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Research team surveyed 160 acres of sunken city and near Salt Pan Hill 

Durrant Pate/Contributor

Jamaica’s world-famous sunken city at Port Royal has been featured on the globally watched Discovery Channel following the research of archaeologist Andrew J. Van Slyke, a visiting lecturer at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

Van Slyke has spent years chasing two pieces of paper; one, a 1722 letter from a pirate hunter, and the other, a 1724 chart of a drowned city. In March this year in the waters of Jamaica’s Kingston Harbour, that paper trail finally met the seafloor. 

Van Slyke and his students, Tom Laufenberg and Faith Johnson, along with a team of volunteers, ran the survey lines, exploring Port Royal’s sunken city with Discovery Channel’s “Expedition Unknown” documenting the expedition. The episode, titled “Sunken City of Pirates,” premiered July 15 and follows the team as they investigate Port Royal, the infamous pirate city that partially sank during an earthquake in 1692. 

Finding the long-lost ships of “Black Bart”

The expedition focused on locating the long-lost ships of Bartholomew “Black Bart” Roberts, whose fleet disappeared after a hurricane struck the harbour in 1722. The work is conducted under permit from the Jamaica National Heritage Trust and brings together archaeologists, students and volunteers from the United States and Jamaica. 

The Port Royal expedition was supported by local partners and the Discovery Channel. Today, Port Royal is one of the world’s largest submerged archaeological sites and was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2025. While viewers watched the search unfold in a 42-minute television episode, the work had been years in the making. 

Van Slyke, co-founder of the Maritime Legacy Project: Jamaica, has spent years working alongside UC Foundation Associate Professor of Archaeology, Morgan Smith and an international team of researchers to study Jamaica’s maritime history. Their work includes searching for Christopher Columbus’ final shipwrecks in St. Ann’s Bay, documenting submerged cultural artefacts. 

Their search on the sunken city was guided by two centuries-old records Van Slyke and Maritime Legacy Project co-founder, Dr Marianne Franklin, had studied: a 1722 letter from pirate hunter Captain Chaloner Ogle of HMS Swallow, describing what happened to two of Roberts’ captured ships after a hurricane struck Port Royal, and a 1724 chart showing where wrecks lay in the harbour. 

Search narrowed to areas never been surveyed using modern technology

Together, the documents narrowed the search to areas that had never been surveyed using modern remote-sensing technology. “Only a few pirate ships have ever been found—only three that have been confirmed,” Van Slyke said during the episode. “What would it mean to find the ships and identify them? It would be historic,” he remarked. 

UTC adjunct instructor Hunter Whitehead, an underwater archaeologist and photogrammetry specialist, documented the sites by stitching together hundreds of underwater photographs into detailed three-dimensional models. His maps gave the team an accurate digital record of the wrecks and later appeared throughout the Discovery Channel episode. 

Over the course of the expedition, the team surveyed roughly 21 acres over the sunken city and more than 140 acres near Salt Pan Hill. “It’s kind of like Easter egg hunting,” explained Laufenberg, a UTC anthropology major about to begin his senior year. “You know there’s something out there and you really want to find it. Every single foot we covered was one more foot that could hold

The team identified the remains of HMS Aboukir, a British warship that had been blown apart in 1881 and had not been located since. 

According to Laufenberg, “nobody had located or identified that ship since it was blown up—and then to correctly identify what ship it was. It’s all part of the one large story that Port Royal has, of ships and people and their interactions with the water. Even if it wasn’t exactly what we were looking for, it was still a story that deserves to be told.”  

While Laufenberg made discoveries from the survey boat, Johnson took to the water helping to document the suspected Great Ranger site, photographing and measuring features of the wreck that will help researchers continue studying it long after the expedition ended. “My heart skipped a beat,” said Johnson, a 2025 UTC graduate with degrees in anthropology and environmental science.”

Research continues in Chattanooga

The research continues in Chattanooga. Van Slyke’s students are transcribing additional HMS Swallow logbooks—the records kept aboard Capt. Ogle’s British warship after his defeat of Black Bart’s fleet—to compare historical accounts with discoveries made in Jamaica. 

Meanwhile, members of UTC’s Shipwreck Research Club digitised decades-old excavation notes to create the most complete map yet of the Port Royal site, placing hundreds of artefacts back into their original context. The students presented that work during this year’s UTC Spring Research and Arts Conference. 

The project drew support from UTC alum Vann Cunningham, who travelled to Jamaica with the team. The Vann Cunningham Internship Fund allowed UTC students to spend months transcribing 18th-century documents before the expedition, turning handwritten records into searchable data to narrow the survey area before the team ever entered the water. Cunningham’s support also helped cover logistics for the fieldwork in Jamaica.