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Offline ChristianTopic starter
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« on: December 17, 2009, 06:30:44 am »
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The 200 Million Pirate Treasure Of La Buse
      



While his country is busy fending off proliferating Somali pirates, Seychellois history teacher John Cruise-Wilkins is tormented by one French pirate who died almost 300 years ago.

Cruise-Wilkins has spent much of his life, as did his father before him, dynamiting granite boulders, exploring caves and pumping water to find the treasure Olivier Levasseur is thought to have buried somewhere near his house in Bel Ombre, in the north of the Seychelles? main island of Mahe.

Standing near a rock just yards from his beachfront home where the ebbing turquoise sea laps at a keyhole-shaped marking his father found, the 51-year-old ponders his future strategy.

?We?ve used all kinds of machines and expensive equipment, ground-penetrating radars, but I think we need to go back to the old method. We need to get into this guy?s mind,? he says with a haunted gaze.

Known as La Buse ? French for buzzard, but whether the moniker was for the speed at which he flung himself on his prey or for his aquiline nose is not known ? Levasseur was driven from the Caribbean with scores of other buccaneers and corsairs in the early 18th century.

He eventually found new hunting grounds in the Indian Ocean, whose islands had not been settled yet but were already key stepping stones on Europe?s trade routes to east Asia.

La Buse and his associates, known as Taylor and England, formed an army of three ships and 750 men that ruled over the region?s waters for years but the big catch came in 1721 ? a crippled Portuguese ship anchored off Reunion island.

The Portuguese viceroy and archbishop of Goa were on board the Virgen del Cabo, as was a treasure of gold, diamonds and religious paraphernalia of prodigious value.

?Each pirate got a share of 42 diamonds and 5,000 guineas and it took three pirates to carry the golden cross of Goa,? said Cruise-Wilkins. ?They all went to Sainte-Marie island, shared out the booty and had great fun.?

The story was told by Taylor, who was later captured. Levasseur for his part went low, lost his bigger ship and is believed to have stayed in hiding in the Seychelles? main island of Mahe.

He failed to obtain an amnesty and was eventually lured onto the ship of a French captain posing as a trader and captured.

?My treasure for he who understands,? Levasseur is said to have uttered, tossing a scrap of parchment into the crowd with a rope around his neck, seconds before his hanging on Reunion island in July 1730.

La Buse?s last words preoccupy Cruise-Wilkins as he watches the sun set on the isle of Silhouette facing his seafront home and ponders the cryptogram.

?I can imagine the scene. This paper going up in the air, many former pirates in the crowd, all those hands reaching up for it and cutlasses being pulled on the first man to grab it,? he says.

Two centuries later, Levasseur?s clue ended up in the hands of a Seychellois lady called Rose Savy, who took a steamboat to Kenya in the 1920s and flew to France to have the document authenticated at the national library in Paris.

Cruise-Wilkins? father Reginald, a former demobbed Royal Navy elite marksmen who later made a name using his skills as a big game hunter among Kenya?s Maasai tribe, moved to the Seychelles and took up the treasure hunt.

?He had done code-breaking work with he British forces and he found references to Andromeda in Levasseur?s enigma,? Cruise-Wilkins explained.

Unlike the Somali pirates taking to the seas on rudimentary ships mainly out of economic desperation, the sea robbers who terrorised the world in the 16th and 17th century were Europeans often driven by a sense of rebellion against the political and religious establishment.

Levasseur himself was a Greek and Latin scholar apparently versed in free-masonry and Cruise-Wilkins believes he buried the bounty according to a complex riddle inspired by the 12 labours of Hercules.

?It?s amazing what these guys did, the passion,? Cruise-Wilkins marvels.

When he recounts how his father and himself went about following the trail of clues, John Cruise-Wilkins sounds like he is speed-reading the glossary of the latest novel by ?The Da Vinci Code? writer Dan Brown.

He reels off references to ?hermetism? and trigonometry and explains how a ?substitution cypher? led to the discoveries of the ?circumpunct? and the ?clavicle of Solomon? mentioned in La Buse?s masonic code.

So far the hunt has yielded little more than the gold ear ring found on one of three skeletons believed to be those of low-ranking pirates Levasseur had executed to keep the precious gold?s location secret.

But Cruise-Wilkins pursues his treasure with the excitement of a boy unwrapping his first pirate outfit, complete with eye-patch and hook, or reading about the infamous exploits of Jack Sparrow and Blackbeard.

Having poured much of his personal wealth into the excavations, the prospect of striking a treasure valued at more than 200 million dollars ? four times the accumulated ransoms paid to Somali pirates in 2008 ? is also attractive.

?According to the civil code here, there?s 50 percent for the finder, 50 percent to the landowner,? he says.

Cruise-Wilkins ? who says he is ten down, two to go in his Hercules? labours ? has turned away foreign ?piratologists? and treasure hunters who wanted access to all his research to lend their funds and expertise.

?But the truth is now I need funds to pay for permits, equipment and above all workforce. Levasseur had no fewer than 50 men to bury this treasure, right now I?m on my own.?
      

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« Last Edit: December 17, 2009, 08:19:01 am by Christian »
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Offline xavier
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« Reply #1 on: December 17, 2009, 05:06:32 pm »
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Hi Christian

Very interesting story but like you said this takes a hell of a lot of resources both manually and financially. We have the lost Kruger Rand over here well not lost but apparently hidden by one of Paul Kruger?s men OR was it? Any how they were never found. When I am done building my metal detector I will investigate and see what kind of info I can find out. One never knows the out come. :Smiley

Best regards
Xavier
 

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So many questions so little time

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« Reply #2 on: December 17, 2009, 07:03:39 pm »
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The fascinating story of a wonderful person
Thank you  Wink

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