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Pirates.

Their peg legs and parrots, their thirst for booty,

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and their ships loaded with doubloons

has fueled our imagination,

and turned them into popular icons.

Fire.

(cannons firing)

But who were these men in real life,

and how did they come to be so feared?

Were they just colorful sailors

who hid their treasures at the bottom of the bay?

Or violent criminals?

How did they structure,

and what was the scale of their illegal trafficking?

Until now,

only a few wrecked pirate ships have been discovered.

But today, in the western part of the Indian Ocean,

a team of archeologists is conducting underwater studies,

in search of the remains of a famous pirate ship,

which sank in 1702.

On land, further research is being carried out

on St. Mary's Island, where pirates used to hide and live.

Their research gives us clues and tangible proof

about these men's mysterious lives.

(adventurous music)

At the end of the 19th century,

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote Treasure Island.

His book quickly became a bestseller,

and the public immediately embraced

its swashbuckling characters,

these seafaring outlaws, hunting for treasures.

Pirates like Blackbeard, Red Rickham,

and Captain Kidd became legendary heroes,

immortalized by dozens of authors.

The pirate's sense of adventure and freedom fascinates.

But how accurate were these stories?

Where did these freewheeling men come from,

and why did they take to the sea?

Where did they hide out

when they weren't aboard their ships?

To answer these questions,

a team of archeologists is headed to the Indian Ocean

in the waters off the east coast of Mauritius Island.

Their goal is to resume the investigation of The Speaker,

A 17th century pirate ship that ran aground

on a coral reef in 1702,

and was first explored in the 1980s.

A rare opportunity to find out more about pirates,

as only six pirate shipwrecks have ever been found so far.

Archeologists, Jean Soulat, Anne Hoyau-Berry,

and Yann Von Arnim have already dived on dozens of wrecks.

They know how difficult underwater archeology is,

but here, weather conditions can be rough.

For 11 months of the year,

ocean swells batter the Mauritian coast,

tossing around our scientists.

Their mission is to map The Speaker's cannons and anchors,

in order to reconstruct how it sank.

(water bubbles)

It's been very difficult today.

There's a lot of shaking.

There've been five, five and a half foot waves

that moved us over 10 feet,

so it's been challenging for everyone.

We were ripped apart, tossed around,

pushed to the surface, and then pushed back down.

So, the waves gave us a lot to deal with.

Despite these rough conditions,

they found some little treasures.

So, we found a piece of metal,

which seems to be a musket or a pistol barrel.

From a pistol or a rifle.

We'll clean it and then we'll know.

It's cylindrical. It looks hollow.

So, this is one of the expedition's first discoveries.

We also found several pieces of lead pistol bullets.

You see, each dive has its trove of new discoveries.

But what was this pirate ship doing

off the East African coast,

in the middle of the Indian Ocean,

and not in the Caribbean, like the legends say?

In England, a researcher at the University College of London

studies piracy and the role it played

in his country's development.

The humble beginnings of the maritime piracy

can be traced down to this place, Cornwall.

By the end of the 17th century,

the people from Cornwall used the environment

to make bonfires,

to make it appear like the fake lighthouses,

to attract the passing ships,

and then the ships will be trapped in the rocky shoreline.

The locals will ambush them, killing them mercilessly,

and then stealing the goods,

and selling them in the daylight with no remorse.

That's why we call the English, nation of pirates.

Leaving the Cornwall Coast,

English pirates soon set sail to expand their hunting area.

The local authorities started

to pay the ship owners and fishermen to outfit their ships

with cannons, hard, fearless sailors

to attack the passing ships.

But that was not the end of the phenomenon.

With the rise of the international trade,

especially with the rise of the Spanish

and the Portuguese empires,

they started to attack their convoys laden with the gold.

A handful of men looking for adventure

then left Europe to travel the world's sea routes.

At the beginning of the 16th century,

Spain and Portugal divided up South America

and exploited not only the silver mines of Peru in Mexico,

but also the continent's sugarcane, tobacco,

and exotic wood.

As France and England wanted their piece of the pie too,

they hired the best pirates,

giving them official letters of protection,

and permission to attack and loot Spanish ships.

These special pirates working for the kings and queens

of England and France were called corsairs.

(dramatic music)

(cannons firing)

(ships exploding)

(swords clashing)

To protect themselves, the Spanish organized.

Their ships now sailed in convoys,

making them increasingly difficult to attack.

But in the 1710s,

the English, French and Spanish formed new alliances

and stopped their proxy war.

This is when these corsairs became unwanted and obsolete.

There was a huge unemployment of the sailors,

especially the British ones.

They were looking for a new job, but there was none.

So they had to join the pirates.

But these new pirates were leaving these old waters

looking for the new hunting grounds.

They were sailing down there,

across the golden coast of Africa to the Madagascar,

looking there for the richly laden galleons

that belonged to the Portuguese.

Pirates and former corsairs soon operated

in a new rich hunting ground.

At the mouth of the Red Sea,

they lay in weight for the ships of wealthy Muslims

on pilgrimage to Mecca.

Off the Indian coast, they hoped to cross paths

with the great Mughal's merchant fleet,

which was often loaded with gold, precious gems,

and valuable goods,

and to intercept the vessels from the Portuguese,

English, Dutch, and French Indies

that transported rich cargoes from China or the Far East.

(people speaking French)

(tense music)

The Speaker is one of these pirate ships.

Why did it sink here?

On Mauritius, the swell has calmed,

so the diving can continue.

(water splashes)

(gentle music)

The ship's wreckage is scattered over a 1000 foot long area,

where the divers have found around 30 cannons

and four anchors.

Slowly, they map the topography of the area,

noting the precise position and placement of each element,

in order to better understand how The Speaker sank.

But what treasure was this pirate ship carrying?

The first remains of this ship were brought to the surface

during the first archeological exploration in the 1980s.

These objects are now kept in the Mahebourg Museum.

They help us imagine the pirates' daily lives,

and to evaluate the variety of ships and cargos they looted.

There are figures linked to deities.

There are objects of adornment, like rings and medallions,

but also navigation instruments like compasses,

or even a portable sundial whose case is missing.

There are also pipes, fragments of clay pipes.

There are buttons from the sailors and pirates' clothing.

From India, the Ottoman Empire,

China, but also Italy, France, Germany, and Austria,

the 1,700 objects held by the Mahebourg Museum

show the diversity of the pirates' hauls

and their personal possessions.

(tense music)

Brigitte Nicolas is a curator

at the East India Company Museum in Port Louis in France.

Several centuries ago, the ships of this company,

hunted by pirates, returned here,

loaded with valuable merchandise

captured in the Indian Ocean.

What lured Europeans to Asia were spices.

First, they went for cloves and nutmeg,

spices found on the Maluku islands.

At that time, they only grew there, and had enormous value,

very lucrative.

There was the pepper found on the Malabar coast,

but also in Java, Sumatra, and Ternate.

All Indian textiles were of real interest to the French,

as they were the heart of their trade.

There were silks from Bengal.

There were lacquers used to make screens and many boxes.

There was also saltpeter and precious gemstones.

There were many different kinds of goods.

Pirates coveted all of these goods.

Spices, precious fabrics and porcelain

were the most common pirate hauls.

Only rarely did they happen upon gold or precious gemstones.

One day, I was using a metal detector

to search an area near The Speaker's guns.

In a hole, it signaled very loudly,

so I told myself I needed to have a look.

So I started moving the coral debris,

and a sea urchin, and the urchin pinged.

In fact, the urchin had taken the gold bar

and camouflaged itself with it.

It has small suction cups on its spines,

and it had attached its spines to the bar

to camouflage itself.

Normally, it uses pieces of coral or sponges,

but there it used a little gold ingot.

So you can see it was cut in half with a knife.

You can also see the knife slice, and in fact,

they had to make a little slice, and then broke it by hand.

There are gold bars that were cut up,

which really shows the way

the pirates divided up their booty.

Though fiercely attached to their freedom,

these sea scoundrels were not lawless.

They actually obeyed the famous pirate code.

These pirate rules,

like those established by Captain Bartholomew Roberts,

govern life aboard and ashore.

For example, their booty was divided equally

among all the sailors,

with only the captain receiving a double share.

But the code also ruled other areas.

For instance, there was an insurance policy

for the pirates.

So for example, if a pirate lost a hand or a leg,

he got a compensation,

and still he was a fully fledged member

of the crew afterwards.

Perhaps this code of conduct

helped Bartholomew Roberts become

one of the most successful pirates.

He and his men raided over 400 ships.

Unlike most pirates, he preferred tea to rum,

refused to rape women, enjoyed classical music,

and was always clean shaven and well dressed.

A perfect gentleman,

who is best remembered for his contribution

to the pirate code.

Were pirate naval battles also codified?

How did they really unfold?

On the wreck of The Speaker,

the archeologists continue surveying.

On the edge of their work area,

the researchers spot some cannon balls.

We brought back only some of the cannon balls,

because with their concretions, it's very difficult.

They're embedded in the coral, and they're stuck to flint.

So it was harder than we thought.

And then, in one of the areas,

where there was a pile of cannonballs, six to be exact,

we managed to remove a whole one that was four inches

in diameter.

Four inch balls could indicate two-headed cannonballs,

which were two cannonballs,

or two half cannonballs joined by a bar.

The purpose of this type of cannonball

was that, as it came out of the cannon, it turned.

They're called angels. They turn like that.

And in fact, they were used to cut the shrouds

holding the masts,

and that would stop a ship in its tracks,

because the masts would fall.

They were very effective,

because they had a high propulsion speed.

And they turned quickly, like nun chucks.

So, they turned.

And in turning, they cut the ropes.

They were highly effective.

(cannons firing)

Battles between pirate ships

and their merchant adversaries

followed a specific modest operandi.

As soon as the ship was within firing range,

they used the big guns, then muskets and pistols.

In a famous 16th century ship that's now a museum,

curator Ed Mayhew describes in detail

these intense confrontations.

Once you're on board,

the main weapon would've been the cutlass.

So these are quite short swords,

designed essentially for stabbing and thrusting.

There are also pistols.

So, pirates famously liked to carry their own pistols.

But they would be fired,

and then probably thrown away, probably at your enemy.

You'd probably throw it towards them,

or they turn around and use it to club with the brass.

(swords clashing)

It would just been a cacophony of noise and smoke.

You might not have been able to see what you were firing at

after a while.

If you were reloading a musket,

your mouth would be really dry with the powder

that was getting in there.

So it would be really chaotic,

and hell on water essentially.

Bartholomew Roberts died by having grapeshot

rip his throat out.

Blackbeard had his head almost severed from his body.

So, the wounds that you received were really awful.

And a basic round shot that came through the ship,

if that didn't hit you,

the splinters that flew in with it

would do a lot of damage as well.

So they could have massive shards of wood through a limb

or it could take off whole limbs.

That was really brutal.

If you didn't have a surgeon on board,

the next best bet in some cases was the carpenter,

which kind of tells you the level of of skill needed.

You just had to be able to saw a limb off quickly.

(water splashing)

Few pirates came out of the Indian Ocean

alive and rich.

So, how can we explain their determination

to live this adventurous life, given the dangers of sailing,

the risk of illness, the fighting,

and the sea's other perils?

I think many sailors had a fervent desire

to escape poverty.

We really can't imagine how difficult life was at that time.

So, a difficult life on board where they were fed

was perhaps less difficult than a life here,

where they weren't sure to eat every day.

So, there was that: escaping poverty. It was truly a goal.

The promise of riches pushed all of these men to Asia.

That was the driver.

Hunted and blacklisted,

often sailing weeks without being able

to replenish their supplies,

pirates relentlessly searched for victims

on the edges of the Indian Ocean.

Two weeks after their expedition started,

the archeologist discover a clue that identifies

one of the ships The Speaker attacked.

At first glance,

we think it's a slave trade shackle.

Wrist shackles to restrain slaves.

Discovering a slave bracelet on The Speaker

provides evidence that pirate ships

often had slaves on board.

Did the pirates free the slaves they captured,

acting as the liberators of oppressed people,

like certain accounts say?

The reality was more complicated.

Pirates were definitely opportunists,

which means that, when it fits to their course,

they liberated slaves

and make them the members of their crews.

But at other times when there would be overloaded ships,

they just simply sell them.

So of course, there was no charity in their behavior.

It was all motivated by the gain, by the profit.

And indeed, the captain of The Speaker,

John Bowen, was known as a pirate who had no scruples

about becoming a slave trader.

On Mauritius Island,

the 8,000 pictures taken by archeologists

have allowed them to construct a first map

of the shipwrecked Speaker.

(people speaking French)

But will this enable them to complete the information

they found in the India office library in London?

They know from these archives that,

despite the violent shipwreck, the crew survived,

and The Speaker's captain John Bowen

could recount the event.

Our return to Madagascar

was hindered by crosswinds.

With a crew of drunks, the ship moved to and fro.

On the night of January 7th, 1702,

there was a terrible tremor.

With abominable creaking, the ship began to list.

Now, our archeologists can reconstruct

more accurately The Speaker's last moments.

For this ship, it seems the weather was very bad.

It hits a rock. It started taking on water.

So there was a hole. Water flooded the hull.

The boat became heavier and heavier.

You can imagine that they threw two anchors,

those at the front of the site, to slow the ship.

So, they dropped the anchor.

And then despite that,

the ship continues to be carried by the waves and the wind.

So, the tips of these anchors break.

The ship continues on, and little by little,

the men try to lighten the ship's load

by throwing heavy pieces of artillery overboard

until they were completely blocked.

And then, from what I see, the waves hit it again and again,

and it ends up like this.

(animals chattering)

According to a letter

written by the island's Dutch governor,

the pirate set off a few months later on a new ship.

John Bowen and his men were able to continue their looting,

thanks to a secret island that gave refuge

to all of the Indian Ocean's pirates: St. Mary Island.

But how do we know this?

A confession one of them made,

now kept in England's National Archives reports this.

According to the account of a pirate

named Adam Baldridge,

found in the England's National Archives,

We know that pirates settled on the Madagascan island

in 1691.

He noticed that the Bay of Ambodifotatra,

with its circular shape and small mouth,

made it easy to defend.

Cannons could be mounted on the surrounding hills

to protect themselves from enemy ships.

Adam Baldridge thought, "Why not settle here?

Entice other adventurers, and fortify the place,

making it a base camp for the pirates of the Indian Ocean."

And so, for nearly 40 years, St. Mary's became their refuge.

Adam Baldridge's text was the departure point

for Jean Soulat's research.

Before going to the island described by the pirate,

the archeologist began his research in Europe's archives.

If pirates had constructed dwellings on St. Mary's Island,

perhaps travelers had mentioned them

in one of their stories.

His investigations were successful.

France's National Library did hold a map

mentioning the presence of pirates on this island.

In fact, the village is protected by fences,

By fences, but that's all.

That's the only protection there was.

And finally, in 1730, there's a shipwreck zone.

It was really a huge discovery for us,

because it's the oldest map that shows

the Bay of Ambodifotatra.

So, it's the Bay on St. Mary's that interests us the most.

This map highlights that a certain number

of defensive elements, ports, batteries,

lookout areas around the bay with different anchoring points

and zones, that were more or less protected.

So, there's all this life that develops here,

which gives us an extraordinary and fresh take

on these pirates at the end of the 17th century,

and at the beginning of the 18th century.

Is the map from the national library accurate?

Will it help locate remains of the pirates on the island?

For three centuries,

the vegetation and the island's development

have completely modified its appearance,

making it difficult to imagine today

the areas where pirates used to live.

Archeologists have never explored the land on St. Mary's,

but underwater searches have already been carried out

and have provided proof that pirates frequented this bay.

20 years ago, the world watched as an American team

led by explorer Barry Clifford found part of a shipwreck

at the bay's mouth.

The discovery of several gold coins

and fine Chinese porcelain caused a sensation.

Their archeological findings allowed the team's historians

to identify the ship.

It is most probably the Fury Dragon,

a Dutch ship captured by one of the rare pirates

who managed to become rich;

a certain Christopher Condent.

(tense music)

According to his victims' testimony,

Christopher Condent was sailing in the waters

off the southwest coast of Africa

when he and his men attacked and captured a Dutch frigate,

renaming it the Fury Dragon.

Afterwards, they passed the Cape of Good Hope,

and in the Arabian Sea,

they came upon a ship from the Mughal Empire

with up to 1.2 million rupees in its hold,

a real fortune for the time.

After capturing this exceptional booty,

Condent retreated to St. Mary's near Madagascar.

Barry Clifford's highly publicized discovery

attracted a large number of treasure hunters,

forcing the Madagascan government to take drastic measures.

Today, underwater excavations in the Ambodifotatra Bay

are forbidden.

Given this, Jean Soulat has decided to launch

an unprecedented exploration on land this time,

a first on St. Mary's island.

If pirates lived here,

they must have left evidence of their presence

on its shores.

But before they can begin their work,

the archeologist must ask permission

to probe the Madagascan soil.

(lively music)

Before every dig in Madagascar,

a ceremony honoring the land's ancestors must take place.

(people singing)

As soon as you touch the soil,

as soon as you touch the sacred ground,

you have to ask for blessings.

You have to ask for them to open the way for you.

All of these mystical forces around us,

that's also Malagasy culture.

How can they locate the remains

of the fortifications mentioned on the map

found in France's National Library?

For this first mission,

Jean Soulat has asked Isabelle Le Tellier,

a specialist in aerial investigation,

to come along with her LIDAR,

a type of radar whose laser beam

is able to detect the remains of dwellings.

Of course, the biggest obstacle here

is that there's a ton of vegetation,

and the rays of light must reach the ground

to be able to create a map.

That's the main challenge today.

(tense music)

After programming the drone to fly

over all the areas to be searched,

Isabelle begins recording.

Without waiting for the LIDAR's findings,

Jean Soulat and the members of his team have decided

to begin prospecting.

They've chosen to go to the island in the middle of the bay,

whose name has piqued their interest for a month:

Pirate Island.

With his colleagues, Jean plans to follow

the island's shoreline to identify any possible remains,

writing on rocks or pieces of ceramic

that could indicate the presence of pirates.

They comb the island

for several days without success,

until one evening, a villager shares information with them

that arouses their curiosity.

Several years before, on a hill across from Pirate Island,

a bay resident discovered a small cannon

while building his house.

Without a moment's hesitation,

the team decide to go see this vestige.

There is concretion.

What's really surprising is that.

What's that?

Oh, but that's a concretion, an element containing iron,

which got stuck to it while it was at the bottom of the sea.

Accounts of Caribbeans

say that cannons were often removed from the ships

and used on land.

Mounted on the top of a hill at the mouth

of the bay of Ambodifotatra,

the small cannon was meant to protect the moored ships

or sound the alarm.

For the second week of exploration,

young Malagasy archeologists have joined the team.

Judith, Rari Naro and Fanny Sabe are students

at the University of Antananarivo.

They're interested in the relationship

between pirates and the island's natives.

According to records, they lived well with the Malagasy.

They were on good terms.

They married Malagasy princesses, they had children,

and those biracial children became clan chiefs

on the Malagasy coast, so that really interests me.

A few dozen yards from Judith and Fanny,

archeologist Alexandre Coulaud

has just spotted a small flat area near the water.

We've located a clump of coral

that seemed to have been burned,

and that could have been used to make lime for masonry,

as a binder or to clean ships' hulls.

And we found lots of nails.

Old, square, hand forged nails.

Yeah, this is the famous nail.

It seems pretty clear that that could have been

to connect the wooden planks of a boat or a ship.

So, this amount of burnt coral is not an accident.

Crushed and heated coral allowed them

to make a kind of whitewash that was used

to clean the ships' hulls.

This maintenance zone is a strong indication

of pirates having been on St. Mary's island.

They surely took advantage of the island's shallow waters

to take care of their ships.

For her part, Isabelle has been able to process the data

of her LIDAR, with some success too.

At the bottom of the bay,

the radar detected a straight and regular shape.

For Jean Soulat, this zone corresponds to the spot

on the map in the national library where it says,

"Place where we make water."

This is certainly the spot where the pirates

could get fresh water.

(tense music)

For the pirates,

the presence of drinking water in this area

was an essential element,

without which they would never have settled here.

Without fresh water,

they would never have contemplated making St. Mary's

their support camp.

Today, this watering hole is difficult to reach.

Vegetation has largely taken over the area,

and has surely covered the traces of this installation.

On the ground, that goes up to the water source,

which actually was behind.

Here, you can see an element of the pipe network.

It's shown on the plans from 1730, in this zone.

Look here.

(dirt scratches)

You can see quite clearly the installations on each side,

as well as the gutter in the center,

which allowed the water to flow to the shore

where they filled the barrels that were loaded

on board the ships.

Following the pipe,

the archeologists discover another essential element.

Careful. It's slippery.

It looks like that's the dam, the first dam.

Yes, and it's damn high. How high is that?

It must be at least 10 feet high.

It's big.

Originating at the foot of the dam,

the 230 foot long pipe carried the spring water

to the shore.

Thanks to it, the pirates could fill their barrels

before heading back out to sea.

(tense music)

The time has come to examine the structure

that most strongly suggests the pirates' presence:

the fort overlooking the bay.

At the beginning of the 20th century,

this structure on the hill was completely modified.

Malagasy soldiers took over the strategic location

to monitor the Indian Ocean.

Unfortunately, the construction covered its oldest parts,

and now it's difficult to see any remains

of the pirate period.

(drone buzzes)

Isabelle Le Tellier and her LIDAR are once again

called to the rescue.

In the evening,

they take a first look at the data.

On the screen, the outlines of the ancient fort appear.

What's extremely interesting

is that we can really see these bastions flanked here

in this older part,

that corresponds to the 17th or 18th century map

in the archives.

Based on the aerial survey,

the remains of the old fort are uncovered

thanks to the help of some soldiers.

It's an opportunity for the archeologists

to examine this 134 long edifice,

and to complete a first physical survey.

In this type of architecture,

the angles of the fortification are protected by bastions.

Side bastions that are polygonal in shape,

which protect the walls of the forts

from both short range attacks,

and from medium to long range ones with canon fire.

For example, a ship's attack or a land attack

by Europeans or natives.

The fort reveals many things,

and we think that the oldest part actually dates

from the pirates' occupation of the bay

at the end of the 17th century,

and the beginning of the 18th.

In other words, where the old maps in the old archives

mentioned the construction of the first fort.

That's a very nice surprise. It feels really great.

Many hours of archival research culminated

with the opportunity to compare these findings

with onsite observations.

With its fort, its maintenance area,

its fresh water supply,

its dwelling and storerooms, Ambodifotatra Bay

was a refuge to over 2000 pirates.

The animal bones discovered

on the shipwrecked Fury Dragon

show that pirates also found the island

to be an abundant source of food.

With chickens, pigs, and fish,

their diet there was quite varied,

in stark contrast to what they had on board.

(gentle music)

(people speaking French)

In this ideal rear base,

they maintain their ships and good living conditions,

which allowed them to organize their trade

and the selling of their booty.

Silks, spices, porcelain.

Most of these goods were of no use to them.

They had to find buyers if they wanted to get rich.

Historians have long wondered how they did it.

Behind this seemingly innocuous question

lies a completely unknown dimension of piracy.

Archives report that the pirates on St. Mary's

signed agreements with merchants to sell their plunder.

What they stole didn't stay in their hands long.

The goods quickly left for the other side of the globe,

aboard a new ship.

From the early 1700s,

pirates regularly sailed to North America,

supplying its black market with goods they'd stolen.

In the new world,

luxury merchandise delivered by England to the colonists

was rare and highly taxed.

So, the governors of the New England colonies

often preferred to trade with former pirates to get some.

For England, this organized black market

threatened British trade.

Parliament issued a series of edicts

to eliminate piracy in the Indian Ocean.

One of the most important things

that the Navigational Acts brings into the notion

is a term called hostis humanis genis.

It comes from Latin, and it means, "Enemies of all mankind,"

which means that pirates are now ousted from the society.

They're being outside, as the worst criminals.

Now depicted as the enemies of all mankind,

pirates felt the tide was turning.

Large French and English fleets sailed to hunt them down.

On St. Mary's, the pirates prepared the defense.

But how could they resist the overwhelming power

of their enemies?

Studying the ancient map reveals an iron chain

at the mouth of the bay,

undoubtedly meant to prevent access.

But that's not all.

The presence of wrecked ships at that same spot

reveals the pirates' strategy.

You must know that there are four

or five pirate ships that were sunk in the bay

at its entrance.

And in fact, the pirates purposely sank their ships

in order to really stop their enemies from entering

in the Ambodifotatra Bay.

The pirates most probably sank the Fury Dragon

on purpose as a defensive strategy,

blocking their enemies from entering their secret cove.

But did it really work?

And what happened to its captain, Christopher Condent?

Was he captured? Did he finish his life miserably?

At the request of Jean Soulat,

historian Philippe Hrodej did some research

in France's regional archives.

He was able to find a manuscript that tells the rest

of the tale.

It shows that Edward Condon, alias Christopher Condent,

accepted the amnesty conditions offered

by the French governor of Bourbon Island.

He offered to pardon any pirate who gave up piracy

and settled to his colony.

His first document is just simply an amnesty proposal

to finally allow these pirates to retire

to the Bourbon Island unpunished.

So it asks them to settle down, give up violence,

and their former lives.

Often, they were asked to sink their ships,

which is the case here.

And then the second condition is simply to come

with their goods and to promise to spend their money

or their goods in the colony.

In fact, it was a win-win situation.

Authorities promised not to investigate them

or bring them to trial.

However, on the other hand,

the French colonies meant to profit

from the pirate's plunder.

(birds call)

Christopher Condent left Bourbon Island

several months later and went to Port Louis in France.

According to a second French document,

he then married a French woman and became a boat master.

A small flotilla skipper,

who then transported goods

from one Atlantic port to another.

He gave up the crazy and exciting adventures

of piracy to live the obscure and laborious existence

of an owner of coastal shipping boats.

At the end of the 1720s,

the golden age of piracy came to an end.

Few had futures as favorable as Christopher Condent,

in large part because governors in North America,

who had encouraged pirates before,

would soon betray them, like the Governor of New York,

Lord Bellomont, who after associating

with a certain Captain Kidd,

brought him to his city, confiscated his cargo,

threw him in prison, and sent him to England to stand trial.

The atmosphere of the trial there was weird.

Half of the public cheering for Kidd,

and the second half eager to see him hanged.

The trial itself was publicized on both sides of Atlantic,

making it one of the most famous pirate trials

of these times.

Then he spent a whole year in the Newgate prison,

but he would've been here at the executioner's dock,

where he met his final days.

He arrived drunken, to make his defiant speech,

but even his last moments went wrong,

as the rope snapped and he had to be hanged second time.

And then his body displayed for the public

to discourage them from committing the same acts of piracy.

Following that of William Kidd,

executions continued apace.

In addition, as many pirates accepted royal amnesty,

piracy continued to decline.

After 40 years of plundering the seas

between India, China, the African coasts, and the Far East,

these sea rovers received their punishment

with neither leniency nor mercy.

Captured, thrown in prison,

and dragged to the hangman's noose,

some convicts continued to defy authority

by conveying the final message to onlookers.

For instance, at his execution,

a pirate nicknamed The Buzzard

threw a cryptogram he'd held in his fist to the crowd,

shouting, "My treasure to whoever can decipher it."

Just before he and 17 of his men were hanged.

The treasure has never been found,

but still feeds the legend today.

It's the last night on St. Mary's.

Like the pirates before them,

the archeologists are getting ready to leave the island.

Though their research has not uncovered

the pirates' dwellings or storerooms,

they have shown their presence on this island.

Analyzing the latest LIDAR data has indicated the presence

of buildings on a few hilltops,

designating new research possibilities

in the coming years.

(somber music)

After their demise,

pirates became emblematic characters,

rough, free, and sometimes cruel sailors,

who disappeared at the beginning of the first globalization.

The golden age of piracy only lasted a few decades,

a brief period that revealed the hunger of these men

who dreamed of fortune, but often only encountered misery.

The real treasure and legacy they left behind

is an enduring fascination with this particularly daring

and adventurous era.

(adventurous music)

♪ Oh, the (indistinct) tale and the requiem ♪

♪ Rang off in the end ♪

♪ These men, both fight ♪

♪ By freedom's light ♪

♪ By child through the valley too ♪