>> RICHARD WIESE: There are almost 500 miles of ocean that stretch along the New England coast.

And those waters are full of treasures-- large and small.

In this episode, we meet lobsterman and photographer Joel Woods, who captures intimate portraits of a hidden world-- dramatic, gritty, and often poignant snapshots of life aboard a lobster boat.

>> That camera became a very quick way to let something out inside of me that was very powerful.

>> WIESE: Next, we set out along the coast of New Hampshire to celebrate local oysters with star chef Jeremy Sewall.

>> It's low impact on the environment, it's just a great way to farm seafood.

>> WIESE: And finally, we uncover the world's only authenticated pirate ship and reveal treasures that have never before been seen in public.

>> Last person to have held that in their hands was one of the pirates.

>> NARRATOR: So come along with us for a once-in-a-lifetime journey through New England as you've never experienced it before, a true insider's guide from the editors of Yankee magazine.

Join explorer and adventurer Richard Wiese, and Yankee senior food editor Amy Traverso, for behind-the-scenes access to the unique attractions that define this region.

It's the ultimate travel guide from the people who know it best.

Weekends with Yankee.

>> Major funding provided by: ♪ ♪ >> The Vermont Country Store, purveyors of the practical and hard-to-find, a family-owned tradition since 1946.

Merchandise and products from around the block, and around the world.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> ANNOUNCER: Family Tree magazine-- articles, podcasts, online courses, and webinar resources for discovering, preserving, and celebrating family history.

>> ANNOUNCER: Massachusetts is home to a lot of firsts-- the first public park in America; the first fried clams; the first university in America; the first basketball game.

What's first for you?

♪ ♪ >> WIESE: Rockport is one of Maine's hidden gems, a working town nestled between the better known seaside villages of Rockland and Camden.

It has one of the most beautiful harbors I have ever seen-- full of lobster boats, sailboats, and even kayaks.

I came here to find lobsterman Joel Woods, a self-taught photographer whose stunning portraits reveal the beauty and rigors of life at sea in a way I have never seen before.

>> Hey, guys.

>> Hey.

>> WIESE: Richard.

>> Ken.

>> WIESE: Hey, Ken.

>> How you doing?

>> WIESE: Nice to meet you.

>> Ralph, nice to meet you.

>> WIESE: Hey, Ralph.

Hey, Joel, good to see you.

>> Good to see you again.

>> WIESE: Yeah.

Wow, this is the real deal.

>> It is.

>> WIESE: You know, Rockport, Maine, this is like the epicenter of lobstering, huh?

>> Ready to see it?

>> WIESE: Yeah, absolutely.

>> Well, we'll get it fired up.

(engine starts) >> I tell you, if nothing else, man, this is a beautiful part of the planet.

♪ ♪ >> WIESE: Hey, Joel, so a lot of lobster guys I've met are multi-generational.

>> This is true.

>> WIESE: Multi-generational?

>> Absolutely not.

I'm the first, first generation fisherman-- that I know of, anyway.

First generation outside of Massachusetts since they immigrated from Ireland.

>> WIESE: And what brought you to do lobstering?

>> Being offshore, not knowing what you're making, being away from your family, being away from life.

All of that combined is... it's something that I can't live without.

Sometimes I hate it.

Sometimes I want to be as far away from it as possible, but this is what I do, this is all I know how to do.

Ready, man?

Get dirty.

>> WIESE: Okay.

>> Right, so you put these on first, that way they'll be on top.

Through, give it a little twist.

Back through like that.

>> WIESE: Right, okay.

I could see that lobstering is not for everybody.

What kind of breed of men are these?

>> The hard breed.

As a whole, they're good people.

As much as they carry grudges and hold feuds, or even as territorial as they may get, you know, they look out for each other.

Fishermen whose ancestors have chosen this, say they're born into it.

There's something about it that drew them to it.

And it's not a life for everybody.

Put it back on track?

>> Nope, we'll save it and we'll repack it next time.

>> WIESE: Okay, that's fine.

>> So expensive now with... >> Oh, I hear you, Ken, I hear you, man.

>> WIESE: It's a rough business.

>> It's a rowdy racket, man, for sure.

I mean not last year, the year before I had three friends, people I knew personally, die out to sea, you know.

And that's just me personally, never mind up and down the coast of people I don't know.

There's something about that freedom and that risk that is attractive.

The boredom of sitting in a cubicle, like I would just shrivel up and die.

♪ ♪ What you have is each one of these buoys that you see has one to three traps on them.

And three's the limit within state waters, which is out from land up to three miles.

And usually go through your string and then you move onto another area.

Usually a string is ten traps, you have five buoys.

So you haul a pair, or triple or a single, and then when you're done, you set it back.

>> WIESE: How many of these you gonna do a day?

>> Usually, 300, 350.

>> WIESE: That's a lot.

>> It is a lot.

I mean, guys who go hard will do four.

I fished with a guy for almost three seasons.

It's not uncommon to do all 800 in a day, you know.

>> WIESE: That's amazing.

>> You hear that holler and the trap gets in front of you, and it's just you've been doing it for so long that you just go fast.

(loud splash) >> WIESE: How did that come about?

>> It's always been there.

I grew up a very hard life.

I was on the streets when I was a kid, I kind of raised myself in a lot of ways.

And that sensitive side, that gentle side you learn to bury, because you have to be hard, you have to have that rough exterior.

That's why I chose fishing.

It was the biggest, baddest thing.

I had a huge chip on my shoulder.

And I tell you, these boats, everybody else on the boat's got a huge chip on their shoulder, too.

So you don't show that sensitive side, that gentle side, you know?

But the reason being drawn to alcohol and violence and fighting-- street fighting-- was not having an outlet.

When I was angry, I would get in a fight.

When I was sad I would get in a fight.

When I was, you know, confused I didn't know what to do, I'd get-- you know what I'm saying?

So that was the outlet, once you learn that there, you know, another outlet, that camera became a very, very quick way to let something out inside of me that was very strong and very powerful.

You know, it took a lot of work to bury that.

Once I got good at it, and I could actually get the shot that I saw, I could see shots for years and couldn't get my camera to, to, to do what I wanted it to do, to get what I saw in my head.

People see you in snippets, snapshots of your life.

It went from the alcohol abuse and getting arrested and going to jail, to not doing that anymore.

And then to see the transition, the amount of energy that was being wasted on that now being put toward something that was positive and healthy in my life, people could see the transition.

I'm scared to death of changing this, you know what I'm saying?

I don't want to...

I don't want to come home and have to send out prints, and then, have to go art shows, or gallery openings.

I want to go take pictures, man.

This is the only thing I have in my life that is pure and untouched.

I don't want to change it.

>> WIESE: From Maine we head down the coast to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, a fishing hub turned foodie destination along the beautiful New England seacoast.

Here is where Yankee food editor Amy Traverso introduced me to James Beard Award-winning chef Jeremy Sewall, whose restaurant, Row 34, takes the classic New England oyster bar and reworks it for the farm-to-table crowd.

In this case, the farm is actually a series of oyster beds off the New Hampshire coast.

In a bit, we'll cook up some oyster stew, but first, we need to get harvesting with one of Sewall's local oyster purveyors, Jay Baker, from Fat Dog Shellfish.

>> Hey, how you doing?

>> WIESE: I'm Richard.

>> I'm Jay.

My name is Jay Baker.

My wife and I are the owners of Fat Dog Shellfish Company.

We are a 12-acre oyster farm here in the Great Bay Estuary.

>> WIESE: And you've got to be Jeremy.

>> That's me.

Nice to meet you, Richard.

>> WIESE: One of the many Sewalls that inhabit the region.

>> There's a lot of us up here.

>> WIESE: What a day we have out here.

>> Planned the perfect day for you, so we got lucky.

>> WIESE: Thank you very much.

>> Come on board.

♪ ♪ >> My family are lobstermen.

My grandfather started lobstering in the 1930s out of York Harbor, and growing up, you know, we'd have these big family picnics and the table was covered with lobster, and I just thought that was the coolest thing and I wanted to be a lobsterman.

And then I went out lobstering one day in the winter and was cured instantly of ever wanting to be a lobsterman.

I thought it was a lot more fun to eat and cook them than it was to go out and catch them.

>> WIESE: Why are the oysters here special?

>> They are definitely a product of their environment.

So how salty the water is, how cold it is, all of those things go into the factor of, you know, size, shape, taste-- everything.

So any time you can take an oyster that's a little bit different, grown in a unique area, and the Great Bay is certainly that, it adds its own kind of personal character to the oyster.

Coastal towns all the way up and down both coasts are growing oysters, getting better at it.

It's low impact on the environment, it's a really sustainable source of protein.

It's just a great way to farm seafood.

>> So we use a long line system here.

So each of those lines represent a different year class of oyster.

So on this line we actually have our market oysters, and I thought I'd pull up a market cage and we can take a look at some oysters.

>> WIESE: Absolutely.

>> So this tray can hold about 1,500 market-size oysters.

The wholesale price ranges from 60 to 80 cents.

>> WIESE: So this represents $1,000?

>> There's a fair amount of money in this cage.

And when we're really busy, we're selling 5,000 to 6,000 oysters a week.

I love the biology of all this, I like to understand how the oyster grows, and just how they work.

That puzzle is what keeps me going.

Here they are.

>> WIESE: Terrific.

>> Really gorgeous oyster.

Beautiful shell, nice cup.

Want me to give you like shucking 101?

>> WIESE: Yeah.

>> Okay.

So cup side always down, because that's where the oyster and all the juice sits.

The hinge is right there in the back, so you just kind of go in and it's more finesse than force.

So as I'm pushing in, I'm kind of twisting.

And I'm in, and the oyster's open.

I just scrape up the right side on the top of the shell.

Pull that away clean.

And the oyster's just floating in the liquid in the cup there.

That one's for you.

>> WIESE: That is really tender.

You could definitely taste the salt in the water.

Every place is different.

Is there a high salt content in this water?

>> Very high here, yup.

>> WIESE: Yeah, I thought so.

And by throwing the shell back in the water, I'm actually seeding the water?

>> Yeah, you're gonna attract some wild oysters to sit on that shell.

So chuck away.

>> You want to try?

>> WIESE: Yeah.

>> I have a towel, you want to use a towel?

>> WIESE: Um... >> Or a glove?

>> Or a glove?

>> WIESE: You know, ye of so little faith.

>> Nicely done.

>> You've done it before.

>> WIESE: I have done this before.

Loosen it up.

Here, I'll let you have it.

>> It's rare that somebody shucks me an oyster.

I usually do the shucking.

Awesome.

>> WIESE: Nice, right?

>> Yeah, those are great.

>> WIESE: Jonathan Swift said the first man who ate an oyster was a brave man.

>> And a hungry one.

>> WIESE: And a hungry one, I think so.

So this is your place.

>> Yeah, this is Row 34 in Portsmouth.

>> TRAVERSO: Hey, so good to see you!

>> How are you?

>> TRAVERSO: I'm good!

>> Nice to see you.

>> TRAVERSO: Hey there, how are you?

>> We missed you out on the water this morning.

>> TRAVERSO: I know, I wish I could've gone, so how was it?

>> It was beautiful.

>> TRAVERSO: Really?

>> Perfect day to be out on the water.

>> TRAVERSO: Oh, my God, those look gorgeous.

So what are we gonna be doing with them today?

>> Let's go in the kitchen.

>> TRAVERSO: Yeah.

♪ ♪ >> WIESE: All right, this is where the magic happens.

>> Here it is, you're in the right spot.

>> TRAVERSO: I love getting a chance to watch you cook, this is really fun.

>> Well, I'm glad you like it.

(laughing) Today we're just gonna do a really simple oyster stew.

You know, it's fall, the leaves are turning, the oysters are plump from getting fat all summer.

So it's something a little heartier, but it's a perfect day for it.

>> TRAVERSO: The one thing I'm wondering about is the apple there.

I'm not used to seeing apples and oysters.

>> No, a little diced fresh local apple at the very end adds a nice sweet, tart flavor to the stew itself.

>> TRAVERSO: Nice.

>> I don't cook it in there, I just kind of put it over the top.

>> TRAVERSO: That's a great idea.

Okay, so where do we start?

>> I'm going to put a little butter in here, Richard, just don't let it burn.

>> WIESE: Okay, sure.

>> All we're gonna really do is cook some vegetables, and we don't want to cook them so much that everything gets mushy like maybe a traditional stew that you would think of.

>> TRAVERSO: Right.

>> Everything's kind of cooked together quickly.

>> TRAVERSO: Now, is this a dish that you've been making for a long time or is it...?

>> You know, yeah, different variations I've been making this for years.

And I always change it a little bit every year.

>> WIESE: While it's an honor to be in the kitchen, I think the honor should be given to Amy.

>> TRAVERSO: Oh boy!

>> You just... you just don't want me to yell at you?

>> WIESE: I don't want to be yelled at.

>> Okay, all right.

>> TRAVERSO: I get to cook in Jeremy's kitchen!

>> WIESE: I only work well with positive affirmation.

>> TRAVERSO: I've dreamed of this day for my whole life.

>> You got to dream bigger, Amy.

(laughter) So this is just a little bit of white wine.

>> TRAVERSO: Any kind of wine, like a lighter white?

>> A lighter bodied wine.

>> TRAVERSO: Yeah.

>> Nothing too strong like something really oaky or something really fruity would never really work.

Something a little more neutral.

>> TRAVERSO: Yeah, yeah.

All right, got some nice evaporation going on there.

>> Yeah, that's about perfect.

So then we're just gonna add a little bit of heavy cream.

So I can tell it's ready is when I can run my spatula across the bottom, and I can see the bottom.

>> TRAVERSO: Yeah, yeah.

>> So I know I'm about there, so we're gonna take it off the heat.

A little fresh pepper.

So we saved all the juice with the oysters.

And that's really important because all that juice has so much flavor.

>> TRAVERSO: Right.

>> We can add that back in, and once that's... all the oysters and the juice are in there, we don't want to really cook it too much.

We want to just get everything warm.

>> TRAVERSO: They get ruffly at the edges.

>> Yeah, you're just kind of gently poaching the oysters in the liquid, and all that stuff is gonna kind of come together.

A little bit of grilled sourdough.

And then we just spoon the oysters and all the vegetables and the cream and everything right over the top.

>> TRAVERSO: All right.

>> And then, what I love to do is to make it look pretty, some fennel tops and celery leaves.

>> TRAVERSO: Make it pretty, Jeremy!

>> That's my job-- it might not taste good.

Let's not forget, though, pièce de resistance for the stew here.

>> WIESE: Oh nice.

>> And these are just local apples.

They're so pretty, and so sweet and tart.

And leave the skin on and just a few over the top.

You guys ready?

>> TRAVERSO: I was born ready.

>> I'm gonna leave it to you.

>> TRAVERSO: Mmm!

I am so with you on that apple.

>> Yeah.

>> TRAVERSO: It really just, like, rounds out the dish.

>> And it tastes like fall.

>> TRAVERSO: That's so good!

>> WIESE: No, it doesn't taste like fall, it tastes like a little bit of heaven has fallen into the sea.

>> That's even better, yeah.

>> WIESE: Thank you not only for taking us in the kitchen, but, you know, you really shared a big slice of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to us.

Being out on the sea, being in the kitchen, doesn't get any better.

>> TRAVERSO: Yeah, thank you so much, Jeremy, it was great.

>> My pleasure, thank you guys for coming.

>> WIESE: I'm gonna keep eating.

>> Please do.

♪ ♪ >> WIESE: From Portsmouth, New Hampshire, we drive further down the coast to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where we discover the surprising history of pirates in New England.

Here we find the world's only authenticated pirate treasure.

Ay, matey!

From the 18th century galley ship Whydah, which sank off this coast in 1717.

It's an incredible tale of pirates, legends and a buried treasure of jewelry, coins, cannons and other artifacts.

And it was all discovered and dug up by my old friend Barry Clifford, who's going to bring us to his lab to get a sneak peek at some never-before-seen pirate booty.

Hey, Barry!

>> Hey, Richard, how are you?

>> WIESE: Good, good to see you.

>> Good to see you, man.

>> WIESE: This is impressive!

I was walking sort of along the beach, and I was trying to imagine what it would have been like 300 years ago when you did have pirate ships and slave ships and all sorts of other shenanigans going on offshore.

>> Yeah, no, it was... this was pirate central, and the place, you know, where we found the ship is called the "Graveyard of the North Atlantic."

There are over 3,000 ships wrecked there.

So when we first began looking for the ship, it was like really looking a needle in a haystack.

>> WIESE: So give me a description of the actual ship.

>> 100 feet, 120 feet long.

22, 24 feet wide.

Would have had like 26 guns onboard.

Could carry anywhere up to 600, 700 slaves.

This was big business in the 18th century.

>> WIESE: So how did the ship then end up here in Cape Cod?

>> This was one of the worst storms of record, and it was in April of 1717.

It drove the ship right up onto a sandbar, within probably 500, 600 feet from shore.

>> WIESE: Do you feel like you've found everything off of this ship?

>> No.

We've got so much more to go, it's scary.

>> WIESE: Really?

And you're only in 20 feet of water, what makes it so hard?

>> Because it's buried under the sand, and we're in this really dangerous place.

You know, we have to anchor very close to shore, we have to put seven anchors out.

Got a big surf that's always coming in, water's very cold.

>> WIESE: There's sharks there.

>> White sharks, yeah.

And the ship broke into pieces and spread out and broke up over a large area because of the storm that it was in.

So you have this scatter pattern of where the ship broke up and deposited artifacts.

If you threw an iron bar in the salt water and then threw 50 coins on top of the iron bar-- let's say the iron bar is that big-- any of those coins within the electrical field of that iron bar as it degradates are going to fuse into a lump like that.

>> WIESE: But how hard is it to pull these lumps apart?

>> It's not hard, it just takes time to do it correctly.

We have so much more to bring up and so many years and years of work ahead of us.

When you see our laboratory you'll know why.

This is Chris Macort.

>> WIESE: Hey, Chris, how are you?

You leave your glove on, leave your... oh, okay.

>> Nice to meet you.

>> WIESE: This looks like real coins right here that you're taking out.

>> Yeah, you can see here in the X-ray, all of those, what we call hot spots, are coins.

And the smaller hot spots are pieces of gold.

>> Right now I'm using a dental pick to carefully remove the concretion from underneath the coin, and I'm being very careful not to make contact with the coin.

But these picks are fantastic for getting the little tiny stones out.

And then what I'm going to use is a wooden pick like this, get underneath it to start loosening it.

Kind of like a loose tooth.

Yup.

And... so you can see it's starting to wiggle here.

Just being very careful.

Boom, there it is.

And I could clean that up a little bit so we can see some of the detail on there.

I just use a little baking soda and just a real soft brush.

We leave the patina on the coins, we don't polish them, we just let them be.

>> WIESE: I can handle it in my hands?

>> What's really fantastic is the last person to have held that in their hands or have seen that was one of the pirates from the Whydah.

>> WIESE: That's pretty extraordinary.

This is sort of like the tip of the iceberg.

I can't wait to see the lab where the other stuff is.

>> Oh yeah, no, get ready, you're gonna be shocked.

>> WIESE: Okay, shocked in a good way.

>> Yes.

>> WIESE: Okay.

>> Let's go.

>> WIESE: Okay.

>> This is our conservation warehouse where we work on material when we bring it back from the shipwreck.

>> WIESE: This place is huge.

I mean this is a massive amount of stuff.

>> It's a scary amount of stuff.

>> WIESE: Each one of these cannons was encrusted in all sorts of stuff?

>> Yeah, the cannons when we find them, this is a concretion.

And you can, this is a massive cannon, by the way, but it's also concreted with all of this material.

That square object is actually the gun door.

So when the cannon went through the side of the ship, it took out the gun door with it, and over a period of time, it fused to the cannon itself.

This pewter plate sticking out of the side of it.

This is the caboose that Henry David Thoreau described in his book Cape Cod.

>> WIESE: And a caboose being... >> This was a stove, the actual stove where you cooked.

The conservation process on this is gonna be really, really, really complicated because it weighs a couple thousand pounds, and this will be the first time since 2007 that we've brought this completely out of the water.

>> WIESE: And you say weighs a couple thousand... it weighs a ton?

>> Yeah, so you grab one end, I'll grab the other.

And but we'll bring it out of the water, and I want to look at it just to get an idea of what it might have been sitting on.

>> WIESE: Something tells me I don't want to stand underneath this.

>> I wouldn't get too close.

(motor whirring) >> WIESE: Oof... >> Watch out, Richard, stand back in case this thing decides to tip over.

Get back.

>> WIESE: Oh, okay.

>> This thing just moved.

>> WIESE: Your back wheel is going up a little.

>> Hold on, I got it.

>> WIESE: It's out of water.

Phew!

>> Don't get too close to this thing, okay?

This thing could tip over.

I haven't looked in here yet, so... yeah, there's something here.

See this?

It was gold flakes frozen into the back of that.

>> WIESE: I know they didn't have iPhones when you first pulled this out of the water.

>> (laughing): Yeah, that's right.

I want to set it down.

I don't trust it.

It's a lot of weight.

>> WIESE: If he doesn't trust it, believe me, I don't trust it.

(motor whirring) >> Okay, Richard, pull it towards you.

Okay?

>> WIESE: Barry, you got me a little nervous there.

(Barry chuckles) >> Welcome to my world.

It's too scary.

It was a little crooked, and I just didn't want it shifting and dropping, you know, and breaking.

So it's just... you know, it was fine.

>> WIESE: Your heart was going a little.

>> Eh.

>> WIESE: You and I have known each other quite a few years, and I have to admit, I learned more about pirates today going through your museum than I have in our entire friendship.

>> Yeah.

>> WIESE: And really, congratulations, Barry.

>> Thank you very much.

♪ ♪ >> NARRATOR: For exclusive video, recipes, travel ideas, tips from the editors, and access to the Weekends With Yankee digital magazine, go to weekendswithyankee.com and follow us on social media, @yankeemagazine.

Yankee magazine, the inspiration for the television series, provides recipes, feature articles, and the best of New England from the people who know it best.

Six issues for $10.

Call 1-800-221-8154. Credit cards accepted.

>> ANNOUNCER: Major funding provided by: ♪ ♪ >> ANNOUNCER: The Vermont Country Store, purveyors of the practical and hard-to-find, a family-owned tradition since 1946.

Merchandise and products from around the block and around the world.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> ANNOUNCER: Family Tree magazine-- articles, podcasts, online courses, and webinar resources for discovering, preserving, and celebrating family history.

>> ANNOUNCER: Massachusetts is home to a lot of firsts-- the first public park in America; the first fried clams; the first university in America; the first basketball game.

What's first for you?

>> That's herring.

>> WIESE: Herring, okay.

Yeah, herring.

(indistinct chatter) >> Yeah, so we have herring.

Herring is... it's a very abundant... >> WIESE: Herring as I said, yes.

>> You're absolutely correct, it is herring, well done.

>> People, like, oyster novices, like they'll try a cooked oyster to make sure they're... the flavor's okay, and then you can talk them into a raw one.

>> TRAVERSO: That's cool.

>> WIESE: It's a gateway shellfish.

(Amy laughs)