1946-

American deep-sea explorer and treasure hunter whose discovery of the pirate ship Whydah in 1984 signaled the beginning of a celebrated career of underwater salvage. (Over 200,000 artifacts were recovered from the wreck.) In 1987 alone Clifford helped discover seven seventeenth- and eighteenth-century shipwrecks in the Indian Ocean. During the late 1980s his team made significant discoveries in New York's East River and Boston's inner harbor. Clifford also discovered up to 18 elaborate French warships and pirate vessels off Venezuela's coast (1998).