Barry Clifford (born May 30, 1945) is an American underwater archaeological explorer, best known for discovering the remains of Samuel Bellamy's wrecked pirate ship Whydah [pronounced wih-duh] which, together with La Louise of French pirate La Buse (Olivier Levasseur), is a fully verified and authenticated pirate shipwreck of the Golden Age of Piracy discovered in the world – as such, artifacts from the wreck provide historians with unique insights into the material, political and social culture of early 18th-century piracy.
Citing federal admiralty law in 1988, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that 100% of the Whydah rightfully belonged to Clifford, and he has kept The Whydah Collection intact without selling a single piece of the more than 200,000 recovered artifacts, which includes tens of thousands of coins, more than 60 cannon, and the "everyday" objects used by the crew. Clifford also has exclusive dive rights to the site, which is patrolled by the National Park Service and U.S. Coast Guard.
Clifford maintains a large private facility in which the majority of the Whydah artifacts are kept for conservation and examination; however, Clifford exhibits a variety of the ship's artifacts, as well as from many other shipwreck discoveries, for the public to enjoy at his Whydah Pirate Museum in West Yarmouth, Massachusetts. A smaller selection of artifacts was previously on an international touring exhibition through a National Geographic/Premier Exhibitions joint venture, called Real Pirates. In 2022, a permanent museum named Real Pirates was opened in Salem, Massachusetts displaying more artifacts from the shipwreck.
The Whydah Project has been called "a model of underwater archaeology" by the Massachusetts Board of Underwater Archaeological Resources.
Biography
Early life
Born in 1945 on Cape Cod, Barry Clifford has been involved in underwater exploration for most of his adult life. He graduated from Maine Central Institute in Pittsfield, Maine before earning a bachelor's degree in History and Sociology from Western Colorado University in Gunnison, Colorado, and received graduate training at Bridgewater State College in Bridgewater, Massachusetts.
Career
In 1999 and 2000, Clifford and his project team completed three expeditions to Île Sainte-Marie off the coast of Madagascar, as a Discovery Channel Expedition Adventure initiative and tentatively identified the pirate ship Adventure Galley (flagship of William Kidd) and another pirate ship which could be the Fiery Dragon (commanded by the pirate Christopher Condent, also known as William Condon). At the time two other shipwrecks were believed to be in the same area.
After discovering and decoding cryptic rock carvings, he then used ground-penetrating radar to locate and chart an apparent tunnel-complex, similar to the Oak Island Money Pit, which may have been constructed by late-17th-century pirates.
In an ongoing project, Clifford is working to identify suspected in-situ remains of the Santa María — flagship of Christopher Columbus in his first travel to the Indies, wrecked near modern Cap-Haïtien on Christmas Day in 1492. His work as a Discovery "Quest" Scholar to locate this site was the subject of a May 2004 Discovery Channel documentary 'Quest for Columbus'. Also ongoing off the Haitian coast is an archaeological survey project that has tentatively identified four shipwrecks associated with Henry Morgan, including Morgan's flagship The Oxford. In 2010 Clifford returned to lead an expedition to identify the other shipwrecks at Île Sainte-Marie. The expedition is featured in the History Channel documentary 'Pirate Island'.
On 13 May 2014, it was reported by The Independent that a team led by Clifford believed they had found the wreck of the Santa Maria, flagship of Christopher Columbus. Proof of its authenticity was a 15th-century cannon on the wreck site, which is directly out from the beach upon which archaeologists had discovered the site of Columbus' fort, precisely as Columbus wrote in his diary. His discovery is peer-supported. In the following October UNESCO's expert team published their final report, concluding that the wreck could not be Columbus's vessel, claiming fastenings used in the hull, and possible copper sheathing dated it to the 17th or even 18th century. The report was heavily challenged by Clifford saying "It was highly political" and "They conducted a prejudiced and nonscientific investigation of the site."