154
DECEMBER 2012
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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 104
WHEN I CATCHUPWITHHANSELMANN
on the water the next morning, he’s just
surfaced with two new artifacts from
the wreck: a sword fragment and a bar-
nacled horseshoe. He’s excited about the
first—Morgan and his men would have
come to the Chagres armed to the teeth.
The swordmakes sense. The horseshoe is
more problematic. The privateers didn’t
bring pack mules with them; they stole
what they needed along the way.
Hanselmann places the artifacts in
plastic bags and we drive to the Pacific
side of the country, crossing the Panama
Canal. Soon the Panama City skyline
comes into view; it looks
as big as Houston’s. We
crawl through the traffic
and finally arrive at the
Patronato Panamá Viejo
(
Old Panama Trust) in the
ancient part of the city,
where the artifacts will
become part of a major collection of
Hanselmann’s discoveries.
Waiting for us is Tómas Mendizábal, a
young Panamanian archaeologist who
is co-director of the Morgan project. He
takes me down to the basement, where
the fruits of Hanselmann’s labor are
submerged in large plastic tubs, with
thin red and blue wires snaking into the
water. “We’re extracting the salts,” says
Mendizábal, “because when the artifacts
dry, the salts crystallize and expand and
then,
poof
,
the artifacts split apart.”
I look down into the tubs and spot a big
17
th-century French cannon, along with
smaller guns whose English brands are
visible through the water. Hanselmann
pulled these guns off the riverbed two
years ago, from a site near the ship that
the archaeologists found. They’ve been
undergoing electrolysis ever since.
We know that before it became the
Sat-
isfaction
,
Morgan’s flagship was a French
sloop that had sailed the Caribbean Sea
under the name
Le Cerf Volant
.
The
pirates captured it and added four can-
nons to the ship’s gunnery, bringing the
total to 22. Spanish ships of the timemost
likely would have carried only Spanish-
made guns, so these British cannons were
probably Morgan’s. It really is a tremen-
dous find. The only other physical artifact
we have from the pirate captain is a comb
that resides in a Jamaican archive. These
iron weapons, however, are intimately
connected to who Morgan was.
“
When I heard that Fritz had found
the cannons, I thought,
Cool!
”
says the
boyishly enthusiastic Mendizábal. “We’ve
never had any material evidence that he
was here, except for Panamá Viejo.” That
is, the old city that Morgan burned down,
separate from the new city—now popu-
lated by skyscrapers—that was founded
a er the pirates le .
Mendizábal makes his living, in a way,
fromthebuccaneerking.Whensomeonein
PanamáViejowants to renovate abuilding,
they must first call in an archaeologist to
dig the site. Still, Mendizábal isn’tMorgan’s
biggest fan. “He was a criminal!” he says,
laughing. “Even if he had a huge impact on
all our lives, that’s what I believe.”
Hanselmann arrives and we examine
the horseshoe. It doesn’t fit with what
we know about the
Satisfaction
.
What’s
worse, it’s getting harder and harder to
ignore the 80 chests that were found at
the bo om of the ship in the Chagres. “If
I’mMorgan and I’mcoming into Panama,”
says Hanselmann, “I’m coming with an
empty ship. Sailing here with a full hold
doesn’tmake sense tome.” Pirates ofMor-
gan’s era saw their ships as getaway cars.
They wanted them to be fast and empty.
After further study, the verdict is
unavoidable: The cannons the teamfound
probably belonged to Morgan. The sword
did too. But the ship did not. Most likely,
it’s a Spanish vessel that sailed at about
the same time that Morgan was alive.
We retire to a bar in Panamá Viejo to
quietly consider the implications over
glasses of rum. “The ship isn’t Morgan’s,”
saysHanselmannfinally, “but it
is
apicture
of whatMorganwas facing. It’s his world.”
We nod. The
Satisfaction
is still out
there, somewhere in the Chagres River.
Nevertheless, the team has the cannons,
and Mendizábal is thinking about what
theywill mean to his countrymen. “Pana-
manians aren’t big on history—at all,” he
says. “Most 20-year-olds today don’t even
know who Noriega was! But ask any kid
in the street, any taxi driver, they know
Henry Morgan.” It’s a weird
twist, freighted with irony:
One of the best hopes of
sparking the locals’ inter-
est in Panama’s history is
the man who burned their
capital to the ground.
So long as the money
holds out, Hanselmann will continue his
quest. But whether or not he’s successful,
it’s clear that Morgan’s legacy goes well
beyond whatever may be waiting at the
bo omof the Chagres. He’s as alive as any
17
th-century pirate could expect to be, still
haunting thememories of Central Ameri-
cans, still serving as a sort of model for
adventurers like Captain Bryan, looking
for a way out of a humdrum life.
It’s se led: Henry Morgan lives. Or at
least his ghost. We raise our glasses—even
Mendizábal—and toast the old rogue.
STEPHAN TALTY
’
s latest book,
Agent Garbo:
The Brilliant, Eccentric Secret Agent Who
Tricked Hitler and Saved D-Day
,
tracks the
life of another fearless adventurer.
“
HEWAS A CRIMINAL!” SAYS ONE
ARCHAEOLOGIST, LAUGHING. “EVEN
IF HE HAD A HUGE IMPACT ON ALL
OUR LIVES, THAT’S WHAT I BELIEVE.”
