drop camera
that's pointed straight down here,
and the hope is what?
That we see a hard bottom here?
Yeah. We're pretty close.
[Josh] We watch on the monitor as hundreds of years of sand
is blown from the sea floor.
We got it. We got hard bottom.
-Here we go. We're on it. -All right.
We're in it.
Hey, Brandon, suit up!
Let's do it.
Before we can get in the water, though,
there's the not-so-small matter of the sharks.
That's because the increased seal population off Cape Cod
has led to a massive increase in the number of great whites.
Nearly 800 of them have been cataloged here over the last decade.
So Matt, from the Clifford's team, sends up a drone
to make sure we can dive without becoming dinner.
Once we get the all clear,
we suit up and cautiously splash in.
[Brandon speaking]
[Josh speaking]
We follow a shot line from the boat,
making our way to the pit in the sand
created by the prop deflector.
And while it isn't deep,
I quickly learn that there are other challenges.
What's the visibility like?
It comes and goes with the tide.
[Josh] Mung is a fine brown algae that can take over
entire sections of the ocean off the Cape.
You might say this is a-mung the worst visibility
I've ever experienced.
And it's not doing wonders for my confidence
in spotting great white sharks.
[Brandon speaking]
[Josh] The deflector up top
has created a depression in the sand,
which we hope has revealed a cache
of historic treasures from the Whydah.
We swim down inside,
scanning as we go with a metal detector.
We bag the spoon and keep moving into the pit.
At the bottom, we see that we've exposed
a layer hidden deep beneath the sand.
[Josh speaking]
Using a metal-detecting probe, I'm able to prod the bottom
to search for anything buried just below the sand.
[Brandon speaking]
[Josh] A double-struck piece of 8
is an amazing find, rare and potentially valuable.
But more importantly, it's a clear sign
that we're on top of some Whydah treasure,
possibly even the stern castle we're looking for.
[Brandon speaking]
[Josh speaking]
At the time this coin was struck,
the Salem witch trials were happening
right up the road from Cape Cod.
And here's a fun fact.
Cotton Mather, the man who prosecuted these so-called witches,
would later try and convict the only two men
that survived the wreck of the Whydah,
hanging them on a dock at the entrance of Boston Harbor
as a warning to ships passing by.
As for us, we keep searching and finding.
[Brandon speaking]
[Josh speaking]
[Josh] High in the Andes,
Potosi, Bolivia, sits on a mountain of silver.
In the colonial era,
it was one of the largest mints for Spain in the New World.
And they would ship pure silver coins
back home through the Caribbean
in treasure fleets,
which became rich targets for pirates.
While we're rolling in the money,
40 feet above us, the team keeps their eyes on the water.
And thank God for that.
Oh. Hey, Barry, we got a white shark here.
It's starting to head into the area.
Topside.
Diver one, diver two, come back.
We've got to pull you to the surface.
We've got a shark sighting up here.
Guys, we've got to pull you to the surface.
We've got a shark sighting up here.
[Josh] The murky waters off Cape Cod
are called "the graveyard of the Atlantic."
It was true 300 years ago for the pirate Black Sam Bellamy,
and it's possibly true today as well.
It turns out we're in the water
with a great white shark.
-We have a shark? -[Matt] Yeah, we got a shark in the water.
Get out! Get out! Get out!
[Josh] Is it close to the boat?
Yes, there's sharks.
[Josh] I don't think I've ever gotten out of the water this quickly.
We scrambled back on board
so that my production team and I
can see what we just escaped.
There's a shark?
Oh, look at that.
That's between us and the beach.
-[Matt] Yup. -That is a great white?
Yeah, that looks like a 12-footer.
A good-size shark.
Definitely.
[Josh] I mean, how... How do you work here
with this in the water with you?
Just try not to think about it too much.
That's the approach?
Yeah, yeah. It's nice when Matt's not around,
so then we don't really know.
Matt, I appreciate you being here.
-For the record. -No problem.
[Brandon] It looks pretty well fed.
Yeah, I'm pretty well fed, too, Brandon.
I can still go out for dessert.
After a while, the shark is gone.
Probably.
Honestly, it would take a ship full of treasure
to get me back in the water-- Oh, wait.
Okay. Time to get back to work.
After all, we're in a target-rich area here
that has already produced several historic finds.
We waste no time returning to the area
where we found the coins,
hoping we're on a significant debris trail.
Over the years, Brandon and the team's archeologists
have painstakingly mapped the location
of every find aboard the Whydah.
[Josh] To do that, they use a grid
which we can methodically search square by square.
[Josh] A pistol was clearly a personal item,
something no pirate would willingly part with.
And in this case, it appears they didn't.
[Josh] These bracelets, called Manilas,
were not only decorative,
but used as currency in West Africa,
where they were traded for human lives.
They would likely have been brought aboard the Whydah
in its former incarnation as a slave ship
before it was captured and repurposed by Bellamy.
[Brandon]
[Josh] We keep scanning the grid, and in no time we have another find.
[detector beeping]
[Brandon]
[Josh]
[Brandon]
[Josh] While they often look like rocks,
mineral conglomerates contain more than meets the eye.
[Brandon]
[detector beeping]
[Josh]
[Brandon]
[Barry] Yeah, we got weather coming. Um, it's time to get back.
So we'll send the basket down, just be careful bagging it
and we'll bring it to the surface.
[Josh]
[Barry]
[Josh]
[Brandon]
[Josh]
We return to the deck of the Vast,
but there's no time to celebrate our finds,
a storm is moving towards us.
And surprisingly, our boat isn't moving away.
-[crew member] One hole. -[Josh] The crew seems concerned.
[crew member] One hole for the--
[bleep] loosen up on the bows, so we loosen these up and then we can unclip 'em.
So, talk to me. Where we at? What's happened here?
-Our generator just let go. -Okay.
[Barry] And with weather coming in,
we have to be able to get the deflector up
because we can't get out of here in an emergency.
[Josh] So, the deflector's in the down position,
the Vast can't navigate with that, right?
-'Cause the props are being blocked by the deflector? -Yep, yep.
-So if a storm hits in this position, that's bad? -Bad.
[Josh] Can the deflector be winched up manually?
Yes. We're gonna try to do that now.
We have to get the hell out of here.
[Josh] The crew frantically tries to raise the deflector,
using the emergency generator to power the winch and drag it up against its will.
Okay, Barry, hit the winch.
[crew member] Go, go, go, go, go, go, go.
[Barry] Watch your hands.
Look out, look out, look out.
[thunder rumbling]
Out of the way, I can't see.
[crew member] Now, now.
Keep going.
[Josh] Above the wreck of the Whydah,
flagship of the pirate Black Sam Bellamy,
we've recovered incredible artifacts and intriguing concretions.
But a storm is now bearing down on us
and we can't move out of the way.
-Hold. -[Barry] That's it.
[Josh] The emergency generator has raised the deflector, but only halfway.
-[Barry] It's not going anywhere. It's stuck. -It's not going?
[Josh] If we're going to escape this storm, it has to be fully up,
so the crew moves on to an old-fashioned plan B.
They tie ropes to the deflector
and then pull.
Come on. All right. Come up on it.
-Come up on it. Come up. -[Barry] Come on. Heave.
[thunder rumbling]
[crew member singing] ♪♪ Oh-we-oh, we-oh-oh♪
Hold! That's it.
[Josh] The deflector is up,
so we raise the seven anchors holding us in place,
before racing the storm to port.
After a soggy ride, we finally make it past the breakers
and into the calm waters of the channel.
Once safely back in port, we dry off and bring our finds to the Clifford's lab,
where archaeologist Andrew Barker
will preserve and catalog
everything we've pulled up today.
Fortunately, we have had a successful dive
and we've brought you a couple concretions stacks.
Excellent.
So looks like we have a lot of concretions here.
How many would you say there are that have yet to be fully investigated?
Uh, hundreds. Give or take. Yeah.
-Hundreds? Okay. -[Andrew] Yeah.
So people might be looking at this saying,
"Why are these artifacts back in the water?"
[Andrew] We have to keep them in the water until we can properly conserve them.
So the process involves slowly leeching the salt out of the concretions, first.
That's step number one.
And then, and only then, can we clean them up further.
How long will some of these items sit in water?
Uh, it all depends on the size and what's inside.
But it can be weeks, months, even years.
For large objects like canons, they've gotta stay in the water for years.
-Years? Wow. -[Andrew] Years. Yeah.
This is kind of maddening, right?
Because it's so exciting out on the ocean to make these discovers.
-You find something and you feel like "We did it!" -Yeah.
And you still can't tell what it is, right?
I mean, they come back here and these things are still a mystery.
Total mystery.
So you have to wait for this whole process to take place
before you can see what's inside of them?
Actually, there is a way that we can see inside of them.
-Now? -[Brandon] Now.
By using X-ray.
X-ray.
The concretions we just discovered
need to soak for a long time before being examined.
But Brandon has a very special find
from the same area we explored that's ready for a close-up.
An extreme close-up.
[Brandon] This is a really exciting concretion for us to scan.
-[Josh] Okay. -Let's take a look at it.
[Josh] Okay.
So what makes this so exciting?
Wait. I can see what makes this special. There are coins?
[Brandon] Those are coins.
There's literally coins--
Wait. There are coins sticking out of this everywhere.
And is this gold?
[Andrew] That is gold. That's part of a gold bar.
And you can see right here where it's been broken.
[Josh] That is insane.
And these holes?
-[Andrew] Pistol barrels. -[Brandon] Pistol barrels.
-[Josh] Two pistol barrels? -[Andrew] Yeah.
[Josh] So the iron has rotted away,
and we're left with the barrels?
[Andrew] Exactly. It's a cast of the barrels.
And one of the reasons we know they were pistols,
aside from the size and shape,
is the fact that they were still loaded.
There was still a lead shot inside
even though the barrel is gone.
[Josh] That's crazy.
But it hasn't been X-rayed yet?
Correct. It has not been X-rayed.
[Josh] Okay. Should we see what's inside of it?
-[Andrew] Absolutely. -Let's do it. Come on.
The man who's going to make this 300-year-old chunk of minerals say cheese
is X-ray tech Bruno Cores.
We just need to back up six feet away and...
-[Josh] Six feet? -Six feet.
Okay, guys, get... keep moving.
Keep going. Further away. Let's do ten feet, huh?
There's no reason we need to stay close.
[Bruno] I'm ready. Everybody ready?
Okay. Fire in the hole.
[machine beeping]
-That's it? -That's it.
And there's the first shot.
-[Josh] Whoa! -[Bruno] Whoa.
[Josh] Loaded with coins. Look at this.
Okay. Can we do a quick coin count here?
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,
nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen,
fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty...
-twenty five-ish coins? -At least.
Oh, come on.
And where's that gold bar? Is that this piece?
The gold bar is right there.
You see how it's rounded on one edge and broken on those two?
[Josh] Oh, yes, that's the gold bar.
[Andrew] Yes, that's the gold bar.
[whispers] Wow.
[in normal voice] That's awesome.
A photogrammetry scan of the concretion is also processed,
which allows the team to digitally preserve the artifacts
in their original positions.
It'll take many more months of soaking to completely dissolve this concretion.
But with everything, this X-ray is revealing,
Brandon wants to attempt to extract
some of its valuable contents now so they can be conserved.
This is a delicate process because it's critical
to extract the objects without damaging them.
Here to help us is project archeologist, Mark Agostini.
-Hey, Mark, nice to meet you. -Great to meet you, Josh.
[Josh] So, Mark, how do we de-concrete this concretion?
We use pneumatic tools.
-So we're gonna use a Dremel here. -[Josh] Yep.
[Mark] Uh, uh, dental tools.
And when we get into removing them,
we're gonna use even toothpicks
'cause, obviously, wood is not as hard as the precious metals.
This is like historic surgery right here.
Yeah, a surgery 300 years in the making.
Yeah. All right. Well, should we scrub in?
-Let's do it. -Let's do it.
All right, Mark, stage is yours.
Mark begins gently cutting into the concretion
around one of the coins protruding from inside.
We hold our breath hoping the procedure is successful.
-Is that loose? -[Mark] Yep. This one's loose.
[Josh] Ooh, look at that.
[chuckles] Unbelievable.
-[Barry] Can I see it, Mark? -[Mark] Yeah.
-Yeah, that's that looks like a two-real. -[Mark] Two-real, yeah.
[Josh] The two-real coin, much like the one we found underwater,
is in surprisingly good condition
for having been encased in minerals for the past 300 years.
-They're real? -[Mark] Carrying on.
[Josh] Mark returns to the drill,
and in quick succession we extract two more silver coins.
[whispers] Look at that.
[in normal voice] But as we get deeper into the concretion,
we find something very different, but just as valuable.
That's shiny. Is that glass?
[Mark] It could be glass. Maybe that's from a bottle of wine or rum.
This is why you don't drink and drive even a pirate ship.
-Looks like, uh-- -Thought it was bone.
-Is that bone? No. -[Mark] It's a pipe fragment.
[Josh] Oh, this is... So this is clay?
[Barry] Part of a bowl... bowl of a pipe.
[Josh] This is part of a pipe? Like, a personal smoking pipe?
This would be a really common personal object among the pirates.
This is really the most personal thing we've seen yet.
You know, this is something that belonged to an individual.
They probably, you know, really held dear, right?
This was their... This is their daily pipe.
The pipe and glass fragments are discoveries that weren't visible on the X-ray,
but the team's next target is one we've been looking forward to
since we first saw it.
So, we're trying to get this gold ingot, this gold piece out now.
This is really delicate work because this gold is really soft.
Easy to damage. This is high stakes here.
[Mark speaking]
-[Josh] Wait, it does look loose. -That's just about right
Ooh, that's gonna come out.
-[Mark] Yeah. We got it -Yes! Look at that.
Yes! Look at that.
[Mark chuckles]
[Josh] Oh, my word. That is pure gold.
In the lab of the Whydah Museum,
explorer Barry Clifford's team is opening a concretion from the fabled pirate ship
that has already produced silver coins and now, solid gold as well.
Barry, what do you think? What's that weigh?
Three or four ounces.
-Three or four ounces of pure gold? -[Barry] Yeah.
That's $10,000 worth of gold right there. I mean, that's outrageous.
So let's talk about this... this concretion,
because it's really strange, right?
We have all of these different coins, these pistols,
parts of a pipe, glass and gold ingots,
all in this incredibly compact space.
What... what is this, do you think?
In archaeology we call this an assemblage,
which means an assortment of artifacts...
-Right. -...that are all closely in one spot.
We are getting organic material.
Oh, look at that. Is that like fiber?
[Mark] Yeah, fiber. It's definitely organic.
It might be hemp or burlap.
And so, Barry, what does that tell you?
All of these coins side by side, beside a rum bottle,
beside a smoking pipe beside a big chunk of gold.
Did they all fall into the ocean
and happen to land on each other?
-Right. -No.
The math says they were in something.
The pirates said the money was kept in bags in chests between decks.
So what you're saying is this could be a pirate's share, a pirate's bag of treasure.
This is definitely 100% a pirate's share of treasure.
So if that's true, that is a one of a kind.
There's nothing like it in the world.
[Josh] We're holding the personal belongings of a pirate, his footlocker.
Since these bags were likely stored in the stern hold,
it's our first indication that we might have been in the vicinity
of the Whydah's fabled stern castle.
And it isn't just valuable monetarily.
Historically, this find speaks volumes.
There are all of these stories about Bellamy, as you know,
not this bloodthirsty pirate, but this egalitarian, kind of democratic leader.
And seeing how rich this share is, really backs that idea up.
-That these pirates are doing well out there. -Yeah.
[Josh] Even more remarkable is that the pirate's share
also applied to the former slaves
who were fully vested members of Bellamy's crew.
A shocking display of equality, in a most unexpected place.
A third of the Whydah crew were of African origin,
-most of whom were former slaves. -[Josh] Right.
This is not a story I remember learning in school.
[Barry] Black pirates were experimenting in democracy with Europeans
50 years before George Washington began his experiment.
When you see this as a single pirate share,
how does it make you think of Bellamy, the man?
I have a lot of respect for Bellamy,
and I often go down to the cliffs and talk to him.
-[chuckles] -Yeah. Does he talk back?
This is talking back right here.
This is a pirate's share of treasure.
Pirates held these coins.
Thousands of coins and gold.
But the real treasure of the Whydah is the story.
This is precious, precious history that we've uncovered here.
And Brandon and all of our crew have dedicated their lives
to preserving this history and bringing it to light.
Barry, Brandon, the whole crew,
you guys still have a lot of work to do out there,
-right? -We... We do.
So what do you think? Is Bellamy's curse lifting here?
Um, not so fast. You know...
-We're taking it-- -One day at a time?
We're taking it one day at a time.
Thank you so much, Barry. What a pleasure.
-Oh, no. With the hook. -Oh, the hook. Right.
-Sorry. Arr. -Arr.
Hey, Mark, thank you so much.
-Brandon, thank you. This has been awesome. -Thank you.
A pirate's share. How about that?
It's difficult to call any pirate a hero.
After all, criminality is baked right into the job description.
But Sam Bellamy seems to come closer
than any I've looked at before.
His sailors tasted freedom and equality
decades before the colony on whose shores they perished.
The Cliffords will continue to conserve the bounty of the Whydah,
expanding their collection of artifacts
into a surprisingly human portrait of piracy.
Black Sam Bellamy is quoted as having said,
"They vilify us, the scoundrels do,
when there's only this difference,
they rob the poor under the cover of law,
and we plunder the rich under the cover of our own courage."
A prince of pirates, indeed.