Musket balls and a charred hull: pirate shipwrecks found in Nassau harbour

An international team co‑directed by a British marine archaeologist has uncovered the first shipwrecks in the Bahamas linked to the real pirates of the Caribbean. After the first official permission to dive in the closed zone of Nassau harbour, the expedition located six wrecks, three of them traceable to the “golden age of piracy” between the 1690s and 1720s.

Blackbeard and Calico Jack Rackham were among the pirates who turned Nassau into a hideout during that period. The archaeologists found a charred wooden hull, still weighed down by a stone ballast pile — a reminder that pirates often burned seized ships to hide their crimes.

Nearby they recovered weapons and tools associated with pirate attacks: a swivel gun, an iron cannon, a pile of 25 lead musket balls and a grinding stone for sharpening swords. When investigators examined the hull’s treenailed timbers they even wondered whether it could have been Henry Avery’s flagship, the Fancy, burned to the waterline.

Bahamas, Nassau harbour

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