The Strange and Brief Life of a Young Pirate

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Stocking, fibula, and shoe from the recently identified remains. Barry L. Clifford hide caption

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Barry L. Clifford

Stocking, fibula, and shoe from the recently identified remains.

Barry L. Clifford

For almost 290 years, the remains of a young pirate-- a fibula, a silk stocking and a shoe -- remained unidentified. Anthropologists have now determined that the remains belong to John King, a 10 or 11-year-old boy believed to have been a pirate.

The remains were found on the wreck of the Whydah, a pirate ship which came to a watery end off the coast of Cape Cod in the 18th century.

Barry Clifford, an explorer with the Whydah Sea Lab and Learning Center in Provincetown, located the ship in 1984 and brought many of the artifacts he found to the surface. Clifford talks about the discovery and common misconceptions about the lives of pirates.