Researchers bring Captain Morgan's guns to the surface
And you thought Captain Morgan was just some guy in cape and pantaloons on a bottle. Well let this be a partial history lesson to all you rum-loving landlubbers: they’ve finally found one of the good captain’s ships.
The ship of the actual Sir Henry Morgan, that is. He’s the seventeenth-century Welsh pirate who stalked and plundered the Caribbean, and whose namesake colorfully graces contemporary bottles of “spiced” rum produced by manufacturer Diageo.
With the financial help of the rum maker, a U.S. team of archaeologists just unearthed a portion of one of Sir Henry’s lost five ships near the Lajas Reef at the mouth of the Chagres River in central Panama. Specifically: the starboard side of one ship’s hull, including, according to Discovery, “a series of unopened cargo boxes and chests encrusted in coral.”
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Morgan lost all five ships in 1671, including his flagship “Satisfaction,” during an attempt to capture a fort near Panama City. While Morgan and his men ultimately succeeded in taking the fort, the ships were lost in rough waters—until now.
“There’s definitely an irony in the situation,” said one of the archaeologists, Fritz Hanselmann, referring to the helping hand offered by the Captain Morgan rum group. The dive team, tipped to potential presence of Morgan’s ship after finding iron cannons in the area, ran out of money before it could finish its search. With funding from the rum-maker, the team was able to perform a search for metal using sophisticated magnetic field tracking techniques.
“When the opportunity arose for us to help make this discovery mission possible, it was a natural fit for us to get involved,” said Captain Morgan brand manager Tom Herbst in a statement. “The artifacts uncovered during this mission will help bring Henry Morgan and his adventures to life in a way never thought possible.”
The cargo boxes and chests have yet to be opened. Any bets on what they’ll find inside?
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Matt Peckham is a reporter at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @mattpeckham or on Facebook. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.