Emily Chan
Below the Mediterranean, a pirate shipwreck was discovered at a depth of around 2,700 feet. The vessel was located in international waters between Morocco and Spain in the western Mediterranean.
It was found in 2005 by Odyssey Marine Exploration (OMS), a deep-ocean exploration company based in Florida, but news of its discovery has stayed under a low profile until now. The story of its wreckage is detailed in Wreckwatch magazine’s summer 2024 issue.
The ship was up to about 45 feet long and was once manned by Barbary corsairs, who were mainly Muslim pirates and privateers. They operated from the Ottoman Barbary states on the coast of North Africa, an area known in Europe as the Barbary Coast.
The new shipwreck has ties to Algiers, which is now the capital of Algeria. During the time of the corsairs, the city was a hub for pirates on the Barbary Coast. They were constantly on the lookout for European ships and coastal settlements in the Mediterranean to raid.
“The threat of Algiers’ corsairs was an everyday terror in the West. The shipwreck found in deep waters is a precious echo of one of the western Mediterranean’s great maritime horrors,” said Greg Stemm, the director of Seascape Artifact Exhibits Inc.
Algiers attracted people from all over the region, such as Muslim refugees from Spain and Christian converts to Islam. They dreamed of striking it rich through piracy. The city’s population reached around 60,000 by the end of the 16th century.
According to Sean Kingsley, the editor-in-chief of Wreckwatch magazine, the corsairs were less famous than the pirates of the Caribbean, but they turned to piracy much earlier and were a far bigger operation, which ran from 1525 to 1830.
“Where Blackbeard and his gang put the fear of God into single ships, the Barbary pirates terrorized entire nations,” Kingsley said. “Like Vikings, they raided as far as southern England. Not only did they take your wealth, they enslaved anyone caught to ransom back for a heavy fee. It was an atrocity of everyday life that Western traders had to gamble with.”
The Algiers shipwreck was uncovered during a search for Admiral Sir Francis Wheeler’s English flagship, the HMS Sussex, which was lost in 1694. The discovery was a surprise, as it wasn’t the exploration company’s targeted site. Additionally, no other wreck has ever been linked to Algiers, making it a significant find.
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