Pirate Hunters: Treasure, Obsession, and the Search for a Legendary Pirate Ship by Robert Kurson

femur. He reached to move debris from the area, but when he got near the object, a cloud of sand and mud exploded near his hand, and a row of razor-sharp teeth lunged toward his face, knocking him backward and sending him sprawling. He regained his footing just in time to see his attacker, a four-foot barracuda, and that the fish had turned back to come at him again. Local legend had it that the barracuda in these parts were crazy, that they lost their minds by eating parrot fish infected with toxins—a disease called ciguatera—and that they would tear off a man’s face if given the chance. Mattera did not wish to test the legend now. Swinging the giant lens from his camera, he hit the barracuda in the nose and sent it torpedoing out of the wreck.
    “Sorry, buddy,” he said. “We were just looking for pirates.”
    Neither diver found human remains. Still, they searched the surrounding area for another two days in case the
Golden Fleece
lay nearby, but every mag hit they collected belonged to the ferryboat. By makinga few phone calls, they learned that a ferry had sunk in the area in the 1970s. Samaná officials were thankful to know of the discovery, as they’d never been able to find her. But it left the men nowhere to look. And no one knew what to do next.
    It made little sense to continue searching Samaná Bay to the west—they’d already strayed too far from Cayo Levantado. There was a mile or two of coastline to the east of the island, but it seemed impossible that Bannister would have gone there, so close to the battering weather of the open Atlantic and so easily seen by passing ships. Mattera had wished to avoid this moment, but he could put it off no longer. At the villa, he pulled Chatterton aside for a talk.
    He needed a break, he told his partner, not for a vacation or for clearing his head, but to take paying customers diving. The salvage business had become more expensive than either of them had imagined, draining thousands of dollars from their bank accounts every week. Boats, generators, electronics, fuel tanks, stomachs—all of it needed fixing or filling constantly, and it all cost a fortune here. Already, they’d had to replace the magnetometer cable three times, at a price of nearly four thousand dollars each. It cost more than seven hundred dollars a month just for the crew’s cell phone service and Internet access. Salt water was eating everything. It had been more than two years since Chatterton and Mattera had gone into business together. Combined, they’d spent nearly a million dollars between them. Neither had seen a dime in return.
    “Are you quitting?” Chatterton asked.
    “No,” Mattera said. “But we have to earn when we can. I’ve got clients who will pay good money to come here and dive with us. With you, I mean. You’re the attraction. You’re the brochure.”
    Chatterton shook his head.
    “We’re in a fight for our lives here. They can take Tracy’s lease any time. UNESCO is breathing down our asses. And we might have thieves trying to jump our claim as we speak. And you want to take tourists out to look at the pretty coral reefs?”
    “I don’t want to. I have to,” Mattera said. “It’s just a week, John. Smile, sign some books, tell stories. We need to do what we can.”
    —
    S AMANÁ B AY WAS BREATHTAKING when one didn’t need to find a pirate ship there. For a week, Chatterton and Mattera took a group of well-heeled Americans to dive the ferryboat they’d found, some sunken cannons in nearby Barco Perdido Shoals, even the
Tolosa
, one of the galleons Bowden had worked. Both men smiled and laughed, and Chatterton told thrilling stories about exploring the U-boat and
Titanic.
But whenever the partners could steal a moment away, they talked about where they might search next for the
Golden Fleece.
Neither could come up with an answer.
    When tourist week ended, the partners took their guests to dinner at Tony’s. The power went out, so the group ate in the