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As a child, did you ever dream of finding buried treasure? I certainly did, but most of us outgrow these fantasies as we get older, stop wearing fairy wings, and lose our sense of wonder. But mine was recently rekindled. I was lounging on a pretty beach, palm trees swaying gently and the warm, clear water lapping at the snow-white coral sand, when I heard rumours of pirate treasure. So I got up, dusted the sand off my sunscreen-slathered shoulders and proceeded to organise a taxi to the other side of the island. In a desperate quest for a story, but – perhaps, just perhaps – also the actual treasure.
You know the old cliché of a ruthless pirate on his deathbed handing over the map to a fabulous fortune in buried treasure in some exotic palm-fringed location. Well, clichéd it might be, but it’s also true. It happened. The pirate in question was the avaricious, wildly narcissistic, one-eyed psychopath Olivier le Vasseur, better known as La Buze (‘the buzzard’). Born to a wealthy French family in 1688, he chose a life of seafaring, speculation and physical hardship over one of respectable and predictable bourgeois comfort. He joined the French navy, galloped through the ranks, and soon obtained a letter of marque – an awesomely handy document that made him a legal pirate, as long as he limited his ‘on-board duty-free shopping’ activities to France’s enemies. And it wasn’t long before he decided that legal piracy was not only the ultimate oxymoron, it was also a tad boring, and very, very limiting for a man who, like fellow pirate Black Bart, aspired to ‘a short life and a merry one.’ Or, as modern-day treasure hunter John Cruise Wilkins so eloquently puts it, ‘live like a king for five years, and then hang like a dog.’
Actually, La Buze died at a pretty ripe old age for a pirate – 42 – and then only because he was sufficiently stupid, or arrogant, to steal from his neighbours. He was hanged in July 1730 in Île Bourbon (now Réunion). And that’s where it gets kind of spooky. Looking like someone straight from central casting, with a black patch over one eye, and wearing a bright blue frock coat, he turned for a moment as he mounted the gallows – and made his stab at immortality. With unbowed head and bold voice, he shouted, as he tossed a small piece of parchment into the crowd, ‘My treasure to he who can understand’. Not like a dog, after all, but rather more like someone who was just taking time out from the game.
And that’s kind of where it stayed for nearly 200 years. But then – on a dark and stormy night (this is a pirate story, after all) – La Buze pressed replay. While the storm – one of the worst cyclones to ever hit the Seychelles – raged, the good people of Bel Ombre crawled under the covers, hoping the roofs would stay on their houses and that they would not be crushed by flying trees or other debris. By the time the sun rose again, it was all over, and the beleaguered islanders ventured outside to assess the damage. And when Rose Savy wandered down to the beach she knew so well … it was gone, and in its place was a sinister world of mythical beasts and wild, staring eyes. A nightmare conceived in madness, carved in stone, buried by time, and revealed by tempest. All the sand had been washed away, and the rocks that had been revealed did not look natural. They looked carved, constructed. Was that a woman? A siren? Surely that was a dog, and that was a horse. A turtle. That sinuous indentation – was it natural, or a carving of a snake?
It wasn’t long before the connection was made, and the locals were convinced that the crazy metaphorical fantasy the storm had revealed was the cryptic hiding place of La Buze’s treasure. And the treasure in question is not a insignificant one. Nine years before he died, La Buze had captured the Portuguese ship Vierge du Cap, which was carrying a vast hoard of gold, diamonds and other precious stones. Soon after that, he kind of slid under the radar for a few years, and the legend is now pretty well entrenched that he spent those years at Bel Ombre, burying his treasure and building a bizarre monument to his own greed and considerable ego.
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A few people tried to work out the cryptic coded message, which had by this time been copied out a number of times, and there was some desultory digging but, really, nothing happened until, in 1948, Reginald Cruise-Wilkins came to Mahé from Kenya to recuperate from a bout of malaria. He stayed near Bel Ombre, heard about the buried treasure in the pub – as one does – and started studying the clues. And – as one does – he became a tad, well, obsessed. He was supposed to be resting but he spent about 18 hours a day digging, walking and generally exploring the weird proto-theme park La Buze had created. He went back to Kenya, raised money to do a more systematic search, and returned confident that he would soon find the treasure.
It’s the archetypal adventure story – you find yourself in an exotic location, meet interesting people with mysterious clues and esoteric knowledge of fabulous treasure, and then give in to the moment. You quest. And, of course, in any classic adventure with somewhat Jungian overtones, you pass tests, survive perils and suffer setbacks until eventually you enter, as Joseph Campbell puts it, the ‘inmost cave’, where you undergo a symbolic death and re-emerge with the treasure, the elixir or the damsel (who should be no longer) in distress.
Well, Reginald lived that. He deciphered the clues pretty quickly once he realised they were written in Masonic pigpen code. And then he started measuring, digging and tromping all over the beach and mountainside. On two occasions, while deep in caves, both symbolic and physical, he nearly died in accidents – or were they booby traps? The search took over his life and, till his death in 1977, he continued to dig, to shore up tunnels, to pump out water, to build holding dams, to blast and – maybe most importantly – to excavate the twisted mind of the long-dead pirate. And, slowly, as he found more and more
clues, he started to get into La Buze’s head. Or was it the other way round? As Nietzche says, ‘If you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes back at you’.
The clues La Buze left were erudite to say the least. He was a wealthy, classically educated European, and thus well versed in Greek mythology, and he was a consummate seafarer so he knew the stars like most of us know the route from our office to our home. And the clues, once deciphered, made reference to the labours of Hercules, to Jason’s quest for the golden fleece, and to the signs of the zodiac.
Towards the end, Reginald had come to view the endeavour as more of an intellectual exercise than a search for wealth, and the treasure to be a treasure of the mind, not of metal. It was a backward sort of quest. First he found the location, then he got the clues, and then he had to work them out, peeling back the palimpsest of bizarre symbolism. Each discovery led, not to the treasure, but to another puzzle. Once, having reached an impasse, he dreamed of a red-haired pirate in a blue coat who showed him the next clue. The following morning, bright and early, he cut himself a coconut brush and scrubbed off the moss and lichen on the rock indicated in the dream. And, sure enough, there was the clue.
He refinanced the venture many times, and each time was so sure he was close to finding the mother lode. And that’s not as crazy as it seems. Possibly the most successful treasure hunter to date – Mel Fisher – had searched off the coast of Florida for the wreck of the Nuestra Señora de Atocha for 16 years, refinancing his dream over and over again, somehow persuading investors to believe in him. Every morning – for 16 years – he would wake up and say, ‘Today’s the day.’ And then he found it. The salvaged treasure was sold for more than US$ 400 million.
After the death of Reginald Cruise-Wilkins, his son, John, took over the search, and is still – well – questing. Times have changed, regulations have changed and bureaucracy can put more obstacles in the path of a treasure hunter than even the most bloody-minded hoarder can devise. Granted, they’re not exactly booby traps that threaten to crush you with huge rocks or drown you in sudden floods, but the financial constraints and red tape have put the endeavour on hold.
But, while John is committed to the search, he is, he says, “a practical dreamer.” He lives in the real world, and has a real job. Interestingly, that job is teaching history at the local school and, in the Seychelles, one week a year is dedicated to pirate history. “So,” he says, “I teach my own history. It’s a bit weird.” And when he’s not teaching, he is dealing with bureaucracy and looking for investment partners. So, if you’ve got a few pennies lying around gathering dust and not enough interest, and you fancy yourself a semiologist of note, or you’ve always dreamed of getting your hands dirty in some wild and outrageous pirate adventure, give John a call. He’d love to hear from you.
And what of La Buze? Is his wretched soul content in the knowledge that he lives on, as generation after generation searches for his treasure and, in the process, finds only his toxic mind?
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, and like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep. (William Shakespeare, The Tempest)
Not so crazy after all
Before you dismiss out of hand the possibility of finding a fabulous pirate hoard in the Indian Ocean, in 1916, a substantial treasure-trove was found on Pemba – believed to be that of a contemporary of La Buze, Bernadin L’Estang, better known as Butin. And, as recently as May 2015, Barry Clifford found, off the coast of Madagascar, the wreck of what he believes to be Captain Kidd’s treasure boat. So, hey, maybe not so crazy after all.
Contact Details
You can contact John on +248 258 0092, johncruisewilkins@hotmail.com
For more information about the archetypal hero, and to get an inkling about why the urge for adventure is so intrinsically human, read Joseph Campbell’s The hero with a thousand faces.
Even if you’re not interested in pirate loot, the Seychelles is a treasure of a destination, turn the page to read more on La Digue and the usual adventures it has to offer.
