Uncovering history on a 300-year-old pirate ship wreckage off Cape Cod
SALEM -- Buried treasure isn't always gold, sometimes it's discovering history. Archeologists working on a 300-year-old pirate shipwreck believe they may have made a new discovery off the coast of Cape Cod. It is a piece of the ship preserved in a natural time capsule.
Dr. Scott Herber is a conservator chipping away at a lost piece of the Whydah. The ship was a key vessel in the pirate empire of Sam Bellamy. A Nor'easter shipwrecked him and his crew off the coast of Cape Cod in the 1700s. A team of archeologists have been uncovering pieces of the wreck for decades. The loot is at the Real Pirates Museum in Salem. Barry Clifford is leading the charge and helped discover this latest piece.
"I told Scott he's got to be very careful because (of) the number of jewels that were lost on the boat. You can mistake (one) for a stone, so every little thing has to be looked at carefully," archeologist Barry Clifford told WBZ-TV.
The belief is one piece may be a long rifle or deck gun off the ship. The iron in the gun interacts with sea water to form a process called concretion. The hard formations preserve everything inside. Crews used hospital CT scans and high-definition x-rays at Lahey Medical Center to get an idea of what was inside.
"It tells me as a conservator where I need to target and to start being careful," explains Dr. Herber, adding that on the x-rays you can see the wood grain buried underneath. "You go, I am coming to the area, I am expecting to see this."
Now that Dr. Herber has revealed a tip of the possible gun, they can attach wires to it and use electrolysis to zap away the remaining concretion. This will reveal their treasure. The electrolysis process could take six months to a year to complete. They also could find other items buried inside as well. They already found a musket ball.
