All language subtitles for Abandoned.Engineering.S06E01.The.Lost.Pirate.City.1080p.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-squalor_track3_[eng]

(Edgy music)

Tom ward (narrates):
A shocking relic

of a cruel cold war regime.

There's dormitories,

there's what looked
to be classrooms.

There's workshops,
it's a big mystery.

The eerie streets of
a sunken pirate city

in the Caribbean.

The harbour walls are
crumbling in to the sea

and the whole area
has been left to collapse.

An infamous plantation
in america's deep south.

There is a sense of foreboding

that something might
have happened here

that you can't quite
figure out what.

And a shadowy
subterranean complex

that helped win a war.

Looking at these doors,

never in your wildest dreams

could you imagine
what lies beyond.

Decaying relics and
ruins of lost worlds.

They were forged
by the passing years

and are now haunted by the past.

Their secrets are
waiting to be revealed.

In the middle of the adriatic
sea near the coast of Croatia

is an island few
holidaymakers dare to visit.

It's a moonscape, barren.

There are mountains of
rock piled up here, there,

it's a palette of
grey and white.

It's pretty barren,

there's not a lot of tree cover
for shade or for breaking the wind.

This is an island that is
not the least bit welcoming.

It is stark, it is
burned and it's dead.

Stretching up the hillside
is a series of stepped ruins,

really just the
outlines of walls.

If you look a
little more closely

you start noticing
some sinister elements.

As you see this place
surrounded by fencing,

machine gun posts
and barbed wire

and the mystery
kind of thickens.

This was a place built
for a dark purpose.

This is an island dedicated
to breaking the human spirit.

This is a place
designed to dehumanise.

What was this
settlement used for?

Who lived here and
were they being held

against their will?

This sterile rocky
outcrop is goli otok.

Local historian darko bavoljak
has spent many years exploring it.

This is an island where
paranoia and violence

reached their height.

The more you
investigate the island,

the more intriguing it becomes.

As you get closer there's,

you know, sleeping
quarters, there's an auditorium.

It's hard to know
what this place is.

There is no readily
apparent reason

why you would build
this semi industrial facility

on an island in the
middle of the sea.

Goli otok's isolated location is
key to understanding its past.

Because it's off the coast,
anything can happen out there,

the fate of the people
there will never be known.

Look at the bunkers.

This is a place that is
designed to be patrolled,

designed to be defended.

But it's not in any way clear

what was worth guarding
and patrolling here.

In fact, goli otok
was a brutal prison

which was sometimes
called the 'Croatian Alcatraz'.

The first prisoners arrived
on this island on July 9, 1949.

After that around 12,000
convicts passed through this place

and they built everything
that you can see here.

But why did someone go to
such lengths to build a prison

on this barren rock far out
to sea and way out of sight?

After the second world war,

goli otok was a part of
communist yugoslavia

which was then closely
aligned with Moscow.

But in 1949, the infamous
dictator Marshall josip tito

split yugoslavia away
from the Soviet union

and its leader, Joseph Stalin.

Not all yugoslavians
agreed with tito's decision.

Many wanted Soviet style
communism to remain.

But the ruthless
dictator had a harsh way

of dealing with dissenters.

Tito wants to be
able to take people

he thinks are loyal to Stalin
and make them disappear.

Tito's cold-blooded
pursuit of power

saw him turn upon
his own people.

He had thousands of
political prisoners rounded up

and sent here to the
prison on goli otok.

This is tito's gulag.

The buildings are
a stark reminder

of the immense paranoia of a
regime that didn't trust its own people.

They would spend years

living under the
harshest conditions,

huddling on this
limestone island

protected by a few blocks,
being worked nearly to death.

The punishing regime saw inmates

digging a huge
network of tunnels

and forced to construct
the very fortifications

that were keeping
them imprisoned.

There are more than
100 bunkers on this island.

Many were used to
stop prisoners escaping.

Those unfortunate
enough to end up here

were subjected to tito's
ruthless re-education

program,

a sinister operation that
turned progressively darker.

Here is a place that
was built, built up,

made almost brutally magnificent

in its ability to cause
people misery and pain

so that they would be compliant.

Yugoslavia's
notorious secret police

kept a close watch
on the whole thing.

Fear of being snatched away

and sent to goli otok
became part of Yugoslav life.

The psychological
trauma is immense.

Imagine being
literally disappeared,

being seized for crimes
you don't even know

you're being
accused of so quickly

and so secretly that even
your friends and family

don't know where you've gone.

None of those who
arrived at this prison

had actually
been tried in court.

They were simply arrested
and seized and sent here

and often on the slightest
pretext for just discussing

other communist
countries openly.

Sometimes people executed
their personal grudges

by informing upon people

that had not really
committed any political crimes.

They just wanted to see
them sent to goli otok.

The prison had a unique
way of maintaining discipline

among its inmates.

Although a small
number of senior officials

were placed in
charge of the gulag,

they weren't responsible
for keeping order.

The prison discipline
was actually carried out

in large part by the
inmates themselves.

So, when newcomers
arrived the older inmates

were forced to whip
them as they passed by.

Those who survived sometimes
Rose through the ranks

to meet out their
own form of brutality

as barrack supervisors.

The barrack supervisor was
the master of life and death,

he could order any prison
to viciously beat another.

These brutal conditions
created a kind of prison hierarchy

where prisoners were
encouraged to humiliate each other,

to inform on one another,
to beat one another.

Everybody was an informer,
everybody was an abuser,

everybody was violent,
and nobody felt safe.

About 600 died on
the island which means,

you know, thousands
returned to the mainland

after being broken
and re-educated

but those that came back,
they didn't dare say a word.

What were they afraid of?

What if someone
informed on them again

and they were
returned to goli otok?

These fears rippled through
Yugoslav society until 1989

when the fall of the Berlin wall
marked the beginning of the end

for the communist system.

Tito's gulag was closed down.

Today the crumbling
buildings of goli otok

are a haunting reminder

of tito's shocking
totalitarian regime.

All of us in the west,

we allowed ourselves to think

that unlike the other
communist dictatorships,

tito's dictatorship
was not founded

on brutality and prison camps.

Of course, we were wrong.

In the swampy wetlands
of Louisiana in the usa

lies a sprawling site with
an extraordinary story to tell.

It seems entirely otherworldly,

because you've got the bayou,

you've got the strange wildlife,

you've got snakes
crawling through the grass,

you've got crocodiles.

It's pretty forbidding.

In this landscape
not only do you have

the remains of buildings like
brick foundations barely exposed.

We also have existing structures,
very, very simple wooden structures,

simple cabins.

They are, you know,
placed one here in a field,

one a little bit further
away, one a bit further away.

These are very, very
basic living quarters,

very simple shacks
quickly thrown together

and barely hanging
together today.

These buildings
in Louisiana, usa,

and the abandoned machinery

that lies submerged in the
steaming swamps around them,

are clues about a murky history.

In the distance you can
see some kind of a crane

or an industrial facility.

And some other heavy equipment

lying around in a
state of disrepair.

So, it looks we're coming

upon basic agricultural
establishment

but for what exactly?

There is a sense of foreboding,

that something might
have happened here

but you can't quite
figure out what.

Who were the workers
that called this place home?

And how were their lives entwined
with the war that divided america?

This place is certainly a puzzle,
perhaps it has an industrial past?

A small train

and other assorted bits
of machinery rust away

in the humid southern climate.

But the cluster of shacks
and a deserted school

hint at a lost community.

Paul Leslie is a local
historian who has spent years

studying the history here.

I came here around 1977

and so I pretty much
discovered it then

and I was just
completely stunned

by the presence of
so many buildings.

It was like a time capsule.

The story begins with a product
that was in demand across the world,

sugar.

What we're seeing here
is a sugar plantation,

a kind of agriculture
that was very common

in the us in the 19th
century and before.

And sugar was
really an integral part

of the Louisiana economy

because it was the
ultimate cash crop.

This isn't just any
sugar plantation.

It's Laurel valley

and it was once one of
the largest plantations

in North America.

In the 1830s, a family by
the name of Tucker arrived

and took over this land

and began building
up the plantation.

But their ambition
came with a high price.

The Tucker family arrive
with a couple of dozen slaves.

Within 20 years they
have almost 170 slaves.

It's a phenomenally
large slave holding family.

The process of making
sugar was a really brutal one

and it was incredibly difficult
for the labourers involved.

At the heart of the
operation was the mill.

This is the old sugar mill.

It's built in the 1840s,

built with bricks that were made
on the plantation by the slaves.

And then assembled painstaking

something like 366,000
slave-made bricks.

The mill was operating
24 hours a day,

it never shut down
unless equipment broke.

A train would come
in from down below us.

It would have box cars

and they would stop
underneath the crane,

the crane would take
the cane, put it in a trough.

They'd wash the cane,
bring it in to the mill,

crush it and then
from then make sugar.

The working day was brutal.

The day here at Laurel
valley was one that started

at around 7:30 and
ended close to 8:00.

It wasn't an uncommon
thing to have people

ploughing in the
fields at night.

As far as the working
conditions they were hard,

the average life expectancy
was around 25 years of age.

This is slave labour in
some very difficult conditions

down here in the swamps
with mosquitoes and malaria

and the blazing sun,

so there was no easy
place to be a slave

but this was probably
one of the worst places.

Workers started
at very young age.

About eight, nine, ten.

Life as a slave was so harsh

that some couldn't bear to
bring a child into the world.

You have infamous
stories of mothers

deciding to commit infanticide

rather than subject
a child to slavery.

The deserted structures
at Laurel valley hint

at the cruelties
of day to day life.

Imagine living in these swamps
in one of these primitive houses,

no screens on the windows
to keep out the mosquitoes,

there were probably, you
know, five people to a room.

Very, very primitive
and difficult conditions.

But a violent series of events
would soon change america,

the tuckers and the
people they had enslaved.

The southerners,

they saw slavery as the
bedrock of their economy

and, you know, it's sort
of an economic nonsense

in a way because
it's been proven

over and over that slavery

was an inefficient
way to run anything.

And yet slavery had become so
entwined with southern culture.

Few families felt more strongly
about this than the tuckers.

In 1861 the civil war
broke out and in 1863,

Caleb Tucker left Laurel valley

and went off to join
the confederate army.

For a man like Caleb Tucker

who has considerable
slave holdings,

the notion of emancipating
his enslaved labour force

is akin to bankrupting himself.

After the union won the war,

Tucker's confederate background
was to have a catastrophic effect

on his plantation.

Local union authorities
exacted real retribution on him.

We know for a fact
that union authorities,

you know, plundered
the plantation,

so as a result the plantation

in the latter stages
of the civil war

really falls upon hard times.

Eventually the tuckers
sold the plantation

and the Laurel valley
slaves were set free.

But any hopes of a
better life soon vanished.

The period just
after the civil war

is really heartbreaking,

because there was
such an opportunity

to give these former slaves
some semblance of their rights.

They were on their
way to something

that looked like at least
a somewhat freer society

and somewhat more opportunity.

But this period of reconstruction
didn't last very long.

Racial hatred and low wages
meant that the working conditions

for the Laurel valley slaves
in Louisiana hardly improved.

In 1887, they
staged a mass strike

and an all-white militia
was sent to crush it.

They not only
tried to kill strikers,

they also end up
massacring black civilians,

black people who are in the town

and so historians don't
have a very strong sense

of exactly how many
blacks were killed

but it was dozens,

it was scores of
people being murdered,

being slaughtered.

The strikers had little
choice but to return to work

in the same sugar fields

and the plantation
began to thrive again.

A boom between 1890 and 1924

saw more building
and development.

They had huge cranes

for loading the cane
and loading the product.

They had miles
of railroad tracks,

they had to move
around a lot of material

and they were willing to
invest a lot in the infrastructure

to make that happen.

But the great depression

of the 1930s bought
economic disaster

to the sugar industry
and southern Louisiana.

Eventually the worker's
cabins became empty

and the sugar mill
closed for good.

Today Laurel
valley still stands.

The fields are still
used to grow sugar cane

but the slave houses
now lie deserted.

This particular site is a window

into a part of our history,

a part of world history

and as tragic as it is

it's also really
important to recognise it.

It's a story that
needs to be told.

Perched on a remote coastline
in the Scottish highlands

is a collection of buildings that
keep silent watch over the sea.

Up on the cliffs you're swept
away by the natural beauty.

But if you look down at your feet,
you'll find concrete foundations.

Man's been here

and he's created things
and then taken them away.

But that's not the only mystery
in these far away foothills.

Concealed in dense grassland

is a fascinating
doorway to the past.

If you don't know
what you're looking for,

you are never gonna
find it in this landscape.

You could just about
make out big steel doors

that appear to lead right
into the mountainside.

Never in your wildest dreams
could you imagine what lies beyond.

Whatever is there is too
secret to appear on local maps.

It's what you don't see
that's even more impressive

about this complex.

Secrecy was very, very
key to the entire operation.

What's there is enormous.

It's when you make a
noise that you realise

the scale of this place.

They represent six cathedrals
buried in the Scottish land.

Why go out of your way
to hide this huge facility?

And what is its connection
to the clifftop ruins?

The link between the
gateway in the woods

and the clifftop structures
begins two miles away

with some vast metal drums
in the town of invergordon.

You're looking at a
kind of industrial complex

and it's a very,
very important site.

You suddenly realise

there are these
massive round structures,

heading off as far
as the eye can see.

Rows and rows of these
rusting circular domes

stretch out in to the distance.

Military archaeologist
Allan kilpatrick

has made extensive
studies of the area.

The site is very impressive,

this engineering and the
quality of its engineering

is absolutely first rate.

It all dates back to
the early 20th century.

Built initially in 1913,

the fact that they're
still here today

having had no maintenance

for over 25 years
or there thereabouts,

still standing in an
amazing condition.

Inside these circular domes,

it's almost pitch
black and covered

in this almost powdery
white substance.

It's quite spooky.

The white powder
is organic material

which confirms that these
tanks have been empty for years.

But they were once filled

with the 20th
century's black gold, oil.

The largest of these
enormous steel tanks

is almost 120ft
high and 45ft wide.

The whole fuel depot once held

hundreds of thousands
of tonnes of oil.

You had 44 oil
tanks constructed,

each one of these tanks
contained 5,000 tonnes of fuel oil.

So, what happened to the oil

and what connects
it to the coastal ruins

and the dark secret
in the mountainside?

During the first world war

this was a key
royal Navy facility.

When you consider

the importance
of fuel to the Navy,

it's as important as
ammunition or guns.

No fuel, no fleet.

Invergordon sits
on the cromarty firth,

a deep island waterway
that leads out to the north sea.

Invergordon was really,
really important strategically,

that ships could slip in
under the cover of darkness,

fuel up and then disappear off.

Thanks to invergordon

the royal Navy was able
to make a huge contribution

to the victory over Germany.

But the clifftop structures
east of invergordon suggest

that the fuel depot
later came under threat.

These are the remains of
the north sutre coast battery.

Originally built in 1913,

by the start of the
second world war

it had been upgraded to
guard against the new threat

to the Navy's precious oil.

All this effort was
to try and protect it

from aerial attack

because aerial attack
was the major threat

to the royal Navy.

When Germany
invaded Norway in 1941,

it gained control of a coastline

that was within striking
distance of Scotland.

In February 1941,

a junkers 88 came
tearing in over invergordon.

It carried out a solo attack,
dropping two 500-pound bombs.

It collapsed tank 13,

spilling oil down the
adjacent railway line

and down in to the firth itself.

Tank 13 was never rebuilt so
now it is a gap in the tank farm.

The British had
foreseen the dangers

and for the previous four
years had been building a place

nearby to store even more fuel.

But there are no
signs of the site.

If you didn't know where
to locate this entrance,

you wouldn't know
this place even existed.

There is a door in
the mountainside

made out of
incredibly thick steel

and very firmly
bolted to the concrete.

Behind this unassuming
portal in to this hillside,

lies one of the finest
examples of civil engineering.

This is one of two tunnels

that lead into this
remote highland hillside,

500ft above invergordon.

It's only by venturing deeper

that the true nature of
the complex is revealed.

The access tunnel here
is over 220 metres long.

A few metres later

and the tunnel
seems to end entirely.

Once you get to the
end of that corridor,

you realise there is
another way forward

but it's through a much,
much smaller pipeline.

The staff would have to lie flat

on this wheeled board

that they'd then be
pushed through the pipes.

They would eventually
emerge into a monstrous void.

The space which is ahead of me

is vast, is the size,

in fact actually bigger,
than a mediaeval cathedral.

The sheer size
of this is 780ft long

by 30ft wide by 52ft high.

It really is an impressive
piece of engineering.

This is just one of
six tanks that make up

the inchindown
underground fuel depot.

The first was completed in 1941

and each one held 5.6
million gallons of fuel.

At more than 400ft below ground,

no German bomb could touch it.

A system of pumps and piping

carried the fuel
down to invergordon.

The fuel flowed down
four miles of pipes,

from the tanks down
to the naval base.

600 men were involved.

Massive amount of tunnelling,

a quarter of a
million cubic metres

of sandstone removed
from this facility.

This impressive
feat of engineering

would soon play a critical role

in the largest seaborne
invasion in history.

In world war ii,

this one facility can support

the fleet for a
considerable time.

And without bases like
this you have no royal Navy.

In 1944, many of the
vessels heading south

towards the beaches of
normandy for the d-day landings

refuelled here at invergordon.

It was a crucial part of
the naval infrastructure.

And it was critical to
the final allied victory

in the second world war.

After the war, the
world-class engineering

of the inchindown oil tanks

saw them continue to play
an important military role.

This facility was all
through the cold war,

a very, very important
and very secure site

for your fuel storage
for logistics for the Navy.

There were plans
to upgrade the site

for use by NATO

but these plans
were later abandoned

and in 2002 the site
was officially closed.

That is an incredible journey
and an amazing life span

for something that was
first constructed in 1941.

The vast inchindown oil tanks

continue to break
records to this very day,

including what's believed to be

the longest lasting
reverberation ever recorded.

It measured about 117
seconds of reverberance

before the sound
finally tailed to nothing.

In the south of Jamaica at
the mouth of Kingston harbour,

a windswept Caribbean
village hides a turbulent past.

It's a thin peninsula
stretching out into the sea.

You can see from the way
the wind whips the trees

that this is an exposed area.

A long building stretches
along the coastline.

The plaster is
peeling off the walls

and it's been battered
by the elements.

Scattered clues suggest
a military connection.

You've got imposing walls

and there's a tower
with some arches.

There's a huge courtyard

with strange wooden
shapes in the floor.

Turn a corner and
there's a line of cannons

in various states of disrepair.

Some rusting,

some looking as though
they're ready to fire.

Further exploration reveals that
something went seriously wrong.

You can see that
the whole building

has been upended on one
side, but remains perfectly intact.

What force could have
moved the entire structure?

The way the harbour walls
are crumbling into the sea

and the whole
place being so quiet,

there's a real sense that
something happened here

that we're not
getting the full picture,

that there's something
under the water.

How did the relics of
manmade structures

end up beneath the waves?

What was this
mysterious settlement?

An incongruous red brick fort
overshadows the sleepy harbour,

hinting that the focus here
has not always been on fishing.

This is a military space
but what period it is from

and what they are protecting
is not immediately apparent.

What was so worth defending
on the far-flung Jamaican coast?

This point is
right in the middle

of the Caribbean's
busiest trading routes

of the 17th century.

This meant money, and
money always needs defending.

This is port royal.

400 years ago,

this forgotten backwater was
the Jewel of the Caribbean.

Local archaeologist dorrick grey

explains how the English
snatched it from Spanish hands.

When the English
captured Jamaica in 1655,

one of the first things
they started to do

was to build a fort.

All it was, was a
stockade with wood

that the soldiers were
to defend the island.

And what is left of it is that
semi-circular you see there.

This was the first English
structure in Jamaica that was built.

The fort rapidly expanded

and so did the town and
port royal soon became

one of the most important
cities in the world.

When it was built this
town was bigger than Boston

and had more money
than all of London.

But this prize so far
from home wasn't easy

for the English to protect.

They then did something
incredibly risky and unusual.

They sent an open
invitation to the most lawless

and ruthless
criminals on the planet

to come and make
it their home, pirates.

The second half
of the 17th century

was the golden age for pirates

with as many as 5,000
at large on the oceans.

Port royal became their capital.

Were the abandoned structures
that litter port royal home

to these buccaneers?

Now just imagine these
were rowdy persons

and there were pirates
operating on behalf of the English.

It seems like a crazy idea

but it was a better the
devil you know move.

By getting these
libertarians on their side,

the British were asking them
to attack the Spanish ships,

thereby protecting their own
trade and diminishing their enemies.

Port royal flourished
under pirate rule,

eventually growing
into an outlaw town

of some 8,000 people.

The Caribbean was like the
wild west of the 17th century.

And port royal
was like dodge city.

It was said that
one in four buildings

in port royal was
a bar or a brothel.

This city was known
around the world

as the 'wicked' city.

Clues about the city's
fate lie beneath the waves.

There was something
far more menacing

on the horizon

that neither the British

nor their pirate army
could have foreseen.

The remains of abandoned
streets have been found

in the murky waters that
surround the pirate city

of port royal in the Caribbean.

And the holes in
the centuries-old wall

show where most
of it disappeared.

If you look you see three spaces

in the wall right here.

This, the largest one,

is where we have lime street.

Lime street was one of
the most important streets

in port royal.

Why did port royal
vanish below the waves?

A curious building
tilting precariously

in to Jamaica's soft Sandy rock

is proof of port royal's
unstable geology.

The building went
more than 15 degrees

into the ground.

So, they call it giddy house
because when you go inside

you are tilting to one side.

The Caribbean archipelago
is a geologically active area.

Jamaica sits exactly
where the Caribbean plate

and gonave microplate meet,

but they meet side by side in
what's called a transform fault

and this fault rubs
against each other

as things move

and that can cause violent
juddering and earthquakes,

but also some of
those earthquakes

can be quite shallow

and cause violent changes
on the earth's surface.

So, on 7 June, 1692, there
was a devastating earthquake.

13 acres of land sank
in to the sea immediately.

These heavy buildings
suddenly found themselves

not on solid sort
of Sandy substrate,

but on a liquid Sandy substrate.

What was solid land all
of a sudden becomes liquid

and things sink into it.

And as the earthquake stopped,

then the sand essentially
re-solidified itself

trapping the buildings
within it and even people.

2,000 people were
killed almost instantly,

another 3,000 died
later from disease.

But that was just the beginning.

The earthquake being coastal,

also created a Tsunami

and it's reported that the sea moved
about a mile away from the land

before then coming
crashing in with violent waves

that attack the city
from the seaward side.

This is fort James

and this was one
of a number of forts

that sank.

Fort James is about 25,
30 feet underwater now.

So, all of that area from
the old naval, coming out,

was once land.

A letter from a survivor said,

"we ran out of the house,

"where we saw all
people with hands lifted up,

"begging god's assistance."

The city can no longer
function, it was over.

Many believed
this was retribution.

All of the debauchery and sin

wiped off the earth
by god's wrath.

More than 1,000 acres of
port royal were destroyed.

The pirate capital never
returned to its riotous heyday.

But it was reborn
a century later.

One of britain's most
celebrated naval officers

was called in to service here.

In 1779, Horatio Nelson
was put in charge of 500 men

at fort Charles.

Admiral lord Nelson

did all he could to
prevent port royal

disappearing back in to the sea.

This naval hospital was
ingeniously designed

with large parts of the
building pre-assembled in britain

before being shipped
out to Jamaica.

The building itself is built,
it's on a raft foundation,

which means all of the columns
you see are tied to each other.

And it's like the
building itself is afloat.

And this is why for example,

it has been able to withstand
more than 17 major hurricanes.

In 1907, there was
another earthquake.

This earthquake was
really the sort of final nail

in the coffin

and after this most
people fled the town.

Mother nature had finally claimed
the once infamous pirate city,

consigning its nefarious secrets

to the depths of
Davy Jones's locker.

Marine excavation
takes time and Patience

and although there's been
a few digs over the years,

there's huge swathes of the city

that have yet to be explored

so who knows what treasures
still lie hidden beneath.

Now they lie abandoned,

but once they were
at the cutting edge

of engineering.

There are echoes from history
in these decaying structures.

They remind us
of terror and war,

but also of great innovation
and human endeavour.

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