The Story of the World First Excavation of a Pirate Treasure Ship and the Man Who Found Her

When I saw this book at a garage sale for $.50, I added it to my growing library of “maybe someday” reads. To be certain, treasure hunting of any kind is right up my alley, but pirates? I’ve never really been a fan.

About this same time, though, I finally got my hands on a copy of E.M. Forester’s first Horatio Hornblower book, Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, and suddenly got a hankering for ocean-going tales. Watching those ancient British warships sail around the coasts of Gibraltar sort of got me in the mood for learning more about ships of the era. My vocabulary was beginning to stretch again with talks of “starboard” and “mainsails,” “jibs” and “poop” (the shipping kind), so in tandem with Hornblower and Clive Cussler’s The Sea Hunters, I ventured out into the shallows of Cape Cod alongside Barry Clifford and Paul Perry and enjoyed every minute of it.

This book is as much about the background processes of treasure hunting as it is about the hunt itself. Included in these processes are the following:

• The inspiration that gets the heart beating about a particular hunt
• The research necessary to begin and continue the hunt, research about people, places, time periods, and cultures
• The legal battles surrounding who gets to hunt and where
• The legal battles and incessant philosophical battles between professional archaeologists and the privateers who actually find the artifacts
• The preservation process of the artifacts uncovered
• The display of those artifacts and the storytelling involved
• And behind all this, the search for funding that never seems to be sufficient enough for the job at hand

Reading this book was like watching 10 seasons of The Curse of Oak Island, which I must admit I loved, with its obnoxious drama and all. As Clifford writes at one point at the end of the book, “I love the search for treasure as much as I love finding it.” (307) I fully agree, which is what makes a book like this so darn entertaining—and which is what makes long, hot days in a yard with my metal detector my favorite hours of summer.

It was a little surprising that Clifford struggled to find a consistent flow of funding for his multi-year expedition, seeing the folks with whom he tended to rub shoulders. It was Walter Cronkite, for example, whose offhanded challenge at a dinner party finally convinced Clifford to finally just go for the dig, come hell or high water (24). And it was J.F.K. Jr. who joined the actual hunt and excavation for a number of months. As the team was pulling up artifacts and silver coins, surely you’d think they’d have no trouble finding the funds to keep them going! But it was the seasons of failure that shattered the initial hopes of investors, so it seems clear that those with deep pockets demand results not merely the efforts it takes to approach those results. No wonder dealing with investors was among Clifford’s least favorite aspects of this adventure!

Throughout the book, he makes a number of interesting observations about the process of treasure hunting that I thought were insightful and worth noting. The following is a small selection of such insights.

Treasure Hunting Impacts Relationships:

I was obsessed with the Whydah. I thought about her day and night, and began to wonder if anything short of having a girlfriend could possibly be as damaging to my marriage as hunting for a sunken ship. I began to understand what Joseph Conrad meant when he said, “There are few things as powerful as treasure, once it fastens itself on the mind.” (47)

Sound Advice for the Professional Treasure Hunter:

Mel Fischer, perhaps the world’s best-known treasure hunter. One of the first pieces that he gave me was to “find a good lawyer and pay him on time.” It turned out to be the most sound advice I received from anyone for years to come. (54)

The True Value of Dug Treasure:

All our financial problems could have been solved if we were selling artifacts, but the fact was we could no more sell wide artifacts than we could body parts… They were like previous family heirlooms and were no more subject to sale than my mother’s wedding ring. (231)

Museums and Private Treasure Hunters:

[Pilgrim Monument Director, Clive Driver] wrote a letter that eloquently presented the other side of the story. “Objects come to museums in a myriad of ways and often by circuitous routes…Certain it is, however, that the majority of objects now in museums are there only because they were first found, identified, cared for, and preserved by private individuals. Moreover, few if any institutions can match the passion of the private collector, and overlook the central role of the private individual in the building of museum collections is a grave mistake.” (231-232)

History is the Goal of Treasure Hunting:

Understanding history is what the Whydah expedition is all about, and why we have spent so much time, effort, and money on the preservation and display of the artifacts we have retrieved. (307)

Apart from these, I was also fascinated by the 19-part “Pirate Constitution” that he prints for us (120-121) and the description of the Maritime Education and Research Center (MERC) that he and Ken Kinkor supposedly started (235). I’ve Googled that exact name and can’t find anything about it online, so perhaps it never went anywhere, but it reminds me of Clive Cussler‘s own National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA), a fictional branch of the government that he actually incorporated into a real-life treasure-hunting company. I’m happy with God’s call on my life as it is, but if He ever wanted me to pursue a different calling…

I loved this book. It’s an armchair-adventure where even the most tedious legal and financial aspects of become important shades of the whole treasure-hunting tapestry. I’m sure there’s documentaries out there that can deliver the same story in a fraction of the time, but for those who love to read, I can’t help but recommend this book.

©2023 E.T.