Pirate Hunters: Treasure, Obsession, and the Search for a Legendary Pirate Ship by Robert Kurson Page A
Authors: Robert Kurson
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dark, making sure to drink their Presidente Lights before the beer turned warm. Talk turned to a recent news event, one making international headlines.
In 2007, Odyssey Marine Exploration, a publicly traded salvage company, made one of the richest treasure scores of all time when it pulled half a billion dollars’ worth of silver coins from an early-nineteenth-century shipwreck off Gibraltar. Now, more than a year later, Spain was claiming the wreck, and demanding that the treasure be returned to the government. Odyssey contested, and the two parties were slugging it out in court. The case likely would determine the future of private treasure hunting.
One of the guests asked if Chatterton and Mattera were afraid a government might claim the
Golden Fleece.
Chatterton shook his head. That was the beauty of a pirate ship, he explained. She didn’t belong to any country. No government could claim her.
“So the treasure’s all yours?” one of the guests said.
“Might not be any treasure,” Mattera replied. “And besides, treasure’s not the point.”
Now the man looked confused.
“Treasure gets found all the time,” Mattera said. “But a Golden Age pirate ship? That’s once in a lifetime. That’s forever.”
—
T HE MEN COULDN ’ T WAIT to get back to the pirate search, but when they went to draw up a plan there was nowhere left to go. They’d surveyed every viable area near Cayo Levantado, dived every last magnetometer hit. For the first time since arriving in Samaná five months ago, the team was out of ideas.
For a week, no one did much more than clean the boat or organize the supply shed beneath the villa where they kept their equipment. In between chores, they wondered who among them might be the first to quit. They missed their homes, no one was making money, and they were being eaten alive by mosquitos while living on pizza and Frosted Flakes in the middle of nowhere. Chatterton’s wife, Carla, and Mattera’s fiancée, Carolina, began asking if the men might come home more often.
Chatterton and Mattera met at Fabio’s to discuss their next move. It had occurred to each of them, more than once, that things would be easier if they abandoned this pirate quest and went back to hunting treasure before UNESCO pulled the plug on salvors. Or, and they both hated to think this, they could even go back to their original lives, pre-partnership, while they still had enough money left to get a proper business started.
They ordered pizzas and ate mostly in silence, a Shakira video blaring on a crooked TV above them the only sound in the joint. But after a while they got to talking. What was the evidence that the pirate ship had sunk in twenty-four feet of water? And what was the evidence that it had happened at Cayo Levantado at all? Bowden seemed convinced of all that, but why? None of the research Mattera had gathered made mention of the island, only that the pirate ship had sunk in Samaná Bay. In all the time they’d been searching, they’d never questionedBowden’s assertion that the wreck was at the island—or any of his other information, for that matter. Chatterton took out his cell phone and called Bowden, and two days later he and Mattera were on a plane to Miami to talk to Bowden about what he really knew.
—
T HE THREE MEN MET for breakfast at a Denny’s in South Miami. Chatterton and Mattera got straight to the point. They needed to know why Bowden believed the
Golden Fleece
lay in twenty-four feet of water. And they needed to know why he thought it had sunk at Cayo Levantado.
“How much do you know about the real story of the
Concepción
?” Bowden asked.
The
Concepción
was one of the three fabled treasure galleons on which Bowden had built his reputation. He was famous for the years of painstaking and beautifully detailed salvage work he did on her remains, an effort
National Geographic
had chronicled in a lengthy article penned by Bowden himself.
“We know the basic story,”
In 2007, Odyssey Marine Exploration, a publicly traded salvage company, made one of the richest treasure scores of all time when it pulled half a billion dollars’ worth of silver coins from an early-nineteenth-century shipwreck off Gibraltar. Now, more than a year later, Spain was claiming the wreck, and demanding that the treasure be returned to the government. Odyssey contested, and the two parties were slugging it out in court. The case likely would determine the future of private treasure hunting.
One of the guests asked if Chatterton and Mattera were afraid a government might claim the
Golden Fleece.
Chatterton shook his head. That was the beauty of a pirate ship, he explained. She didn’t belong to any country. No government could claim her.
“So the treasure’s all yours?” one of the guests said.
“Might not be any treasure,” Mattera replied. “And besides, treasure’s not the point.”
Now the man looked confused.
“Treasure gets found all the time,” Mattera said. “But a Golden Age pirate ship? That’s once in a lifetime. That’s forever.”
—
T HE MEN COULDN ’ T WAIT to get back to the pirate search, but when they went to draw up a plan there was nowhere left to go. They’d surveyed every viable area near Cayo Levantado, dived every last magnetometer hit. For the first time since arriving in Samaná five months ago, the team was out of ideas.
For a week, no one did much more than clean the boat or organize the supply shed beneath the villa where they kept their equipment. In between chores, they wondered who among them might be the first to quit. They missed their homes, no one was making money, and they were being eaten alive by mosquitos while living on pizza and Frosted Flakes in the middle of nowhere. Chatterton’s wife, Carla, and Mattera’s fiancée, Carolina, began asking if the men might come home more often.
Chatterton and Mattera met at Fabio’s to discuss their next move. It had occurred to each of them, more than once, that things would be easier if they abandoned this pirate quest and went back to hunting treasure before UNESCO pulled the plug on salvors. Or, and they both hated to think this, they could even go back to their original lives, pre-partnership, while they still had enough money left to get a proper business started.
They ordered pizzas and ate mostly in silence, a Shakira video blaring on a crooked TV above them the only sound in the joint. But after a while they got to talking. What was the evidence that the pirate ship had sunk in twenty-four feet of water? And what was the evidence that it had happened at Cayo Levantado at all? Bowden seemed convinced of all that, but why? None of the research Mattera had gathered made mention of the island, only that the pirate ship had sunk in Samaná Bay. In all the time they’d been searching, they’d never questionedBowden’s assertion that the wreck was at the island—or any of his other information, for that matter. Chatterton took out his cell phone and called Bowden, and two days later he and Mattera were on a plane to Miami to talk to Bowden about what he really knew.
—
T HE THREE MEN MET for breakfast at a Denny’s in South Miami. Chatterton and Mattera got straight to the point. They needed to know why Bowden believed the
Golden Fleece
lay in twenty-four feet of water. And they needed to know why he thought it had sunk at Cayo Levantado.
“How much do you know about the real story of the
Concepción
?” Bowden asked.
The
Concepción
was one of the three fabled treasure galleons on which Bowden had built his reputation. He was famous for the years of painstaking and beautifully detailed salvage work he did on her remains, an effort
National Geographic
had chronicled in a lengthy article penned by Bowden himself.
“We know the basic story,”
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