17th Century Pirate Ship Camouflaged as Trading Vessel Discovered in Mediterranean Waters

A 17th-century pirate ship with a variety of items was discovered by a company around 2,700 feet below the Mediterranean. Wreck hunters from Florida-based company Odyssey Marine Exploration (OME) found the remains of a small pirate ship, Barbary corsair, in deep water between Spain and Morocco in 2005, Live Science reported.

The corsairs on the Barbary coast in the 17th century were usually manned by Muslim pirates who operated out of Algiers, then a part of the Ottoman Empire, Live Science reported.

These individuals mostly targeted people and other ships carrying valuables along the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts of Europe. The people they managed to kidnap, were sold into the North African slave trade.

The discovery is important because of this pirate ship's origin, Live Science reported. Algiers was known as the corsair capital of the world, but before this, no other pirate ship linked to the city had been found by explorers. This is the first pirate ship from the city to be unearthed, according to maritime archaeologist Sean Kingsley, the editor-in-chief of Wreckwatch magazine.

After a thorough analysis, the researchers concluded that the wreckage was of a pirate ship, Newsweek reported. Pottery and heavy weaponry in the vessel were pieces of evidence that helped them determine it was a pirate ship.

"Two defining characteristics of pirate ships are heavy weapons and cosmopolitan cultural contents—assembled from the many prizes taken," Kingsley said, Newsweek reported. "The wrecked corsair ship was very-heavily armed with muskets, four large cannons, and 10 swivel guns. When the captain ran into trouble, these antipersonnel weapons could be quickly installed for attacking crews in the rigging and on decks."

The pottery found in the wreckage was linked with kilns dug up in Martyrs' Square in Algiers, Newsweek reported. The presence of unusual glass liquor bottles made in Belgium or Germany, tea bowls from Ottoman Turkey, and a European spyglass, removed any doubts in researchers about the pirate ship belonging to a trader.

A typical Mediterranean trader would not have such a variety of items on their ship, according to experts.

The explorers found a cargo of pots and pans made in the North African city of Algiers, in the wreckage, Live Science reported. Experts believe these items might have been put in place to mask the ship as a trading vessel in front of authorities.

The researchers stated, that the ship found in 2005, could have been heading towards the Spanish coast, to kidnap and enslave people, Live Science reported.  Kingsley states that the ship must have encountered a storm during its course.

"The small ship almost certainly succumbed to a storm that came out of nowhere. The bold and brave corsair was punching above its weight in unforgiving seas," Kingsley said, Newsweek reported.

The pirate ship was found when the company was searching the remains of the 80-gun English warship HMS Sussex, which was lost in the area in 1694, Live Science reported.

"As so often happens in searching for a specific shipwreck we found a lot of sites never seen before," Greg Stemm, the founder of OME and the expedition leader shared. The news about the wreckage is just being released now, after extensive research.

The corsair wreck, as per the explorers, has been "exceptionally" preserved and remains archaeologically coherent, Newsweek reported. The explorers have not disturbed anything on the site, as per Kingsley.

Of the whole ship, only the lower third of the hull below the waterline survives. The primary reason behind this is Mediterranean "shipworms" (a type of saltwater clam), who tend to eat all the organic remains above the seabed. 

Researchers are searching for ways to conduct an in-depth analysis, of the wreckage, Live Science reported. The team has to closely go through the wooden hill of the ship, to determine when the ship was constructed and how long it was in service. The pottery and glassware found inside the pirate ship indicate that the ship must have sunk around 1760.

"Most of the pottery has exact parallels in the 18th-century ceramics excavated during rescue work in Martyrs' Square in Algiers," Kingsley said, Newsweek reported. "The Ottoman bowls on the wreck stopped being made in Turkey around 1755. The tightest dating comes from the glass bottles that were blown, at the latest, 1740-1760. So the ship can't postdate 1760."