The UnXplained

Brazen buccaneers

who terrorized the Seven Seas.

Vast riches

left hidden around the world.

And stories of adventures so outrageous,

they rival our imagination.

Say the word "pirate"

and immediately it conjures up images

of swashbuckling adventure, brutish behavior

and wooden chests filled with priceless treasure.

300 years ago, thousands of pirates roamed the Seven Seas,

and their rum-soaked exploits became enduring legends.

But in reality,

many of these dangerous marauders left a bloody trail

of pillage and plunder that, quite frankly,

is nothing to celebrate.

What do we really know

about the mysterious seafaring criminals we call pirates,

as well as the lost treasures they left behind,

still hidden and just waiting to be found?

Well, that is what we'll try and find out.

Founded in 1565

and considered to be the oldest town in the U.S.,

this former Spanish colony

was an important nautical gateway to North America

and what was called the New World.

And here,

at the St. Augustine Pirate & Treasure Museum,

fascinating artifacts offer a glimpse

into one of the most captivating chapters

in maritime history...

a time long ago

known as the Golden Age of Piracy.

So, the Golden Age of Piracy

was this extraordinary time in-in history

where you have these competing European empires...

competitors like England, France and the Netherlands...

and they are challenging Spain and Portugal

throughout the world.

They had established their New World territories

in the East Indies,

which was South Asia,

as well as the West Indies or the Caribbean.

It is the time of flourishing maritime trade,

where you have these trade networks

moving out of the Americas.

There's silver moving,

there's commodities, there's gold.

And all these things were very lucrative and very valuable.

But before there were pirates as we've come to know them,

there were privateers...

the paid mercenaries of the sea.

These ship captains and their crews

were hired by European empires

to steal the goods and valuables from other warring nations

as their colonial ships crossed the ocean.

A lot of people that were pirates

had started out as a privateer.

They had a commission called a letter of marque

that allowed them to operate

under the protection of a government.

Every country had these, because,

as the New World colonies expanded,

they didn't have, the naval assets

to, continue their fights,

so they used privateers.

From around the mid-1600s to the early 1700s,

privateers made their living

from the sizeable rewards they received

after capturing enemy ships.

But as many privateering contracts began to expire,

these now wealthy marauders were not willing to retire,

but instead were ready to work for themselves.

Privateers were paid in the goods that they take.

About 80%. They can keep about 80% of that.

And so, as a result, we've got loads of sailors

becoming privateers.

But then when the letter of marque expires,

a lot of them just kind of continue on,

and they're people who are operating

completely outside the law.

They're not working for a government.

They're working only for themselves.

And they're going to rob any ship they come across

that they feel could actually bring them a lot of money,

and they continued on into piracy.

Piracy was a profession that gave sailors an opportunity

to live by their own rules

and potentially make a quick fortune.

But there was one major catch.

Piracy was not only a capital offense punishable by death...

it was also a life of extreme violence.

I think we should never forget

just how brutal piracy is.

It is about violence.

It is about theft. It is about killing people.

And some of these pirates take that to such extremes,

probably to make a reputation for themselves

and even to make their own lives easier.

Because if you capture a ship and everyone on that ship

is terrified of you, they're gonna surrender.

They'd have captured a vessel and they say,

"Give up your treasure.

Tell us where it is hidden on the ship."

Because people would hide the materials on the ship.

And one way they would do it is they would basically

force someone over the side of the ship.

They'd have them walk the plank.

And they'd be pushed over the side

so that they would drown in the water.

It's a great motivator.

And we know from some of the accounts

that they would cut off people's noses,

people's ears.

They would whip them.

If there were women, they would rape them.

So lots of different things that would be used

for intimidation...

to get people

to turn over where their treasure was hidden.

Pirates became the scourge of the Seven Seas.

Stories of the exploits of these notorious criminals

circulated all over the world.

And in 1724,

a book was published that would forever transform

these lawbreakers into legends

called A General History of the Pyrates.

The General History of the Pyrates

is one of the most important books

about piracy ever published.

It appears in 1724,

and it's published by a number of publishers in London.

It's an enormous success. It goes through many editions.

There's clearly a demand for stories about pirates.

And it's really a rogues' gallery of all of the pirates...

every pirate who's famous,

every pirate who's got a reputation.

It's drawing on pirate trial records, on newspapers,

but they're also inventing stories.

And in-in many ways, this is the book

that creates the idea of piracy

that we have in our heads still today.

For 300 years,

The General History of the Pyrates

has been the primary resource

on not only the lives of the world's most notorious robbers

but also their rumored vast treasures.

During the Golden Age of Piracy,

3,000 ships clearly were taken by pirates.

Sometimes that ship is fabulously wealthy...

all kinds of treasure on it and everything.

Silver, gold, diamonds, emeralds.

When those came through,

those are the stories that kept being told

and retold through time.

Because the idea of treasure

captures the imagination of everyone.

Yet just as mysterious as the marauders themselves

is the whereabouts of all the valuable loot they stole.

Remarkably, shipwrecks

and battles at sea may have claimed

the vast majority of hundreds of years

of pirates' treasure.

When we hear stories that here was this vessel

that contained these great riches and we hear it was lost,

it makes people think, "my gosh,

"maybe it's not so lost that we couldn't ever find it.

Perhaps we can find it again."

There is likely a lot of money

sitting on the bottom of the ocean.

There could be

untold, millions of dollars under there,

because there's thousands of shipwrecks

and they're still being discovered

by treasure hunters today.

April 26, 1717.

Just off the coast of Wellfleet, Massachusetts.

One of the wealthiest pirates in history,

Captain "Black Sam" Bellamy,

sails his treasure-laden galleon the Whydah to Cape Cod,

where his ship is destroyed in a violent storm.

Of the 146 crew aboard,

only two survive.

And the vessel is lost for centuries.

Until, in 1984,

underwater archaeologist and explorer Barry Clifford

discovers the long-lost ship rumored

to contain Black Sam Bellamy's legendary treasure.

Now, the Whydah lay at the bottom of the ocean

undiscovered for centuries

until Barry Clifford ended up discovering it.

And this was really, really important.

The Whydah has tons of what we would call treasure on it.

There's coins, doubloons, pieces of eights,

guineas. Tons of guineas.

There's gold and silver bars.

We've got jewels such as pearls and rubies and diamonds.

It's full of really expensive silks and other textiles.

It's got medicinal supplies.

It's got all kinds of different wines and rums and sugars.