kid any person would ever walked to
beach
I think everybody’s thought about
finding pirate treasure
in April 17 17 the Whydah crashed on the
shores of Cape Cod I was certain that I
wanted to look for this show
it’s offering us a glimpse into this
never-seen-before world of pirates
it’s the only documented pirate treasure
period but there was a story here that
was much more valuable than any of the
artifacts
well thank you very much it’s a great
honor to be here I sort of the last
place I would have ever expected to be
when I was a kid growing up on the Cape
when I used to sit around the fish house
with my Uncle Bill and all of my uncles
who had not too long had you know had
just come back from World War two and we
would hear the stories and our favorite
story was from my uncle bill and it was
the story of a pirate ship that had
wrecked off the Cape now my other uncles
referred to Uncle Bill as Uncle ball so
so there was always a modicum of doubt
not with me I I believed everything bill
said but my uncle’s I could see them
sort of winking at each other and there
was always that story of that pirate
ship but I think everybody every every
kid any person that ever walked a beach
I think everybody’s thought about
finding pirate treasure I mean I’ve read
the stories about people finding Captain
Kidd’s ship in Kansas so you know so
it’s it’s but this cover of National
Geographic magazine you know of all the
treasures in the world it’s the only
documented pirate treasure period all of
the treasures that we’ve heard about you
know in the Caribbean it’s not pirate
treasure Spanish galleons this is real
pirate treasure this is the stuff that
rubble it’s Robert Louis Stevenson wrote
about it’s the stuff that I dreamt about
and when I started off as a kid you know
when it was gonna what was I gonna do
with all that treasure you know with all
this millions of dollars that we would
get when we salvaged it but of course
when I found the ship I realized that I
couldn’t sell anything
that there was that that there was a
story here that was much more valuable
than any of the artifacts so I did a
complete right turn after we discovered
the ship that this was something I could
never sell I’ve never sold an artifact
and I’m so proud to be with National
Geographic and we have two world-class
exhibits traveling around the world real
pirates and a lot of people really put a
lot of tremendous sacrifice it’s been
over 30 years for me on the Whydah not
to mention all the years dreaming so as
I heard as I heard these stories as a
boy about the ship there was a legend of
this handsome young sailor that came to
Cape Cod in 1715 and he met this
beautiful young girl from Wellfleet her
her hair was the color of corn silk in
her eyes or as blue as the deeps of gull
pond these were some of the things that
I remember as a kid and reading about
her and her name was Maria halan
and Bellamy promised he was going to go
to the Caribbean to salvage the 1715
Spanish treasure fleet all of the
Spanish galleons that wrecked and he
left Maria and he promised to come back
someday with a rich dowry and they would
be married and off he went to the
Caribbean the Whydah which was a slave
ship that was built to carry slaves back
from witih were 2 to 3 million slaves
were exported from this part of Africa
and when the widow dropped off a
shipment of slaves in Jamaica it was
headed back to England with money and
all of the things that they were able to
gather in in Africa that were on the
ship and the widow was a 26 gun ship of
about 300 tons was a brand-new vessel it
was built in 1716 and on this first
voyage after dropping a shipment of
slaves off in Jamaica she was captured
by Sam Bellamy who gave up looking
Spanish treasure ships and went on the
account or turned pirate and the widow
was the 50th ship that he captured but
off of Cape Cod in April of 1717 the
widow was caught in this horrific storm
and crashed on the shores of Cape Cod
off of Wellfleet and the moon custer’s
showed up the next day these are people
who cursed the moon because they wanted
things dark so that they could rob ships
that came ashore and you can see these
fellows busy at work
robbing everything that was washing away
you know off of the ship you know I was
certain that I wanted to look for the
ship but I didn’t have any I didn’t have
enough documentation to so you know this
was a Jack and the Beanstalk deal this
was I was really gonna have to bet the
farm I had to have something that was
really solid and I came across this
document which is a map and the map was
drawn by a fellow by the name of Cyprian
south hack who was sent by the governor
of Massachusetts to salvage the Whydah
after it wrecked this person was a well
known map maker he was in his 50s he was
chosen by the governor of Massachusetts
to salvage the shipwreck this was a
solid piece of documentation and this is
a treasure map place with the pirate
ship would erect Bellamy command where I
buried 102 men drowned pirate ship widow
he also kept a ship’s log couldn’t spell
very well but he the things that he was
saying were things that I could
understand as a salver because he was in
the salvage business he said that the
water was messy with sand and he
couldn’t see and they had tongs to Tong
for things and the storm lasted for
several days and he could watch the ship
on the outer sandbar this is wrecked
very close to shore only 1500 feet from
shore well less than that because all of
the erosion on the Cape this was
probably less than a thousand feet from
shore at the time that it wrecked and it
was one of the worst storms of the
century
he watched it so here’s somebody who’s
in my business you know who’s a salvage
person watching this ship breakup and he
said the next day she turned bought him
up and the decks spell out their riches
with the guns will be buried in the sand
the riches with the guns will be buried
in the sand that resonates every night I
go to dice dreamt about that for 30
years what did he mean well he meant the
26 guns that were on the Whydah he’s
telling me where the treasure is and as
I said when I started this there’s no
question about it we were looking for
treasure I didn’t know what I was gonna
do with it it was mostly the adventure I
have for me I think but you know we
found thousands and thousands of coins
and artifacts but we still up until very
recently hadn’t found what we were
looking for now another document that
surfaced out of the 180 pirates that
were in the Whydah pirate gang eight of
them survived this shipwreck and they
were taken to Boston and tried and
everything they said was transcribed by
a court stenographer and one of the
Pirates testified he said fifty pounds
was added to every man share the money
was kept in bags in chests between decks
well what happens when that you know the
treasure that’s between deck something
has to happen to it we’re gonna get that
I’ll get to that in a few minutes in the
fall of 1982 John Kennedy Jr who worked
for me on the vineyard where we lived in
myself
we hired a local fisherman to take us
out to the site we did a magnetometer
survey we were determined that there was
an area in the survey that was hot in
other words there was a lot of metal
there deed there was 26 cannon that
would give off a big
magnetic signature in other words this
would indicate the disturbance level of
how much iron would be in the Earth’s
magnetic field this is an old machine by
the way back from the 80s but we were
able to calculate the difference in the
Earth’s magnetic field and that’s where
we felt that the Whydah wrecked and
after john doe von the wreck and came up
and looked at me and said barry there’s
nothing but sand
we decided how we’re going to go through
the sand we’d built two mailboxes which
is able to divert the energy from the
propellers as the propellers spin and
the energy from that the water stream is
diverted straight down where you can
blow the sand away and as you get close
to artifact level which is very deep
it’s now we’re finding 30 feet under the
sand artifacts migrate to a layer of
Pleistocene glacial till we just found
out that it’s even deeper than we
thought we’d always been working 10 to
20 feet below sand we now know that this
is a whole other layer 30 feet below the
santé one day after blowing we get down
to a level and we found what turned out
to be a cannonball and out of the
cannonball there was a little coin and
it turned out to be 1684 and then there
was this trigger guard from a musket for
me I knew at that time that I had found
the widow I mean it wasn’t enough
evidence to prove everything but it was
exactly where it was supposed to be I
knew it but the state historian did not
believe me
and and indeed she was smart not to in
fact I was giving a talk when knighted
at a church in Wellfleet before we found
the wreck and an elderly lady came up to
me and held her wrist out after the talk
and said my grandfather said he found
these coins on the beach and he said
that they came from the widow and they
were gold escudos little gold escudos
about a half an ounce each and they had
slice marks in them like someone hit
them with a knife or a file and I’ll
never forget that but it didn’t it was
kind of like okay somebody else found
the widow didn’t really sink in because
there’s always lots and lots of treasure
stories but you’ll see why that’s
important and in a few minutes here so
we we went out to the site we were
bringing up bags of treasure here’s a
bag and in the bag there were these
chunks of gold this is a Spanish bar it
would be as long as a small sandwich sub
you know but but it had those same slice
marks in it that those coins had that
that elderly lady had on her wrist the
Pirates were testing it to see if it
were counterfeit because each one of
these pieces of gold that would have
been the size of a small pizza a disc of
solid gold but they’re broken up into
pieces and all of these black objects
are pieces of eight coins Spanish coins
Dutch coins French coins and why are the
Pirates dividing breaking because they
were dividing up everything equally
they were democratic they were
experimenting and democracy each man had
an equal share and here was proof these
gold bars that were cut into pieces this
would have been the minimum share that
somebody would have got when a ship was
robbed and again fifty pounds was added
to every man share there being a hundred
80 men and this is just out of a little
8 foot by 8 foot test spit every
artifact is measured in we bring up the
artifacts they’re bagged very carefully
and numbered so every single artifact
here has a position where it came from
and then they’re tagged and photographed
and drawn and we have you know over 200
thousand artifacts recorded this is just
one dive and the problem there is that
the sand is caving in and during big big
storms the site is being destroyed so
it’s it’s really a situation where we’re
going is trying to go as fast as we can
it’s been 30 years but you know to save
this thing because it’s offering us a
glimpse into this never-seen-before
world of pirates these guys were voting
and in fact 1/3 of these people were of
African origin they were black native
they were people who were equal on board
the Whydah and some of them Africans
were being elected by predominantly
European crews as officers and even
captains on board slave ships we have
absolute proof of this in fact you
didn’t read about this I never saw that
in Disney when I was a kid with Treasure
Island I didn’t see any black people but
1/3 of the Pirates in the Golden Age of
piracy were of African origin most of
whom were former slaves but still the
state historian didn’t believe us that
we had the Whydah
until this happened we found a ship’s
Bell at the bottom of a 20-foot deep pit
and here we’re bringing it up and this
is a concretion this is a massive
material when iron is submerged in salt
water it’ll start to degra gate and an
electrical field will form around a
piece of iron depending how big it is
and anything within that field whether
it’s human remains or shoes or coins
will be encapsulated in these
concretions I mean they’re variable
treasure chests
and one day I get a call from the
laboratory and said Barry you better get
over to the lab we just found a W on the
Bell because the whole word Widow was on
the other side of the concretion and as
the concretion was taken away it just
doesn’t say Widow it says the Whydah
Gally 1716 1716 and it was the cover of
the New York Times the next day and
there’s the Bell today and we’ve kept it
submerged in water with the concretion
still on it
the Whydah Gally G al ly and again all
sorts of things are encapsulated in
concretions including the bones a shoe
size six shoe very carefully made silk
stocking and a human leg bone and for
years I would go into our laboratory and
my historian is beyond brilliant he
knows everything there is to know about
pirates and he’s been with me for over
25 years
but he doesn’t have a clue about normal
things like in the new the coffee stand
he’d walk right in the wall drinking his
coffee and and one day I said Ken it’s
really small pirates on board the witih
size six shoe I said were there any kids
on board the ship is it oh yes there was
a boy Ken it’s been years why didn’t
know and his name was John King he was
on a ship called the Bonita they were
leaving Jamaica and I’ve got a letter
somewhere to the Governor of Jamaica
from captain savage who was the captain
of the bonita complaining about this
very rebellious young boy named john
king who threatened his mother and
joined the pirate crew now that stalking
and leg bone and shoe was found in this
cannon so apparently what happened is
when the ship turned over john king was
crushed and his bone and shoe and sock
concreted to the cannon but this is sort
of the things that we’re finding and
this wasn’t disguise
you know only years after you know we
discovered it so that’s why it’s
important in what we do and in
archaeology is and that things aren’t
sold is to keep the collection together
so academics can squabble about what
they are including this akan jewelry and
we have hundreds of pieces of akan gold
that were being traded along with the
slaves by the European slave traders and
it’s the oldest reliably dated
collection of akan jewelry in the world
I’m told this is our laboratory on Cape
Cod where we’re making discoveries every
day in this lab there are over 30,000
pounds of concretion x’ look at all
those bags these are actually artifacts
that have been Deacon creted but the
concretions themselves we x-ray and we
have an x-rayed them yet – just four
fragments of gold dust and all that and
each of these tanks can contain cannon
and concretions this anchor was recently
Deacon creted you can see the concretion
from the anchor there and now here’s the
big twist the we didn’t have 24 cannon
we found over 60 so the guns that South
hack was talking about the riches with
the guns would be buried in the sin I
had no idea nobody would have had any
idea that there were those extra guns
but the guns that he was referring to
were the guns that were in the bottom of
the ship the guns that we just found and
concrete ‘add to this anchor was the top
of a treasure chest here you can see a
heart-shaped coin rare heart-shaped coin
with a cross on it these are probably 2
reals which are small Spanish coin you
can see a sword hilt with the woven
metal and the pummel you’ve heard of
being pummeled that’s the pummel on the
sword hilt and these are big pieces of
eight this is probably Mexico that’s
probably either potosi or Lima Peru
that’s probably Mexico and thousands and
thousands and thousands of artifacts are
still encapsulated within
these concretion so this is these I know
these are escudos by the shape of these
and they were kept in stacks and this is
what we’ve been finding recently on the
site we’ve been finding stacks of coins
which mean they were in bags and that’s
the outside of this is the concretion
and there’s very clearly a stack of
coins which I think are escudos and the
the sword handle that you saw there’s my
dad working on it and as an example
every artifact that we bring out is
carefully drawn and recorded now this
would be the side plate off of a musket
serpentine you know a symbol of ferocity
and it’s brass but it’s not only
photographed but it’s carefully drawn to
bring out the imperfections or you know
whatever might be of archaeological
significance and this is the oldest
reliably dated Freemason symbol
Freemasonry actually somewhere around
May or June of 1717 was recognized at
the beginning of Freemasonry this ship
wrecked in April of 1717 so there’s no
there’s not an earlier reliably dated
Freemason symbol and we found several of
them you can see Jacob’s Ladder
another Masonic symbol and this
particular piece which happens to be my
favorite in the whole collection
it’s a blazing star leading the way and
a waning and a waxing moon and a heart
pierced by two arrows a symbol of lost
love and it’s a wax seal something a
pirate would stamp a letter to his
girlfriend or wife with and again
concretions this is a massive concretion
weighing a couple thousand pounds and
it’s inundated with artifacts you can
see where as a pistol and these things
haven’t been taken apart all of these
artifacts have not seen the light of day
I mean there’s I’ll be gone for 50 years
when they get through with this there’s
thousands of artifacts that have not
been you know Deacon created and again
over 50 ships were robbed from the widow
and to date of the 60 cannons that we
have we don’t have one
carriage I think we only have fifty
cannonballs we don’t have anything from
the stern section of the ship and we
think we know we think we know where it
is now you know what we’re looking for
you can see very clearly here there’s a
gun a pistol we have several of these
pistols you can see a set of cuff links
and there’s and again the pistol came
out of a concretion so it’s all covered
in this concrete like material and that
ribbon was wrapped around the handle
meaning that a pirate could wear several
of them around his neck and get more
than one shot this is my son Brandon
who’s been diving with me since he was a
kid he’s 34 now back in these days the
conservator would let him work alongside
her at one of the tables and he he found
this little coin and a piece of a
concretion and he just told me this a
couple of years ago he said dad I didn’t
tell you this but you know I found I
found this face on the edge of a
concretion I didn’t tell anybody because
I knew they would take it away from it
eat it
that’s the louis xiv and that’s on the
butt of this pistol this particular
piece was the cook stove that they used
to cook on board the ship we actually
found two of them now one would have
been for slaves the other would have
been for the crew this is a heavily
concreted cannon and we’ll probably keep
it like this is actually a gun door
that’s actually the the door from the
ship the gun door and that’s actually a
small gun probably a rail gun that’s
concluded to the cannon but we were able
to get down deep and Brandon said dad I
can hear something down there
you know don’t move like he knows how
impatient I am don’t move stay there
so we dug and we dug and we dug and we
don’t get down 30 feet under the sand
everything else we found we were always
finding at 10 to 20 feet this is stack
of seven cannon all frozen together
along with ebony wood and artifacts and
two big rolls of lead
six feet long weigh thousands of pounds
so it weighs about 14,000 pounds so
after all of those years probably like
from 1985 we just found this whole layer
of material that’s deeper than we ever
thought along with the top of a treasure
chest
and this is what the cannon pile looked
like so rather than breaking it apart we
were able to bring it up in one piece
again now we’re in this area we came
back after all these years and gone
deeper and this is what we find find
concreted to this anchor which came out
of the same pit at the top of a treasure
chest that’s a an artifact sticking out
from a concretion and it says Whydah
Gally and that’s a nameplate that was on
the top of that chest my conservator
who’s very nervous he’s got a $300
camera he’s in the lab by himself his
hand is shaking and he’s carefully
dusting away this dust from the edge of
the concretion that as he takes it out
from the concretion and he sees the
number one he sees the number seven he
sees the number one so it’s going to be
1716 just like the Bell no 17 13 what
the hell does that mean
1713 Whydah Gally
he’s hands shaking like hell now as he’s
doing the and he runs into the other
room to see Kent who of course knows
everything in Kansas ken there’s a 17-13
on the on the on the nameplate what
could that mean encounter goes oh yes
well there were two witness
this had to have belonged to captain
prints on his widow that he had before
this Widow this wood it was built in
1716 this was 1713 so this must have
been one of Captain princes chest that
he kept his treasure in because all
around that treasure chest
there were coins Goldust and right where
we discovered all of those cannon now I
have to say that this all sort of came
to reality to me a few years ago as I’m
driving down Wisconsin Avenue in Chicago
and from two miles away
there’s our logo on on the field Museum
I mean what the hell did we do right you
know but there it is
and we’re just so absolutely pleased to
be involved with Geographic and so
greatly honored that our discoveries are
being shown here and we we really we
really appreciate you coming and and and
again it’s a great honor thank you very
much
you
beach
I think everybody’s thought about
finding pirate treasure
in April 17 17 the Whydah crashed on the
shores of Cape Cod I was certain that I
wanted to look for this show
it’s offering us a glimpse into this
never-seen-before world of pirates
it’s the only documented pirate treasure
period but there was a story here that
was much more valuable than any of the
artifacts
well thank you very much it’s a great
honor to be here I sort of the last
place I would have ever expected to be
when I was a kid growing up on the Cape
when I used to sit around the fish house
with my Uncle Bill and all of my uncles
who had not too long had you know had
just come back from World War two and we
would hear the stories and our favorite
story was from my uncle bill and it was
the story of a pirate ship that had
wrecked off the Cape now my other uncles
referred to Uncle Bill as Uncle ball so
so there was always a modicum of doubt
not with me I I believed everything bill
said but my uncle’s I could see them
sort of winking at each other and there
was always that story of that pirate
ship but I think everybody every every
kid any person that ever walked a beach
I think everybody’s thought about
finding pirate treasure I mean I’ve read
the stories about people finding Captain
Kidd’s ship in Kansas so you know so
it’s it’s but this cover of National
Geographic magazine you know of all the
treasures in the world it’s the only
documented pirate treasure period all of
the treasures that we’ve heard about you
know in the Caribbean it’s not pirate
treasure Spanish galleons this is real
pirate treasure this is the stuff that
rubble it’s Robert Louis Stevenson wrote
about it’s the stuff that I dreamt about
and when I started off as a kid you know
when it was gonna what was I gonna do
with all that treasure you know with all
this millions of dollars that we would
get when we salvaged it but of course
when I found the ship I realized that I
couldn’t sell anything
that there was that that there was a
story here that was much more valuable
than any of the artifacts so I did a
complete right turn after we discovered
the ship that this was something I could
never sell I’ve never sold an artifact
and I’m so proud to be with National
Geographic and we have two world-class
exhibits traveling around the world real
pirates and a lot of people really put a
lot of tremendous sacrifice it’s been
over 30 years for me on the Whydah not
to mention all the years dreaming so as
I heard as I heard these stories as a
boy about the ship there was a legend of
this handsome young sailor that came to
Cape Cod in 1715 and he met this
beautiful young girl from Wellfleet her
her hair was the color of corn silk in
her eyes or as blue as the deeps of gull
pond these were some of the things that
I remember as a kid and reading about
her and her name was Maria halan
and Bellamy promised he was going to go
to the Caribbean to salvage the 1715
Spanish treasure fleet all of the
Spanish galleons that wrecked and he
left Maria and he promised to come back
someday with a rich dowry and they would
be married and off he went to the
Caribbean the Whydah which was a slave
ship that was built to carry slaves back
from witih were 2 to 3 million slaves
were exported from this part of Africa
and when the widow dropped off a
shipment of slaves in Jamaica it was
headed back to England with money and
all of the things that they were able to
gather in in Africa that were on the
ship and the widow was a 26 gun ship of
about 300 tons was a brand-new vessel it
was built in 1716 and on this first
voyage after dropping a shipment of
slaves off in Jamaica she was captured
by Sam Bellamy who gave up looking
Spanish treasure ships and went on the
account or turned pirate and the widow
was the 50th ship that he captured but
off of Cape Cod in April of 1717 the
widow was caught in this horrific storm
and crashed on the shores of Cape Cod
off of Wellfleet and the moon custer’s
showed up the next day these are people
who cursed the moon because they wanted
things dark so that they could rob ships
that came ashore and you can see these
fellows busy at work
robbing everything that was washing away
you know off of the ship you know I was
certain that I wanted to look for the
ship but I didn’t have any I didn’t have
enough documentation to so you know this
was a Jack and the Beanstalk deal this
was I was really gonna have to bet the
farm I had to have something that was
really solid and I came across this
document which is a map and the map was
drawn by a fellow by the name of Cyprian
south hack who was sent by the governor
of Massachusetts to salvage the Whydah
after it wrecked this person was a well
known map maker he was in his 50s he was
chosen by the governor of Massachusetts
to salvage the shipwreck this was a
solid piece of documentation and this is
a treasure map place with the pirate
ship would erect Bellamy command where I
buried 102 men drowned pirate ship widow
he also kept a ship’s log couldn’t spell
very well but he the things that he was
saying were things that I could
understand as a salver because he was in
the salvage business he said that the
water was messy with sand and he
couldn’t see and they had tongs to Tong
for things and the storm lasted for
several days and he could watch the ship
on the outer sandbar this is wrecked
very close to shore only 1500 feet from
shore well less than that because all of
the erosion on the Cape this was
probably less than a thousand feet from
shore at the time that it wrecked and it
was one of the worst storms of the
century
he watched it so here’s somebody who’s
in my business you know who’s a salvage
person watching this ship breakup and he
said the next day she turned bought him
up and the decks spell out their riches
with the guns will be buried in the sand
the riches with the guns will be buried
in the sand that resonates every night I
go to dice dreamt about that for 30
years what did he mean well he meant the
26 guns that were on the Whydah he’s
telling me where the treasure is and as
I said when I started this there’s no
question about it we were looking for
treasure I didn’t know what I was gonna
do with it it was mostly the adventure I
have for me I think but you know we
found thousands and thousands of coins
and artifacts but we still up until very
recently hadn’t found what we were
looking for now another document that
surfaced out of the 180 pirates that
were in the Whydah pirate gang eight of
them survived this shipwreck and they
were taken to Boston and tried and
everything they said was transcribed by
a court stenographer and one of the
Pirates testified he said fifty pounds
was added to every man share the money
was kept in bags in chests between decks
well what happens when that you know the
treasure that’s between deck something
has to happen to it we’re gonna get that
I’ll get to that in a few minutes in the
fall of 1982 John Kennedy Jr who worked
for me on the vineyard where we lived in
myself
we hired a local fisherman to take us
out to the site we did a magnetometer
survey we were determined that there was
an area in the survey that was hot in
other words there was a lot of metal
there deed there was 26 cannon that
would give off a big
magnetic signature in other words this
would indicate the disturbance level of
how much iron would be in the Earth’s
magnetic field this is an old machine by
the way back from the 80s but we were
able to calculate the difference in the
Earth’s magnetic field and that’s where
we felt that the Whydah wrecked and
after john doe von the wreck and came up
and looked at me and said barry there’s
nothing but sand
we decided how we’re going to go through
the sand we’d built two mailboxes which
is able to divert the energy from the
propellers as the propellers spin and
the energy from that the water stream is
diverted straight down where you can
blow the sand away and as you get close
to artifact level which is very deep
it’s now we’re finding 30 feet under the
sand artifacts migrate to a layer of
Pleistocene glacial till we just found
out that it’s even deeper than we
thought we’d always been working 10 to
20 feet below sand we now know that this
is a whole other layer 30 feet below the
santé one day after blowing we get down
to a level and we found what turned out
to be a cannonball and out of the
cannonball there was a little coin and
it turned out to be 1684 and then there
was this trigger guard from a musket for
me I knew at that time that I had found
the widow I mean it wasn’t enough
evidence to prove everything but it was
exactly where it was supposed to be I
knew it but the state historian did not
believe me
and and indeed she was smart not to in
fact I was giving a talk when knighted
at a church in Wellfleet before we found
the wreck and an elderly lady came up to
me and held her wrist out after the talk
and said my grandfather said he found
these coins on the beach and he said
that they came from the widow and they
were gold escudos little gold escudos
about a half an ounce each and they had
slice marks in them like someone hit
them with a knife or a file and I’ll
never forget that but it didn’t it was
kind of like okay somebody else found
the widow didn’t really sink in because
there’s always lots and lots of treasure
stories but you’ll see why that’s
important and in a few minutes here so
we we went out to the site we were
bringing up bags of treasure here’s a
bag and in the bag there were these
chunks of gold this is a Spanish bar it
would be as long as a small sandwich sub
you know but but it had those same slice
marks in it that those coins had that
that elderly lady had on her wrist the
Pirates were testing it to see if it
were counterfeit because each one of
these pieces of gold that would have
been the size of a small pizza a disc of
solid gold but they’re broken up into
pieces and all of these black objects
are pieces of eight coins Spanish coins
Dutch coins French coins and why are the
Pirates dividing breaking because they
were dividing up everything equally
they were democratic they were
experimenting and democracy each man had
an equal share and here was proof these
gold bars that were cut into pieces this
would have been the minimum share that
somebody would have got when a ship was
robbed and again fifty pounds was added
to every man share there being a hundred
80 men and this is just out of a little
8 foot by 8 foot test spit every
artifact is measured in we bring up the
artifacts they’re bagged very carefully
and numbered so every single artifact
here has a position where it came from
and then they’re tagged and photographed
and drawn and we have you know over 200
thousand artifacts recorded this is just
one dive and the problem there is that
the sand is caving in and during big big
storms the site is being destroyed so
it’s it’s really a situation where we’re
going is trying to go as fast as we can
it’s been 30 years but you know to save
this thing because it’s offering us a
glimpse into this never-seen-before
world of pirates these guys were voting
and in fact 1/3 of these people were of
African origin they were black native
they were people who were equal on board
the Whydah and some of them Africans
were being elected by predominantly
European crews as officers and even
captains on board slave ships we have
absolute proof of this in fact you
didn’t read about this I never saw that
in Disney when I was a kid with Treasure
Island I didn’t see any black people but
1/3 of the Pirates in the Golden Age of
piracy were of African origin most of
whom were former slaves but still the
state historian didn’t believe us that
we had the Whydah
until this happened we found a ship’s
Bell at the bottom of a 20-foot deep pit
and here we’re bringing it up and this
is a concretion this is a massive
material when iron is submerged in salt
water it’ll start to degra gate and an
electrical field will form around a
piece of iron depending how big it is
and anything within that field whether
it’s human remains or shoes or coins
will be encapsulated in these
concretions I mean they’re variable
treasure chests
and one day I get a call from the
laboratory and said Barry you better get
over to the lab we just found a W on the
Bell because the whole word Widow was on
the other side of the concretion and as
the concretion was taken away it just
doesn’t say Widow it says the Whydah
Gally 1716 1716 and it was the cover of
the New York Times the next day and
there’s the Bell today and we’ve kept it
submerged in water with the concretion
still on it
the Whydah Gally G al ly and again all
sorts of things are encapsulated in
concretions including the bones a shoe
size six shoe very carefully made silk
stocking and a human leg bone and for
years I would go into our laboratory and
my historian is beyond brilliant he
knows everything there is to know about
pirates and he’s been with me for over
25 years
but he doesn’t have a clue about normal
things like in the new the coffee stand
he’d walk right in the wall drinking his
coffee and and one day I said Ken it’s
really small pirates on board the witih
size six shoe I said were there any kids
on board the ship is it oh yes there was
a boy Ken it’s been years why didn’t
know and his name was John King he was
on a ship called the Bonita they were
leaving Jamaica and I’ve got a letter
somewhere to the Governor of Jamaica
from captain savage who was the captain
of the bonita complaining about this
very rebellious young boy named john
king who threatened his mother and
joined the pirate crew now that stalking
and leg bone and shoe was found in this
cannon so apparently what happened is
when the ship turned over john king was
crushed and his bone and shoe and sock
concreted to the cannon but this is sort
of the things that we’re finding and
this wasn’t disguise
you know only years after you know we
discovered it so that’s why it’s
important in what we do and in
archaeology is and that things aren’t
sold is to keep the collection together
so academics can squabble about what
they are including this akan jewelry and
we have hundreds of pieces of akan gold
that were being traded along with the
slaves by the European slave traders and
it’s the oldest reliably dated
collection of akan jewelry in the world
I’m told this is our laboratory on Cape
Cod where we’re making discoveries every
day in this lab there are over 30,000
pounds of concretion x’ look at all
those bags these are actually artifacts
that have been Deacon creted but the
concretions themselves we x-ray and we
have an x-rayed them yet – just four
fragments of gold dust and all that and
each of these tanks can contain cannon
and concretions this anchor was recently
Deacon creted you can see the concretion
from the anchor there and now here’s the
big twist the we didn’t have 24 cannon
we found over 60 so the guns that South
hack was talking about the riches with
the guns would be buried in the sin I
had no idea nobody would have had any
idea that there were those extra guns
but the guns that he was referring to
were the guns that were in the bottom of
the ship the guns that we just found and
concrete ‘add to this anchor was the top
of a treasure chest here you can see a
heart-shaped coin rare heart-shaped coin
with a cross on it these are probably 2
reals which are small Spanish coin you
can see a sword hilt with the woven
metal and the pummel you’ve heard of
being pummeled that’s the pummel on the
sword hilt and these are big pieces of
eight this is probably Mexico that’s
probably either potosi or Lima Peru
that’s probably Mexico and thousands and
thousands and thousands of artifacts are
still encapsulated within
these concretion so this is these I know
these are escudos by the shape of these
and they were kept in stacks and this is
what we’ve been finding recently on the
site we’ve been finding stacks of coins
which mean they were in bags and that’s
the outside of this is the concretion
and there’s very clearly a stack of
coins which I think are escudos and the
the sword handle that you saw there’s my
dad working on it and as an example
every artifact that we bring out is
carefully drawn and recorded now this
would be the side plate off of a musket
serpentine you know a symbol of ferocity
and it’s brass but it’s not only
photographed but it’s carefully drawn to
bring out the imperfections or you know
whatever might be of archaeological
significance and this is the oldest
reliably dated Freemason symbol
Freemasonry actually somewhere around
May or June of 1717 was recognized at
the beginning of Freemasonry this ship
wrecked in April of 1717 so there’s no
there’s not an earlier reliably dated
Freemason symbol and we found several of
them you can see Jacob’s Ladder
another Masonic symbol and this
particular piece which happens to be my
favorite in the whole collection
it’s a blazing star leading the way and
a waning and a waxing moon and a heart
pierced by two arrows a symbol of lost
love and it’s a wax seal something a
pirate would stamp a letter to his
girlfriend or wife with and again
concretions this is a massive concretion
weighing a couple thousand pounds and
it’s inundated with artifacts you can
see where as a pistol and these things
haven’t been taken apart all of these
artifacts have not seen the light of day
I mean there’s I’ll be gone for 50 years
when they get through with this there’s
thousands of artifacts that have not
been you know Deacon created and again
over 50 ships were robbed from the widow
and to date of the 60 cannons that we
have we don’t have one
carriage I think we only have fifty
cannonballs we don’t have anything from
the stern section of the ship and we
think we know we think we know where it
is now you know what we’re looking for
you can see very clearly here there’s a
gun a pistol we have several of these
pistols you can see a set of cuff links
and there’s and again the pistol came
out of a concretion so it’s all covered
in this concrete like material and that
ribbon was wrapped around the handle
meaning that a pirate could wear several
of them around his neck and get more
than one shot this is my son Brandon
who’s been diving with me since he was a
kid he’s 34 now back in these days the
conservator would let him work alongside
her at one of the tables and he he found
this little coin and a piece of a
concretion and he just told me this a
couple of years ago he said dad I didn’t
tell you this but you know I found I
found this face on the edge of a
concretion I didn’t tell anybody because
I knew they would take it away from it
eat it
that’s the louis xiv and that’s on the
butt of this pistol this particular
piece was the cook stove that they used
to cook on board the ship we actually
found two of them now one would have
been for slaves the other would have
been for the crew this is a heavily
concreted cannon and we’ll probably keep
it like this is actually a gun door
that’s actually the the door from the
ship the gun door and that’s actually a
small gun probably a rail gun that’s
concluded to the cannon but we were able
to get down deep and Brandon said dad I
can hear something down there
you know don’t move like he knows how
impatient I am don’t move stay there
so we dug and we dug and we dug and we
don’t get down 30 feet under the sand
everything else we found we were always
finding at 10 to 20 feet this is stack
of seven cannon all frozen together
along with ebony wood and artifacts and
two big rolls of lead
six feet long weigh thousands of pounds
so it weighs about 14,000 pounds so
after all of those years probably like
from 1985 we just found this whole layer
of material that’s deeper than we ever
thought along with the top of a treasure
chest
and this is what the cannon pile looked
like so rather than breaking it apart we
were able to bring it up in one piece
again now we’re in this area we came
back after all these years and gone
deeper and this is what we find find
concreted to this anchor which came out
of the same pit at the top of a treasure
chest that’s a an artifact sticking out
from a concretion and it says Whydah
Gally and that’s a nameplate that was on
the top of that chest my conservator
who’s very nervous he’s got a $300
camera he’s in the lab by himself his
hand is shaking and he’s carefully
dusting away this dust from the edge of
the concretion that as he takes it out
from the concretion and he sees the
number one he sees the number seven he
sees the number one so it’s going to be
1716 just like the Bell no 17 13 what
the hell does that mean
1713 Whydah Gally
he’s hands shaking like hell now as he’s
doing the and he runs into the other
room to see Kent who of course knows
everything in Kansas ken there’s a 17-13
on the on the on the nameplate what
could that mean encounter goes oh yes
well there were two witness
this had to have belonged to captain
prints on his widow that he had before
this Widow this wood it was built in
1716 this was 1713 so this must have
been one of Captain princes chest that
he kept his treasure in because all
around that treasure chest
there were coins Goldust and right where
we discovered all of those cannon now I
have to say that this all sort of came
to reality to me a few years ago as I’m
driving down Wisconsin Avenue in Chicago
and from two miles away
there’s our logo on on the field Museum
I mean what the hell did we do right you
know but there it is
and we’re just so absolutely pleased to
be involved with Geographic and so
greatly honored that our discoveries are
being shown here and we we really we
really appreciate you coming and and and
again it’s a great honor thank you very
much
you
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