Archaeologist Andrew J. (AJ) Van Slyke, a visiting lecturer at UTC, 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. This March, 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. Discovery Channel’s “Expedition Unknown” documented 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. The expedition focused on locating the long-lost ships of Bartholomew “Black Bart” Roberts, whose fleet disappeared after a hurricane struck the harbor 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 Jamaican partners and 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. Many of the discoveries began at UTC.
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 artifacts.
“We’re getting to discover and touch history for the first time and really prove a story—true or false—that was only written down in a couple of sentences centuries ago,” Van Slyke said.
Laufenberg and Johnson arrived in Jamaica after completing UTC’s Maritime Archaeological Field School, where they learned the same remote-sensing techniques used by professional underwater archaeologists. Before anyone entered the water, they spent days aboard the survey boat collecting sonar and marine magnetometer data across Kingston Harbour, searching for anomalies below the seafloor.
Their search 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 Capt. 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 harbor.
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.”
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.
“It’s the friendships and the partnerships all coming together to pull the cart in one direction,” Van Slyke said about the collaboration. “That’s what makes it beautiful as we’re getting to discover and touch history for the first time.”
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,” said 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 something we’d spent months researching. It was almost a little bit addicting.”
The wrecks were the first Laufenberg had ever discovered.
“I always had this vision of sitting on a boat with a shipwreck beneath me that I was studying,” he said. “When it came across the screen, I had that sense of ‘I’m doing it, I’m really doing it,’ way before I ever thought I would.”
One of those discoveries proved to be significant in an entirely different way.
The team identified the remains of HMS Aboukir, a British warship that had been blown apart in 1881 and had not been located since.
“Nobody had located or identified that ship since it was blown up—and then to correctly identify what ship it was,” Laufenberg said. “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.
She helped 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. “Oh my god, this is real. It’s this tiny piece of wood in a much bigger picture. A ‘whole is greater than the sum of its parts’ kind of experience.”
The experience confirmed that she had chosen the right career.
“Wow, this is my job,” Johnson said. “I’m practicing for the career I want to have forever.”
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 digitized decades-old excavation notes to create the most complete map yet of the Port Royal site, placing hundreds of artifacts back into their original context. The students presented that work during this year’s UTC Spring Research and Arts Conference.
“Science isn’t finished until it’s communicated,” Van Slyke said. “Everything we do is for the youth. We’re trying to have them see the world through different lenses and pay it forward by giving them meaningful work that’s bigger than us and showing them the beauty that’s inherent to an anthropological pursuit.”
The project drew support from UTC alum Vann Cunningham, who traveled to Jamaica with the team.
“I’ve been a scuba diver since 1968, my first year at the University of Chattanooga,” Cunningham said. “I spent more than 50 years diving shipwrecks around the world. When the opportunity arose to work with UTC’s team at Port Royal, ‘The Wickedest City in the Caribbean,’ I could not pass it up.”
The Vann Cunningham Internship Fund allowed UTC students to spend months transcribing 18th-century documents before the expedition, turning handwritten records into searchable data that helped narrow the survey area before the team ever entered the water. Cunningham’s support also helped cover logistics for the fieldwork in Jamaica.
“What first drew me to the project was simple,” he said. “UTC has built an underwater archaeology program that is working in places no one would expect a small undergraduate unit to reach. I wanted to see that work firsthand.”
After spending time with the students and researchers in Jamaica, Cunningham said he left even more convinced the program was worth supporting.
“UTC’s faculty are doing nationally significant archaeological work with limited resources, and I wanted to expand the students’ direct access to those opportunities,” he said. “Funding support turns a competitive grant or a television production into an expedition students can actually experience.”
The skills forged in Kingston Harbour traveled back home to Chattanooga.
After graduating, Johnson accepted a summer position as an interpretive park ranger at Harrison Bay State Park before beginning graduate school. During orientation, she learned that the former town of Harrison lies submerged beneath Chickamauga Lake just offshore.
“My interest was instantly piqued—a whole city underwater? I just got back from surveying an underwater city in Jamaica,” Johnson said. “I told my bosses, ‘This is what I went to school for, and I know the people who can help.’ They loved the idea and ran with it.”
In July, Van Slyke, Johnson and Laufenberg brought the same remote-sensing techniques they used in Jamaica to the submerged town of Old Harrison and the Cherokee-era community of Vann Town. Working from a canoe outfitted with survey equipment, the team began documenting roads, building foundations and other remnants hidden beneath Chickamauga Lake.
“We passed over a road that goes through the whole town, and we were surrounded by building foundations,” Johnson said.
Laufenberg said the Jamaica expedition sparked something bigger.
“Finding two shipwrecks like that lit a fire inside of me,” he said. “I’m looking for many more opportunities to do it again.”
He hopes other students see those opportunities as attainable.
“Nothing is really out of reach,” Laufenberg said. “You have to put in the work, you have to ask questions, you have to really fight for it. But if you truly want it, you can achieve it.”
Johnson agreed, pointing to the unglamorous parts as the most rewarding.
“Staring at a computer screen for hours,” Johnson said, “I ended up getting to learn the goings-on of a pirate hunter and his commander. It was a great and very rewarding experience.”
The full episode—“Sunken City of Pirates” (“Expedition Unknown,” Season 17, Episode 4)—is streaming now on Discovery Go. Featured alongside Van Slyke are Maritime Legacy Project archaeologists Joshua Marano, Matt Hanks and William Wilson.
Photos courtesy of Discovery Channel and AJ Van Slyke