This is Dumbarton Rock, not too far away from the industrial powerhouse of Glasgow.

Once a giant of the shipping industry during the heyday of the British Empire.

Huge vessels from the Titanic to World War II destroyers once regularly came up these waters

on the western Isles of Scotland.

Into the Firth of Clyde, the deepest of Britain's coastal seas.

Today, since the decline of the shipping industry, this is one of the most deprived areas in the UK.

Though peripheral now, it hasn't always been that way.

In pre-modern times, Dumbarton has always been an especially sought-after strategic location.

An impressive fortress guarding the entrance to the River Levin,

where the salt water of the western seaways meets the crystal clear runoff from Loch Lomond to the north.

It is a commanding position, probably the best of the the crystal clear runoff from Loch Lomond to the north.

It is a commanding position, probably the best naturally occurring one in all of Britain.

For on the very edge of the coastal spit is an extinct volcano.

Untold eons ago, this peak, then unfathomably taller than it is now, spat its last dying breath, entering a new life as a ready-made fortress for an early British kingdom.

There's still a castle here today, the oldest in all of Scotland.

To say this place is ancient would be an understatement.

Its history stretches far back before the written word, into the dark mists of the Iron Age and before.

Later it was the site of a Roman settlement, perhaps a fortress of the long-lost province of Valentia,

on the very edge of the world.

But when Rome fell is when our history begins. For then, sometime in the murky 5th century,

as barbarian empires and mercenary kings took hold of the continent,

this place emerges into the written record as a pirate

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