FORMAT: MULTI-REGION What's this?In this Globe Trekker history special, presenter
Megan McCormick travels to
Colombia, Panama, Florida, and
The Bahamas, to learn about the galleons, treasure, and pirates of the Caribbean. She follows the route of 17th century Spanish galleons on their voyages to bring back gold from the New World, and discovers the stories and legends about the golden age of piracy and its treasures. We take a look at the treasure at stake and what still remains from that extraordinary era.
In 1492
Christopher Columbus quite literally put the Americas on the map. This milestone in history also sparked over 250 years of perilous treasure hunting and brutal competition with the English, the French, the Spanish, the Dutch and the Portuguese all vying for gold, silver and other riches. Galleons were sunk. Thousands were killed and up until the mid 1700s, it was the pirates who ruled the waves.
Megan's journey begins in
Panama and
Colombia where she visits the the
Museo del Oro (Gold Museum) in
Bogota - stashed with treasures from across the Americas, it's probably one Megan treks the most important gold museums in the world. She then explores the famous
Camino Real mule trail and traces the route the Spanish took to transport gold from
Peru to
Panama City and
Portobello on The Caribbean. In Cartagena she takes a tour of the forts and city walls built by the Spanish to protect their stolen gold, then takes a boat out to sea to visit the burial place of
Sir Francis Drake who died here in 1596. Drake was the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe - a national hero in England, he was known as "El Dragon" to the Spanish.
Next stop is
Port Royal in
Jamaica where Megan meets some interesting characters with a tale or two to tell about the life of pirates:
Captain Morgan,
Mary Reid, and
Anne Bonny. She can't resist sampling some typical pirate food and drink: boucan and "pirates poison" rum.
Then it's over to
The Bahamas where we learn about one of the most famous pirates of all,
Blackbeard. Megan ends her journey in
Florida with a spectacular scuba dive off the
Florida Keys where she witnesses the last remains of the famous Spanish galleon shipwrecks.
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