Black Bart Roberts.
He is the most successful pirate
in the Golden Age of Piracy.
-Period. -Period.
[Josh] He steals millions, and the world is after him.
And like a shark, he has to keep swimming to evade
these pirate hunters. -[Josh] It's like a Jack Sparrow movie.
[Josh] Port Royal was the wickedest city on Earth,
and you're telling me it's underwater.
It's beneath the waves. 30 acres of submerged city.
What would it mean to find these ships?
It would be historic.
It'd be a pirate ship on top of a pirate sunken city.
He's calling this as the location of
Black Bart's ship.
Two wrecks side by side.
That is a shipwreck.
[Josh and man speaking]
[orchestral music plays]
It was known as the Golden Age of Piracy,
a time when rogues, cutthroats, and bandits
marauded the high seas,
plundering ships and turning ports of call into
hives of scum and villainy.
Their names are legend -- Captain Morgan,
Blackbeard, Captain Kidd.
But those guys, well, they were just amateurs
compared to Black Bart Roberts.
For three bloody years, this Dread Pirate Roberts
rules the oceans with violent impunity,
raiding and capturing
a staggering 400 ships
and amassing a fortune worth
nearly $50 million today.
But in 1722, a pirate hunter catches up with Black Bart,
killing him in a fierce battle and seizing
his three treasure-laden ships, the Great Ranger,
the Little Ranger, and his flagship,
the Royal Fortune.
The captured vessels are sent to the infamous pirate haven of
Port Royal, Jamaica.
But just after they arrive, a powerful hurricane
tears through the harbor,
sending all three to Davy Jones' locker,
and they've been lost ever since.
Identifying these wrecks could lead to lost treasure,
but also, it would be nothing short of history-making,
since only a handful of ships belonging to any pirate
have ever been discovered.
To tackle the case, a determined archaeologist
is following a trail of clues in newly uncovered
historical documents.
But it won't be easy, because the city of Port Royal
was half-swallowed by the ocean in a massive earthquake,
and the ships are somewhere in the sunken ruins.
By launching the first ever high-tech survey of this
pirate Atlantis, experts hope to map the lost city
and pinpoint the location of the wrecks.
So join me in pursuit of a real-life pirate of the Caribbean
as we set sail for Black Bart's fleet
and his fortune.
The past is all around us.
Whoa!
It's working!
A world of mystery.
This is the Thunderbolt! Yes!
Danger.
[man] Fire in the hole.
Whoa!
And adventure.
That's gold!
Oh! Look at this place.
I travel to the far corners of the Earth
to uncover where legends end...
-[expert] The key! -It's the key -- whoo-hoo-hoo!
...and history begins.
OK, let's punch it.
I'm Josh Gates and this is "Expedition Unknown."
My hunt for Black Bart's lost fleet begins in Jamaica,
but thanks to some confusion at the rental counter,
I have to search through another fleet first.
No. No.
-[beeping] -[sea shanty plays]
Hey, at least with the extra passenger, I can get into
the carr-pool lane.
I stand by that joke.
♪ I want to go to Kingston town ♪
♪ Listen to reggae music ♪
I roll my scallywagon into Jamaica's modern capital
of Kingston, epicenter of Rasta, Red Stripe,
and of course, reggae.
♪ Jamaica's the place to be ♪
But long before Marley, it was pirates who put this island
on the map. And it turns out,
they're still here.
I've come ashore during Kingston Pirates Week,
a celebration of Jamaica's notorious past.
-Hi. -[woman] Hi.
Sorry, didn't see you there.
This island has always been at the crossroads
of the Caribbean.
Columbus arrived here on his second voyage,
kicking off nearly 500 years of Spanish
and later British colonial rule
until Jamaica finally won her independence in 1962.
Fifteen miles away from Kingston sits the old town
of Port Royal, ground zero for the Golden Age of Piracy
and inspiration for the original Pirates of the Caribbean,
by which I mean the ride.
This was once the stomping ground of Captain Henry Morgan,
Blackbeard, Calico Jack, Anne Bonny, and, well,
just about any other pirate you could think of.
But the last and perhaps greatest chapter in
the Golden Age of Piracy belongs to a guy with humble beginnings
who becomes one of the deadliest names
on the high seas.
He begins his naval career as a sailor named John Roberts,
until a pirate named Howell Davis captures his ship.
As it happens, both he and Roberts are Welsh, so instead
of killing him, Davis hires Roberts onto the crew,
making him an official pirate.
When Roberts goes rogue, he ditches his given name.
Nobody wants to be known as John the Pirate.
He trades it in for something with a bit more panache,
Bartholomew. I like the sound of that.
The newly named Bartholomew Roberts quickly proves himself
as a skilled navigator, fighter, and leader.
When Davis is killed in a 1719 ambush,
the crew elects Roberts
as their new captain.
In just three years, Roberts and his men take
massive scores, like a Portuguese treasure ship
in 1721, loaded with tens of thousands of gold coins.
Most of the fortune Roberts raked in, though,
has never been found.
Which is what brings us here,
to the great pirate capital of Jamaica.
Welcome to Port Royal.
Or, you know, at least what's left of it.
In 1692, at the height of the Golden Age of Piracy,
Port Royal gets hit by a cataclysmic earthquake,
shivering a lot more than just its timbers.
In minutes, more than 2,000 people are dead,
and half the city has fallen into the sea.
The pirate capital is now underwater, and the Port Royal
left behind never returns to its former wicked self.
But it turns out that the pirate Bartholomew Roberts
never actually set foot in Port Royal.
So why are we looking for his lost fleet here?
Well, I'm about to meet the man who can hopefully
break it all down for me.
In the last remnants of Port Royal's fortifications
that aren't sitting on the ocean floor,
I find marine archaeologist AJ Van Slyke.
He's been researching Black Bart's fleet for years
and is mounting a new expedition that he hopes will lead
to the wrecks.
-[Josh] I got a lot of questions for you. -Bring them on.
We've got a sunken city out there,
we've got a lost pirate fleet
belonging to a pirate that wasn't here.
-That's correct. -Explain that to me.
Well, this guy right here is the key.
That's Captain Chaloner Ogle.
[Josh] Chaloner Ogle, what a name.
[AJ] Yeah, he's a British Royal Naval captain,
and importantly, a pirate hunter.
And I would imagine that our boy Black Bart here is
a pretty big target. -Yes, he is the target.
He is the most successful pirate
in the Golden Age of Piracy.
-Period. -Period.
[Josh] By 1722, Roberts and his crew
have taken down astonishing
400 ships.
No other pirate even comes close.
His raids add up to a fortune in treasure,
as much as $50 million worth today.
Bart even assembles his own fleet of three pirate ships,
two French frigates taken near Senegal,
which he renames the Great Ranger and the Little Ranger,
and his flagship, the Royal Fortune,
which he arms with 40 guns.
So where is Black Bart Roberts at this time?
Well, he's being hunted, and like a shark, he has to
keep swimming to evade these pirate hunters.
By the time Ogle catches up with him, Roberts is on
the west coast of Africa.
And we can read that in Ogle's own logbook.
-[Josh] This is his log? -[AJ] Written in his hand.
OK, this is going to be a tough read, here we go.
Ogle says, "Saw three ships at anchor,
which we judged were the pirates.
-We bore away northwest and west northwest." -"And west northwest."
[AJ] And what you don't see here is Ogle's actually flying
a false flag trying to lure in Roberts.
[Josh] And one of the ships presently got under sail
and gave chase.
-[AJ] Yeah. -[Josh] So, wait a minute.
The pirate chases the pirate hunter?
That's like a Jack Sparrow movie.
-[AJ] It is. -And so, does it work?
Big time.
[Josh] Once out of view of Roberts,
Captain Ogle raises his true flag
and attacks the Great Ranger, capturing it before
resuming his pursuit of Black Bart's other two ships,
the Little Ranger and the Royal Fortune.
He catches up to them four days later.
"When she came within pistol shot, I gave her a broadside...
which she returned."
[AJ] Yeah, Roberts got too close.
[Josh] Ogle trains 25 cannons on Roberts, loaded with grapeshot,
a cannon shell that sprays like a shotgun.
In one fateful volley, Black Bart is struck
in the neck.
So this is the end of Black Bart.
The end of Black Bart, but more significantly,
it's the end of the Golden Age of Piracy.
Now let's talk about treasure.
We know Black Bart amassed a lot of it.
-[Josh] $50 million worth today. -[indistinct].
[Josh] What happens to all this wealth
he gets from these ransoms of these ships?
Some of it's mentioned in the documents,
but the full amount is never accounted for.
After the battle, Ogle and his men sail all three of
Black Bart's ships to Jamaica
and to the harbor of Port Royal,
still recovering from the earthquake
30 years earlier.
But Mother Nature has another trick up her sleeve.
Just days after they reach Jamaica,
a powerful hurricane slams the harbor,
wrecking over 50 ships, including the Royal Fortune,
the Great Ranger, and the Little Ranger.
And treasure aside for a second, the ships themselves
are a huge treasure, right? -[AJ] Yes.
What would it mean to find these ships and identify them?
It would be huge.
Only a few pirate ships have ever been found.
[Josh] Only three that have been confirmed.
And not to brag much, but I've dived on two of them,
Blackbeard's Queen Anne's Revenge off the coast of
North Carolina and Black Sam Bellamy's Whydah Gally
off of Cape Cod.
-OK, so this would be huge. -It would be historic.
[Josh] But where to start?
Well, pirate hunter Chaloner Ogle himself
gives us a vital clue in a detailed letter
describing what happened to two of the ships in the storm.
He says the Fortune, "the Royal Fortune,
"and Little Ranger pirate prizes both drove ashore on the rocks
under Salt Pan Hill." -[AJ] Also known as Salt Pond Hill.
OK, and that's where?
That's across the harbor from Port Royal.
[Josh] "And was beat all to pieces in less than an hour."
-[AJ] Yes. -So, two of these ships,
the flagship, the Royal Fortune,
and the Little Ranger, are pushed up onto the rocks
there and never found again? -Never found again.
They were splintered in pieces.
There's no evidence that they were salvaged or anything
like that. -And has that area,
this Salt Pan Hill,
has that been fully sonared over there?
Nobody's ever towed a magnetometer
or a side-scan sonar over there.
Well, we should change that.
And so we shall.
AJ and I head down to the water
where his colleagues are waiting.
Remote sensing specialist Matt Hanks
and archaeologist William Wilson.
-Nice to meet you. -Nice to meet you.
All right, we all got the khaki shirt memo?
-Yeah. -Let's do this.
You got it.
[Josh] Will hits the throttle, and we're on our way,
hot on the trail of a lost fleet of pirate ships.
[Josh] The fleet of the world's most prolific pirate,
Black Bart Roberts, was destroyed in a 1722 hurricane
off of Port Royal, Jamaica.
Historic clues reveal that two of the vessels,
the Little Ranger and the Royal Fortune,
sank at a place called Salt Pond Hill.
And when we arrive, it's easy to see why.
All right, I can certainly believe that ships could wreck
over here. -What would give you that idea?
It's just a hunch, really, you know?
These modern wrecks have me feeling hopeful.
But how do we find two pirate ships that went down here
more than 300 years ago?
So these ships are going to be broken up
and rotted away largely. What are we likely to see?
The first thing that we're going to be looking for
is ballast stones.
[Josh] To stay stable at sea, ships' hulls were loaded with
heavy stones called ballast.
And since the rest of the wooden wreck
quickly deteriorates in salt water,
the stones are sometimes all that's left behind
for us to find.
All right, well, let's do science.
-[Matt] Let's do it. -Come on.
[Josh] We're hoping that the sonar can help us find
the distinctive pattern of ballast stone piles,
while the magnetometer can find iron items like cannons,
spikes, and other fixtures that would have been part of
Black Bart's fleet.
All right, mag is away.
Here we go.
This back-and-forth scanning is frequently referred to as
mowing the lawn.
But honestly, it's about as interesting as watching
grass grow.
This is the most boring ocean floor I've ever seen.
-Good. -What do you mean, good?
If it was a super rocky bottom,
a ballast pile is not going to be as prominent.
-Right. -[Matt] That is ideal.
-[AJ] It's a blank canvas. -[Matt] Yeah, that's what we like.
If it was easy, everybody would be finding
pirate shipwrecks, right? -That's right.
[Josh] Of course, when you get a hit,
it's worth the wait.
-Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. -Hey, wait a minute.
-Yo, yo. -What is that?
Right in the middle of the nadir.
Look at the nadir squeeze like that.
-[AJ] That's a mound. -[Will] Oh, yeah, you see those little --
-[Josh] Is that a rock pile? -[AJ] Yeah.
[Matt] That could be ballast, boys.
Look, I got a little blip on the mag, too.
-[AJ] OK. -[Matt] Dude, how big is it, man?
-Uh, 20, 40, 60, 50-60 feet. -[Josh] Yeah?
-I mean, that's a huge -- -That's...
[Josh] If that was a ballast pile, that's a pretty huge
ballast pile. -[Matt] That's big, man, yeah.
OK, so we'll mark that. That's a, that's
a potential target. -[AJ] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Let's see what else we got out here.
We stick with the back and forth for hours more until...
What's the mag doing? Mag's jumping.
-[Josh] Absolutely. -[AJ] That is...
Oh, that is a wreck.
-[Matt] Look at that. -[Will] Whoa.
[Josh] Two wrecks side by side?
[AJ] A big one and a small one.
Dude, that's a shipwreck.
This is nuts, man.
[Josh] These are two shipwrecks.
20, 40, 60, 80, 100, 120.
120 feet.
How big was the Royal Fortune?
130 feet long.
-I mean, in the money. -[Matt] Yeah.
-I'm speechless. -Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[Josh] Like, that looks like it could be a mast.
Could it be that easy?
Could they be sitting side by side like that?
-That we have to dive on. -Yeah, we have to dive on.
That's the only way we know for sure.
Unbelievable!
Along with our first hit that looked like a mound,
we have solid sonar and mag hits to investigate.
Now it's time to determine if these targets could be
the Little Ranger or the Royal Fortune.
AJ's team arrives with a dive boat.
We transfer aboard, where we meet up with
marine archaeologist Josh Marano.
[Josh M.] All right, guys, we have several anomalies in this area.
Because of the bay that we're in,
the sediment's being pushed in.
The visibility is going to be very, very poor.
We know there's animals down there we need to be
concerned of. Urchins, lionfish.
-Saltwater crocodiles. -Yeah.
That's in the mangroves, but watch where you put your hands out here.
You don't want to get hit by [indistinct].
Wait, there are saltwater crocodiles in the mangroves?
-Oh, yeah. -Oh, I was kidding.
I didn't realize that was a real thing here.
-Oh, they're there. -Yeah, they're there.
Perfect!
[suspenseful music plays]
It's lousy visibility,
so we drop a weighted shot line
to follow down to our first target,
one of the two side-by-side wrecks.
[diver speaking]
[Josh speaking]
[Josh] In water this cloudy, we stay close together
so we don't get lost amidst whatever's down here.
The visibility is next to nothing.
About the only way I can see the wreckage
is by slamming my face into it.
-Literally. -[clanking]
[diver speaking]
[Josh speaking]
[diver speaking]
[Josh] This iron belongs to a ship too modern to be Black Bart's.
We mark it for further study
and move on to the other nearby sonar hit
from our scan.
[diver speaking]
[Josh speaking]
[diver speaking]
[divers speaking]
[Josh] I'm not 100% certain, but I'm pretty sure that
pirate ships don't have propellers.
Clearly, this is another wreck, which is an exciting find,
but one from the wrong century.
[divers speaking]
[Josh] Two targets down,
but we still have one left to investigate.
The sonar hit that looked like a strange mound.
[suspenseful music plays]
[diver speaking]
[Josh] Off the coast of Port Royal, Jamaica,
we're on the hunt for the treasure-laden vessels
that once belonged to the infamous
dread pirate Black Bart Roberts, and we just found
something that looks hugely promising.
[divers speaking]
[Josh] Ballast stones are the primary calling cards of
an old, wooden sailing ship,
so they're the first clue that we could be
dealing with one of Black Bart's missing vessels.
[diver speaking]
[Josh] The Royal Fortune was Black Bart's flagship, so if he was
still carrying treasure at the time of his death,
it may have been aboard.
[Josh] We fan out, each of us slowly passing over the mound of
stones, looking for anything man-made.
[divers speaking]
[Josh] A rudder gudgeon is a metal fitting that holds
the rudder in place.
But with the wooden rudder long ago disintegrated, this is what
survives, like the hinge of a door long after the house
is gone.
[cheering]
-Holy crap. -That's a wreck.
-[man] I see that. -[Josh] That is a wreck.
-Yeah, dude. -Huge ballast pile.
Yeah, that rudder gudgeon, the thing was bowing
to the rocks. -[Josh] That's right.
So that rudder gudgeon obviously marks the stern of
the ship, and the bow is right into those rocks.
Yep, like the documents say, splintered in pieces.
-So we're in the ballpark. -Yeah, that's a huge contender.
I guess the question is, could that be it?
Could we have just dived on Black Bart's flagship?
[Josh M.] I think so, man.
Definitely need to do some more investigation
to tell definitively,
but that's definitely our candidate.
-[laughing] -[Josh] Oh, man!
[Josh] AJ's excitement is understandable.
We have strong indicators that this could be
the Royal Fortune, one of the most notorious vessels
to sail the high seas.
It'll take more excavation to be sure, but if it's what
we think it is, the shockingly short list of
identified pirate shipwrecks just got a little bit longer.
We steam back to what remains of Port Royal, but instead of
grabbing the nearest bottle of rum to celebrate our dive,
AJ has already set his sights on the third of
Black Bart's ships, the Great Ranger.
And as the sun sets behind us, he's already got
a plan to find it.
It'd be right here on this side of the bay
atop the sunken city.
Why do you think one of them is still sitting here?
Because I have a map that says so.
-You got a map? -Yep.
You're holding out on me, dude.
-Check this out. -[Josh] What is this?
-[AJ] This is Port Royal in 1724. -[Josh] What is this map?
[Josh] Port Royal, Jamaica, 1724. And this map is made by who?
Lieutenant John Gascoigne, a cartographer in
the Royal Navy. -And where was this thing?
My mentor Donny Hamilton found it during his excavations
of Port Royal in the 1980s and 90s.
[Josh] Dr. Donny Hamilton conducted extensive underwater studies of
the sunken city of Port Royal.
And the map he unearthed in the Jamaican National Library
was drawn by celebrated marine surveyor John Gascoigne,
known for his accuracy and attention to detail.
So on his map here, we see the part of Port Royal
that's still above water. -[AJ] Mm-hmm.
Most importantly, he has three wrecks on here.
N, O,
and P.
[Josh] Gascoigne drew this map in 1724, only two years after
the hurricane that wrecked Black Bart's fleet,
meaning that his estimation of wreck locations was based on
eyewitness accounts from the time.
And a legend that says P,
the wreck of the Ranger.
[AJ] A pirate ship taken by Captain Ogle.
He's calling this as the location
of Black Bart's ship?
Yes, and importantly,
it's the only one pointing to shore.
[Josh] The other two wrecks are pointed relatively north,
so we know that the wreck we're looking for is
the only one sitting on an east-west axis.
So to be clear, though, this is also where
the submerged section of Port Royal is, right? -Yeah.
So if this is a wreck,
it's sitting on top of Port Royal.
It'd be a pirate ship on top of a pirate sunken city.
[Josh] But Gascoigne's map obviously doesn't have GPS coordinates.
So how do we figure out if there is a wreck here
and if it is the Ranger?
First, we want to do a full comprehensive survey of
the entire sunken city. -It's not been done before?
It's never been done with remote sensing equipment.
Wow. OK.
Once the city is surveyed, we can reference
whatever we find against this historic map.
All right, so, X marks the spot?
-P marks the spot. -[Josh] P.
Let's see what's there.
The next day, we're back on the boat and steaming toward
our mysterious target and a pirate Atlantis.
OK, so we're hooking around into the harbor here.
Yeah, we're entering the sunken city now.
[Josh] You wouldn't know it, but beneath us is the remains
of the richest pirate port in the Caribbean.
34 acres of warehouses, streets,
taverns, and fortifications all sitting on the ocean floor.
And if a 300-year-old map is accurate, there's also
the remains of the Great Ranger.
Back in the 1960s, shipwreck hunter Bob Marx
conducted the first exploration of Port Royal.
Somewhere beneath us, he discovered a coin
dated 1721, the year before
the Great Ranger went down.
To find out if our wreck is indeed here, Matt and Will
deploy the side-scan sonar and a marine magnetometer,
sweeping the seabed for ballast piles
and anything else resembling a ship.
-[Josh] OK, sonar is up and running. -[AJ] Yep.
Mag is magging?
So we should be seeing all sorts of stuff
down here, right? -Yep.
[Josh] We're getting unprecedented data on Old Port Royal.
And as it rolls in, the ruins below
reveal themselves.
-Wow, look at this. -Look, there's a building.
-[Josh] Oh! -[AJ] Right there, the corners of it.
[Josh] Oh, God, look at that. That is absolutely a building.
We run the sonar back and forth,
scanning the submerged structures and marking
various targets that could be a wreck.
-Oh, is that a building? -Yeah.
[Josh] Got a hit there. That's good.
We should be coming up on the spot where P was
on that map. -[Josh] So there's something here.
-[AJ] Yeah. -Looks like a, is that
maybe a rock pile there?
Yeah, it could be a rock pile.
[Josh] Could that be a wreck?
-[AJ] Yeah. -[Josh] So hard to say.
-Is that fair? -That's fair because it's fallen walls.
It's bricks with coral on them.
It's building structures.
But we've seen some stuff in here that looks like
a ballast pile of the shipwreck. -[Josh] Right.
We have to dive it to investigate it,
and know what it really is.
Right, could be part of the sunken city,
could be the remains of a ship.
Could be the remains of the Great Ranger.
To find out, AJ and I head ashore along with
archaeologist Josh Marano.
We stroll through the ruins of the centuries-old
abandoned naval hospital, established by
the British after the pirate era ended.
Here, at the edge of where Port Royal sank,
we prepare to walk out onto the underwater streets
of a sunken pirate city.
All right, so let's talk about where we are here.
This old naval hospital behind us.
The rest of the city is out here in the water.
[AJ] 30 acres of submerged sunken city.
[Josh] This is where old Port Royal, Jamaica, fell into the sea.
Somewhere out there are the remains of a pirate ship
belonging to Black Bartholomew Roberts.
And the roads in the old city
would have gone right out there.
Straight out until they met each other.
Oh, so the streets literally just go underwater here.
The people of Port Royal paved our way.
I love that.
[Josh M.] We have to differentiate between the wreckage from
the city and the wreckage from an actual shipwreck.
If we go out there and find a ballast pile,
we'll be on the right track.
OK, so we're looking for ballast.
-What else? -I would love to find
articulated wooden structure.
The ship is the biggest artifact itself.
And can the wood be diagnostic in terms of
identifying the Ranger? -[Josh M.] Absolutely.
The Ranger was originally a French-built vessel,
and it was stolen, right?
So it could be that we find different units of measure
on this one.
[Josh] French shipbuilders didn't use
British imperial measurements.
Instead, their timber was cut to the French foot,
which was closer to 12.8 inches,
something that would be
reflected on the Great Ranger.
All right, what do you say we walk down a sunken road?
-Let's do it. -Let's go.
[Josh] No splash this time.
Instead, we simply wade into Port Royal like we're walking
down a street, which we are.
And then we descend into the past.
[diver speaking]
[Josh] We move deeper into the ruins
where the remains get bigger.
[diver speaking]
[Josh] These taller walls are what's left of Fort James,
one of the key British defenses of Port Royal.
It once had 26 guns trained across the harbor,
every one of which was useless during an earthquake.
[Josh] We leave the fort behind and continue towards what
we hope is the Ranger.
[diver speaking]
[Josh speaking]
[Josh] We finally approach the spot where Point P appears
on Gascoigne's map, a clear marker
of a ship that on the chart is
pointed towards shore on an east-west axis.
[divers speaking]
[Josh] The ballast stones confirm that we're exploring
the remains of a ship, and the ballast seems to be
mixed in with some other material.
[diver speaking]
[Josh] These nine-inch mortar balls were ammunition for
land-based mortar, so they're here strictly for weight.
We keep looking for anything else that can be tied to
this wreck.
[divers speaking]
[Josh] Intact deck planking from a 300-year-old shipwreck
would be a rare discovery that could help identify the vessel.
There's fragile history here resting in the sand.
[AJ speaking]
[Josh speaking]
We get out our ruler to measure the plank,
using its widest point to determine
the board's original span.
[AJ speaking]
[divers speaking]
[Josh speaking]
[AJ speaking]
[Josh] This wreck's orientation,
pointed towards shore, is lined up precisely with how
the Gascoigne map shows the Ranger.
The evidence is piling up that this could be a real,
honest-to-God sunken pirate ship, one of only a few
confirmed to exist anywhere.
It's so exciting, I could use a drink.
Nothing says pirate like an onion bottle,
the thick, heavy vessels common on ships
of the 17th and 18th centuries,
carrying all sorts of potent potables.
To preserve the discovery here, potentially
the Great Ranger itself, we do photogrammetry
on the wreck, taking a comprehensive
photo array that will be stitched together
by computer software
to create a three-dimensional model of the site.
[AJ speaking]
[Josh speaking]
[AJ speaking]
[Josh] Once we've finished, AJ and I finally come up for air,
and I follow the flooded streets of Port Royal
back to shore.
Later that evening, we reconvene by the dock.
AJ's team has processed the data from our survey.
We're going to start with this old map of Port Royal
from 1772. -[Josh] Uh-huh.
[AJ] It shows Old Port Royal sunk in 1692.
[Josh] And for a long time, this is kind of all there was.
This was the best map of the Sunken City.
Right. OK.
And now let's talk about what we've added to this.
He brings up bathymetric maps...
[AJ] It works from dark red being the most shallow
out to blue, the deepest.
And look at how the contours of this match this map
from 1772.
...sonar surveys...
[AJ] That's Fort James, really sticking proud out of
the muddy bottom. -...and magnetometer readings.
That is so cool. Look at that!
-Yeah. -That's incredible.
[Josh] These scans give archaeologists the most complete picture of
Old Port Royal since the earthquake of 1692.
But we're just getting started.
And now let's talk about the wreck we're looking for.
We have the best view of that from that
photogrammetry data you collected.
-That's been stitched. -[AJ] Yeah.
[Josh] Oh, come on!
That is insane!
I mean, we can see that entire wreck.
Look at all this. We can see the timbers.
We can see all the ballast pile.
It is so much clearer than what I could see down there
with my own two eyes. -[AJ] Yeah.
And look at the size of this ballast pile.
You can literally see the shape of a ship.
-[AJ] Exactly. -[Josh] So no question this is a ship.
But does it line up at all with Gascoigne's map?
Well, in the digital age, we can now overlay that.
1724 chart like no other archaeologist has done before.
[Josh] OK, so let's see Gascoigne's map.
[AJ] Right here.
OK, so here's the Great Ranger, which he labels P
on his map. -Yeah, and what's really important
about this is that P
is the only wreck pointed to shore, and we know from
our dive that that matches the orientation of 60 degrees
that we found on the site. -So we had similar orientation.
Are we anywhere near his drawing?
Yes.
This drawing is hundreds of years old, but we are
within 100 feet of that wreck.
[Josh] So almost the same orientation and really close to each other.
That's pretty damn good.
Our wreck sits in the vicinity of the last charted position
of the Great Ranger.
It also shares its size, both in length and width.
Its orientation, not to mention it has timbers that match those
of an 18th-century French-built ship.
So what do you think? Is that the Great Ranger?
I'm about 90% sure that's the Great Ranger.
I mean, that's pretty damn good.
It doesn't get much better than that.
I think we're looking at a pirate ship.
On top of a pirate sunken city.
How about that?
-That is sensational, man. -Yeah, man.
-Really. -Yeah.
[Josh] It seems like the Great Ranger is ready to re-enter
the history books no longer lost,
a page of pirate lore that AJ
will be studying for years to come.
[sea shanty plays]
We head out into the streets to celebrate on the last
raucous night of the Kingston Pirate Festival.
This is just labeled grog.
First of all, your eye patch is not on correctly, sir.
Yeah, I need to see.
I have great news for you. You have two eyes.
The authentic grog here is not for land lovers.
-It's good. -[man] Good.
It's really good.
Though it does have a rich aftertaste.
-Oh, wow! -[man] Oh, wow!
-That's amazing! -That's treasure!
[Josh] Wow!
And after a week of chasing Black Bart's legend,
I find myself faced with the same choice
he made 300 years ago.
[yelling]
No, no, no, guys, no, no, no, no.
You have two choices. You either join us or die.
[Josh] Hold on, I'm thinking.
Treasure, rum, copious eyeliner?
-OK, I'm in! -Yeah!
Joining.
Let's go!
Jamaica!
[Josh] The Golden Age of Piracy was not a long one, lasting only
about 80 years, and its end was marked by the death of
Bartholomew Roberts on the deck of the Royal Fortune.
Those 80-short years birthed legends that have endured
four times that long.
I've circled the globe to investigate those stories,
but there's no doubt that this one is special.
History was made here in Jamaica as not one,
but two ships belonging to the most successful pirate of
the Golden Age have likely been discovered.
It's a stunning victory, which puts this team of
archaeologists in rare company with pirate hunter
Chaloner Ogle as the only people to capture the ships
of Black Bartholomew Roberts.