Local archaeologist presents history of pirates

[Archiee]

BREVARD COUNTY – Piracy has been a feature of trading waterways since the dawn of civilization, and it continues to occur even in today’s high-tech world.

On Tuesday, May 8, underwater archaeologist and historian Sir Robert Marx presented a lecture at the Florida Institute of Technology on the subject of pirates and piracy, including his own experiences with modern pirates.

Sir Marx also spoke about his own archaeological experiences in looking for sunken pirate treasure. One of his archaeological excavations took Sir Marx to the sunken city of Port Royal, Jamaica.

“I used a diving hookah, which is a mask on your head with a hose going to the surface [to complete the excavations],” Sir Marx explained. “With SCUBA, you have to take the tank off every hour or so and come back up depending on how deep you are. With a hookah, you can stay down all day and never come up. I started in the morning, and went eight to 10 hours every day.”

At the Port Royal site, Sir Marx found “over 2 million” artifacts. “It’s the largest amount of artifacts ever found, on either a sunken city or a shipwreck,” Sir Marx said.

Sir Marx also spoke about fending off modern pirates in the Caribbean, and around the coasts of Africa.

In 1969, Sir Marx had an encounter with pirates in the Bahamas, who were after the gold that he had pulled up from a nearby Spanish galleon. He also had two other run-ins with modern pirates, one of which held him for ransom in South America.

Sir Marx’s presentation are made available by Florida Tech, which hosts lectures on various topics throughout the year.