The Lost Fleet: The Discovery of a Sunken Armada from the Golden Age of Piracy

The story of a group of French ships lost off the Venezuelan Coast in the late 17th century. The story is one part the original wreck and then the subsequent careers of some of the sailors involved, and one part the story of Clifford’s team discovering and mapping the wreck in 1998.

The historical part takes place a bit before the golden age of piracy, which is what most people picture when they thinnk of pirates, Nassau and whatnot. This was before all that, when ships typically had some sort of commission, however thin, that gave them a legal standing of some kind. It was the era of the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal and England fighting over who would control the Caribbean and the Atlantic sailing routes.

Clifford traces the careers of Chevalier de Grammont, Nikolaas Van Hoorn, Thomas Paine, Jean Comte d’Estrées, and perhaps the most famous of them all, Laurens de Graffe. These were the captains set the stage for the democracy of buccaneers that formed around Nassau about thirty to fifty years after the wreck.

Clifford is an interesting figure in his own right, somewhat abrasive in real life from what I’ve read, and an outsider so he takes quite a bit of flack from the professional archaeology clubs which don’t like outsiders pulling off things they can’t or don’t. Whatever else he may claim, he most definitely did find the Whydah, Sam Bellamy’s ship, off the coast of Cape Code, the first confirmed pirate wreck to ever be found.