On January 2, 1678, a fleet of French ships sank off the Venezuelan coast. This proved disastrous for French naval power in the region, and sparked the rise of a golden age of piracy.

Tracing the lives of fabled pirates like the Chevalier de Grammont, Nikolaas Van Hoorn, Thomas Paine, and Jean Comte d'Estrees, The Lost Fleet portrays a dark age, when the outcasts of European society formed a democracy of buccaneers, settling on a string of islands off the African coast. From there, the pirates haunted the world's oceans, wreaking havoc on the settlements along the Spanish...

With the help of the Discovery Channel, undersea explorer Barry Clifford fields an expedition that includes some of America's top experts in shipwreck recovery. Their goal is to find, identify, and possibly excavate the remains of history's most famous pirate ship: Captain Kidd's Adventure Galley. The search takes them to a tiny island off the coast of Madagascar, Sainte Marie, known to historians as the model for Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island.

Return to Treasure Island and the Search for Captain Kidd weaves together two exciting stories: the...

A Captivating Account of the Golden Age of Piracy, the Search for Sunken Treasure, and the Business of Underwater Exploration

Bored by his successful life and obsessed with a boyhood dream of lost pirate treasure, Barry Clifford began a quest for legendary pirate Black Sam Bellamy's ship Whydah, which had supposedly wrecked off the coast of Cape Cod more than two centuries ago. Ignoring claims that he was a fool and a dreamer, Clifford pressed on, until he unbelievable found the Whydah...and then the real story begins in a spellbinding story that will capture your...