A SUNKEN pirate ship has been discovered at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea with rare cargo on board.
Treasure hunters have found an archaeological gold mine of artefacts between Spain and Morocco, including a rare spyglass, 2,700 feet under the sea.
The pirate ship that raided towns and kidnapped victims has been linked to Algiers, now the capital of Algeria.
This city was infamous during the corsairs reign, serving as a hub for Barbary Coast piracy.
Director of Seascape Artifact Exhibits and Odyssey Marine Exploration, Greg Stemm told Newsweek: “The threat of Algiers’ corsairs was an everyday terror for the West.
“The shipwreck found in deep waters is a precious echo of one of the western Mediterranean’s great maritime horrors.”
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In an email to Live Science, Stemm said the ship was equipped with a rare spyglass which had “probably been captured from a European ship.”
Other artefacts of the wreck support the notion this was a pirate ship laden with stolen goods.
He said: “Throw into the sunken mix a collection of glass liquor bottles made in Belgium or Germany, and tea bowls made in Ottoman Turkey, and the wreck looks highly suspicious.
“This was no normal North African coastal trader.”
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The small vessel measured at approximately 45 feet in length, was found by Florida-based company Odyssey Marine Exploration.
The OME team has uncovered more than 300 shipwrecks over the years.
It’s believed to be the first Barbary pirate ship ever found in the region.
The ship was once manned by Barbary corsairs, operated from the coast of North Africa and was a constant scourge for European ships—and coastal settlements in the Mediterranean.
Sean Kingsley, editor-in-chief of Wreckwatch magazine and researcher, told Newsweek that the vessel was “the first Algiers corsair found in the Barbary heartland.”
He said: “Two defining characteristics of pirate ships are heavy weapons and cosmopolitan cultural contents — assembled from the many prizes taken.
“The wrecked Corsair ship was very heavily armed with muskets, four large cannons, and 10 swivel guns,
“The wreck neatly fits the profile of a Barbary corsair in location and character.
“The seas around the Strait of Gibraltar were the pirates’ favourite hunting grounds, where a third of all corsair prizes were taken.”
Researchers are unsure of the vessel’s age or how long it was in service, but they were able to determine that it likely sank during a storm in the 17th or 18th century.
Kingsley said: “Most of the pottery has exact parallels in the 18th-century ceramics excavated during rescue work in Martyrs’ Square in Algiers.
“The Ottoman bowls on the wreck stopped being made in Turkey around 1755.
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“The tightest dating comes from the glass bottles that were blown, at the latest, 1740-1760.
“So the ship can’t postdate 1760.”
Who Were The Barbary Pirates?
The Barbary pirates were predominantly Muslim pirates from North Africa who terrorised the eastern and Mediterranean coasts of Europe.
In addition to capturing merchant ships, they often raided coastal European towns and abducted people to sell at slave markets back in Africa.
They first emerged during the Middle Ages, but they were most active between the 16th and 18th centuries.
The Barbary pirates became so problematic that a military coalition between the United States, Sweden, and the Kingdom of Sicily worked together to expel them for good in the early 19th century.
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