Viking Silver Coins Discovered on Gotland


The treasure cache consists of silver coins, weighing a total of around 3 kilos. They were discovered by 20-year-old Edvin Svanborg and his 17-year-old brother Arvid, who were working in the grounds of their neighbour, artist Lars Jonsson.

"I just stumbled by chance across an Arab silver coin that was around 1,100 years old," Edvin Svanborg told news agency TT.

Svanborg says he is studying history, and recognized the coin as one that is commonly found on Gotland. He said he had seen pictures of similar coins in the past.

The brothers started looking for more coins, and quickly realised that they had found something very valuable. In quite a small space they found around 1,100 coins and a few bracelets. Most of the treasure was in good condition, although rabbits had left their mark on some of the coins.

This was the first time that the Svanborg brothers had found treasure, although Edvin said he hoped to find more in the future.

"I'm planning to study to become an archaeologist," he said.

The brothers are now likely to get a reward, after handing over the treasure to the authorities. It is so far unclear how much they will receive.

"But that's not the most important thing. The point is finding a treasure trove," Edvin said.

Majvor Östergren at Gotland county administrative board praised the brothers for handing in the treasure.

"They acted in an examplary fashion."

Gotland is an archaeologist's paradise, where there have been discoveries of a large number of Viking treasures. Farmer Björn Engström found the world's largest ever haul of Viking treasure on the north-eastern part of the island a few years ago.

The loot included coins, necklaces and other jewelry, which altogether contained 65 kilos of silver and 20 kilos of bronze. He was given 2.1 million kronor as a reward.
Source: thelocal. se

Treasure Valued at $10M Discovered in Sunken Pirate Ship Off Coast of Borneo


Not all the pirate news is bad these days. German newspaper Bild reports that Dresden-based treasure hunters have found riches in a pirate ship that sank off the coast of Borneo in 1806.
“At first, everything on the ocean floor looks encrusted and worthless. But when you hold the treasure in your hands, it’s an indescribable rush of adrenaline. You’re witness to times past,” expedition leader Martin Wenzel told Bild, according to German news website The Local.
Wenzel told Bild that divers have so far found 1.5 tonnes of silver coins, gold jewellery, cannons, crystal and porcelain in the wreck, The Local reports. The value of the coins alone is believed to be more than $10-million Cdn.
Over the past two years, Wenzel and his team searched 35 ship wrecks in the area but only two before now turned up anything of value.
The name of the pirate ship that finally paid off? Forbes. That should have been their first clue to its treasure.
Source: network. nationalpost. com

Shortly About Treasure Hunting


The search for sunken ships and underwater treasure is a standard plot line in Hollywood movies. In real life, the most successful treasure hunters aren’t a band of rough adventurers but companies, sometimes publicly traded, with smooth-talking CEOs. One such company, Odyssey Marine Exploration, is led by CEO Gregg Stemm, an individual who has earned notoriety in the underwater archaeological community by aggressively exploiting, some would say destroying, shipwrecks. Odyssey is currently embroiled in a legal dispute with the Spanish government over ownership of a sunken ship located some 180 miles west of Portugal in international waters. The discovery became public in May 2007 when Odyssey removed tons of coins from the wreck site to Florida.
Spain’s basic claim is that any ship flying the national flag belongs to the state and only the state has the right to recover the wreckage. The ship’s identity has not been established but it may be Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes, a Spanish ship blown up in 1804 by the British. On June 4, 2009 a judge in Florida ruled that the U.S. lacks jurisdiction over the case and the property should be returned to Spain. On this news, Bloomberg.com reported that Odyssey’s share price fell 43%.
Marine recovery is a challenging and expensive. Treasure hunters and salvagers aren’t just after any ships, though, they’re often after historical ships known to carry valuable cargo—archaeological artifacts and human remains whose recovery is a boon to scholars seeking to understand such ships, the people who sailed them, and the history of the seafaring. Sometimes such ships, like the Tang Dynasty wreck featured in the June issue of National Geographic, are discovered by accident, only later to be salvaged for treasure and sold. Like all good science, underwater archaeology is slow, painstaking work in the field followed by years of conversation and study in the lab. In this sense, the exploitation of ships like the Mercedes and the Tang Dynasty wreck for profit is incompatible with their long term study and management as cultural heritage.
Odyssey's struggle with Spain may very well continue. In the meantime, the treasure hunting and site destruction continues as well. National Geographic's audience should learn more about the need to protect underwater cultural heritage. You can start by downloading a copy of UNESCO’s colorful and informative brochure. Read it and let us know if it changes your mind about underwater archaeology, salvaging, or treasure hunting.
Source: blogs. ngm. com

Rare Treasure Plant Discovered in Sichuan's Tibetan Area


About 600 plants of Isoetes hypsophila, a first-level state-protected wild plant, have been found in nine places in Baiyu County, Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province.

It is the second time that Isoetes hypsophila has been seen in this area following its initial discovery here in 2006.

The subsistence of Isoetes hypsophila is greatly affected by the shrinking of wetlands, drought and biological competition. Each of the nine distribution places covers an area less than 100 sq m, and in some places, the number of Isoetes hypsophila is smaller than 30.

Researchers said that follow-up investigations aim to discover more about its distribution and habitat in order to better understand how to protect the species.

Isoetes hypsophila, the most precious species of the first-class state-protected Isoetes, only grows in alpine wetlands, marshlands and meadows, and by lakes at an altitude between 3,000 m and 4,400 m.

It has also been found in marshlands, wetlands and ponds in northwestern Yunnan Province and western Sichuan Province in China.
Source: xinhuanet. com

Man Finds Treasure, Can't Dig It


It's a mystery going back more than 140 years. Many have searched, but no one has found the millions of dollars in gold lost during the Civil War in Elk County.
Now, one treasure hunting team from Clearfield says it knows where the gold is.
The story dates back to around the battle of Gettysburg in 1863. According to legend, Abraham Lincoln ordered a gold shipment to help pay Union soldiers and the route for the shipment came right through Elk County.
The soldiers transporting the gold made it to Ridgway and St. Mary's, but after that they disappeared -- except for the wagon train's guide, a man known only as Conners.
"(Conners) was the guide of the whole expedition and when he made it into Huntingdon, he claimed he couldn't remember anything. He couldn't find the dead bodies; he couldn't find anything," said Dennis Parada, who runs Finders Keepers USA, a treasure hunting crew from Clearfield.
For years, treasure hunters have speculated about the fate of the gold shipment. The story has become a local legend and has been passed down from generation to generation. Some say a raiding party killed most of the soldiers escorting the gold. Parada, however, said he believes the gold's disappearance was part of an inside job.
"Conners ambushed and killed the rest of the guys -- and killed them off completely. He planned this whole thing from the Ridgway point of this trip," Parada said.
The gold shipment was originally worth around $2 million, but Parada estimates its value at around $30 million today.
Though many have searched for it without success, Parada said he finally knows where it is: near the Cameron County border around the village of Dents Run.
"This site is on the same mountain that the dead bodies were found. It's on the same mountain that the wagons were found; the location of the site is perfect. ... It seems so easy that if I had the wagon train and I was going to hide something, this site is perfect. I just wonder why nobody has got on to this before," he said.
After detector readings indicated that gold and iron were 6 feet below the site, Finders Keepers workers were ready to dig. But that's where things got complicated.
"The state doesn't want it dug up, that is basically where we're at. It appears they are stalling from every direction to prevent us in digging anything up. For what reason? Maybe -- at a later date -- so they can dig it up and claim part of it," he said.
Parada said the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources told him he will be arrested if he digs at the Dents Run site. Officials with the department's Bureau of Forestry said Parada isn't following the proper process.
"He could actually get a bond to do some specialized testing that wouldn't have any impact to the land itself. In other words he could do stakes, put out stakes and do testing with specialized equipment with radar that would go under the ground and give him a better idea of what's under there," said Jeanne Wambaugh of the bureau.
However, Parada said he has already found objects at the site including a bottle and a bullet that he says are from the Civil War. Bureau officials said the artifacts are from around World War I and said they need to see more evidence.
"If he would fulfill the bond and go ahead and do the testing and if there is something there, the ground will be dug up," Wambaugh said.
Parada said that would be too expensive because it would cost several thousand dollars for a bond and $500,000 to dig. For now, he said he will keep trying to get approval from the state to dig at the site.
"It's just sitting there until someone lets us do what we can," Parada said.
Parada said he has gone to federal officials asking for help in digging up the treasure, but he said they can't do anything until he proves the gold at the site is federal gold.
Stay with Channel 6 News and WJACTV.com for continuing coverage.
Source: wjactv. com

Man Discovers Treasure Using Google Earth


Some people log onto Google Earth and spy men sitting on the toilet. Others find buried treasures of a different kind.
At least that is the claim of Nathan Smith, a Los Angeles musician. Mr. Smith was noodling around on Google Earth one day, randomly examining parts of the Aransas Pass in Texas. Suddenly, his eyes darted to a shoeprint-shaped outline near Barketine Creek.
His suspicions and, presumably, his vast knowledge of history, were sufficiently aroused for him to believe that what he had found was the wreckage of a Spanish barquentine (think large boat with three or more masts) that supposedly met its final resting place south of Refugio, Texas, in 1822.
Mr. Smith scuttled off to consult a few experts and concluded the ship and its treasure was worth $3 billion. With all due promptness, he grabbed hold of a metal detector and drove all the way to the site. One small problem: the land appears to be part of a ranch owned by the late Morgan Dunn O'Connor.
You will feel palpitations in the deeper part of your throat to discover that this has all ended up in court. Mr. Smith's lawyers believe that the land beneath which the ship is submerged is navigable waterway. If they're right, U.S. law says the first person to find abandoned treasure gets first dibs on the spoils.
However, if the court decides it's land, then Mr. O'Connor's family gets first crack at the jewelry, trinkets and, um, those metal contraptions they hung recalcitrant sailors in.
The O'Connor family's lawyer, Ron Walker, was very forthright with ABC News: "It was offensive that somebody could go on Google Earth, look down, and see what they think is under the ground...and come in and say, I want to dig up your property. They have no proof anything is there and no experience."
Yes, but Mr. Smith has watched Nicolas Cage in National Treasure.
Please allow me to add some more characters to this wonderful tale of Google-eyed adventure, avarice, and advocacy.
The state of Texas also has lawyers. And they're pretty darn sure that there's no commercial waterway there. No, as far as they are concerned, if it's in water, it's in Texas's water. So the state has lodged its claim.
And, through all this, the precise location of the supposedly full vessel is being kept under wraps. (So come on, Google Earth obsessives, please find it for me. Perhaps we can stake a claim too.)
Next month, U.S. District Judge David Hittner will rule. In two months' time, Sean Penn will be asked to play Nathan Smith. With Billy Bob Thornton as Ron Walker. And, hey, how about Josh Brolin defending the state of Texas? I thought he played 43 rather well, didn't you?
Source: cnet. com

Fossils Discovered In Limestone Cave Southwest of Chicago


Remnants from a cave embedded in a limestone quarry southwest of Chicago have yielded a fossil trove that may influence the known history of north central Illinois some 310 million years ago. Initial research findings were presented April 12 by University of Illinois at Chicago earth and environmental sciences professor Roy Plotnick at a regional meeting of the Geological Society of America in Lawrence, Kan.
Plotnick's talk presents the broad strokes about what's in the cave and the research opportunities it affords. His research colleagues include Fabien Kenig, associate professor of earth and environmental sciences at UIC and Andrew Scott, professor of palaeobotany and coal geology at Royal Holloway University of London.
"What's really valuable about the cave is the level of preservation of the material," said Kenig. "We see charcoal that preserves biological features at the cellular level. Charcoal is an indication of fire burning ancient trees. The cave also beautifully preserved molecular indicators of these fires."
Plotnick and a group of students discovered the cave while on a class field trip about four years ago. It is revealed by darker color surrounded by the lighter limestone, and by the sand and mud containing fossilized material that choke the cave from bottom to top.
"Finding this was pure serendipity," said Plotnick. "We didn't go out looking for it, but after finding it we said, 'Wow, look at all of this!' The cave is basically a trap for sediment, and things get preserved that usually may not get preserved."
Findings include nearly-pristine plant spores, leaves and scorpion parts. Needles from a conifer were dated and discovered to be the oldest ever from North America. "The oldest conifers previously described are at least 2 million years younger," said Plotnick. The specimen is now in the collection of Chicago's Field Museum.
The scientists think that a shallow sea covering today's north central Illinois during the geological Ordovician period about 450 million years ago formed the limestone. The caves were eroded in the limestone at the beginning of the Pennsylvanian period, about 315 million years ago. Within a few million years, sand, mud and organic debris from plants and animals -- some burned and turned to charcoal -- washed into the cave through surface openings, where it remained preserved but not compacted since that time.
Fossil material the scientists analyzed corroborates earlier hypotheses that a change from wet to dry conditions, along with vegetation fires, took place in this region during this geological period. Plotnick said he and his colleagues have dated much of the organic material they found to be around 310 million years old.
The cave is in Illinois's Kendall County, about 10 miles north of the town of Morris. Owned by Central Limestone Company, the scientists are permitted to conduct field trips and excavate material from the cave usually on Sundays when there is no regular mining work.
The exposed area where the scientists work is more than 900 feet long and about 30 feet high. Area geologists have found evidence that the cave may snake under the region for miles.
"We could be sampling for years to come," said Plotnick. "There's just a tremendous amount of material."
www.sciencedaily.com

Ancient Treasure of Satricum Was Hidden in Bookshelf in Italy


Italian police have found the long-sought treasure of Satricum, consisting of more than 500 delicate miniature pots crafted about 2,600 years ago, in a farmers bookshelf.

According to a report in Discovery News, the treasure was discovered during a police investigation in the countryside near the village of Campoverde di Aprilia, some 25 miles south of Rome.

The archaeological squad of the Carabinieri police noticed suspicious mounds, which are typical of a dig, near a small lake known as Laghetto del Monsignore.

After spotting fragments of pottery in the soil, the Carabinieri placed the farmer who was working that land under investigation.

He told us that he had found just a few fragments. Given the fact that he had already violated the law by not reporting to authorities his finding, we did not believe him and searched his house. Indeed, we seized 500 well-preserved miniatures, the Carabinieri wrote in a report called Operation: Satricum.

Meticulously stored in a bookshelf in the farmers house, the miniature jars were made of Italo-Corinthian pottery and Etruscan bucchero pottery, a kind of ceramic made in the Etruscan region between the 7th and 5th centuries B.C.

They were thrown into the lake, which is fed by a perennial spring, as votive offers during ritual festivities.

The lake was basically an open votive deposit. The Latin-speaking people who lived there offered their ceramic artifacts to a deity probably connected to the spring. We believe that a 7th to 6th century B.C. sanctuary can be found at its bottom, said Stefano De Caro, director of archaeology at the Italian Culture Ministry.

Symbolic of storage and cooking vessels that were used in daily life, the miniature jars may have contained food, liquid offerings and perfumes that were dedicated to the lake deity.

The Laghetto del Monsignore is a most important open-air sanctuary where the Latin peoples living in the surrounding areas dedicated offerings from the early Iron Age onward, said Peter A.J. Attema, director of the Pontine Region Project and professor in classical and Mediterranean archaeology at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands.

It is of the utmost importance that the looted material be studied by specialists, and it is hoped that a regular excavation will be started to save what is left of this unique find, he added. (ANI)
Source: thaindian. com

Ancient Islamic Treasure Discovered on Funen


Ancient Islamic coins and silver jewellery were discovered in one of the biggest finds of its kind on Funen by a local man with a metal detector An amateur archaeologist hit the jackpot when he discovered a hidden cache of...
An amateur archaeologist hit the jackpot when he discovered a hidden cache of buried silver in a rural field on Funen earlier this year.
Odense City Museums has since taken advantage of the recent stretch of fine weather over the past few days to further unearth the unique and valuable Viking-age find.
So far, archaeologists have found 41 silver coins, a silver bracelet and half of a highly decorative Thor’s hammer. Most of the coins originate from the ancient Islamic times of the caliphs, while some are from the area covered by present-day Russia.
The bracelet and hammer are thought to be Scandinavian in design.
The find lay undiscovered in the field near Ringe for more than 1,000 years and museum curator Jesper Hansen said that is the biggest coin find of its kind on Funen.
Odense City Museums indicated that the foreign coins are ‘yet another sign of the vast connections and trading relations, which were an integral part of Scandinavia during the Viking age’.
It is likely that the treasure finder, Benny Pennerup, will receive a finder’s fee from the National Museum.
Source: jp. dk

$500 Million in Coins Discovered in a Shipwreck


Mystery over site of sunken vessel; could be richest shipwreck treasure ever
Deep-sea explorers said they have hauled up what could be the richest sunken treasure ever discovered: hundreds of thousands of colonial-era silver and gold coins worth an estimated $500 million from a shipwreck in the Atlantic Ocean.
A chartered cargo jet recently landed in the United States to unload hundreds of plastic containers packed with the 500,000 coins, which are expected to fetch an average of $1,000 each from collectors and investors.
“For this colonial era, I think [the find] is unprecedented,” said rare coin expert Nick Bruyer, who was contracted by Tampa-based Odyssey Marine Exploration to examine a batch of coins from the wreck. “I don’t know of anything equal or comparable to it.”
Citing security concerns, the company declined to release any details about the ship or the wreck site.
Company co-founder Greg Stemm said a formal announcement will come later, but court records indicate the coins might have come from the wreck of a 17th-century merchant ship found off southwestern England.
Because the shipwreck was found in an area where many colonial-era vessels went down, the company is still uncertain about its nationality, size and age, Stemm said, although evidence points to a specific known shipwreck.
The site is beyond the territorial waters or legal jurisdiction of any country, he said.
“Rather than a shout of glee, it’s more being able to exhale for the first time in a long time,” Stemm said of the haul, by far the biggest in Odyssey’s 13-year history.
He would not say if the loot was taken from the same wreck site near the English Channel that Odyssey recently petitioned a federal court for permission to salvage.
In seeking exclusive rights to that site, an Odyssey attorney told a federal judge last fall that the company likely had found the remains of a 17th-century merchant vessel that sank with valuable cargo aboard, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) off the southwestern tip of England. A judge granted those rights.
In keeping with the secretive nature of the project dubbed “Black Swan,” Odyssey also is not discussing details of the coins, such as their type, denomination or country of origin.
Bruyer said he observed a wide variety of coins that probably were never circulated. He said the currency was in much better condition than artifacts yielded by most shipwrecks of a similar age.
The coins — mostly silver pieces — could fetch several hundred to several thousand dollars each, with some possibly commanding much more, he said.
Value is determined by rarity, condition and the story behind them.
Other experts said the condition and value of the coins could vary so much that the price estimate was little more than an educated guess.
“It’s absolutely impossible to accurately determine the value without knowing the contents and the condition of the retrieved coins. It’s like trying to appraise a house or a car over the phone,” said Donn Pearlman, a rare coin expert and spokesman for the Professional Numismatists Guild.
Experts said that controlled release of the coins into the market along with aggressive marketing should keep prices at a premium.
The richest-ever shipwreck haul was yielded by the Spanish galleon Nuestra Senora de Atocha, which sank in a hurricane off the Florida Keys in 1622. Treasure-hunting pioneer Mel Fisher found it in 1985, retrieving a reported $400 million in coins and other loot.
Odyssey likely will return to the same spot for more coins and artifacts.
“We have treated this site with kid gloves, and the archaeological work done by our team out there is unsurpassed,” Odyssey CEO John Morris said. “We are thoroughly documenting and recording the site, which we believe will have immense historical significance.”
The company salvaged more than 50,000 coins and other artifacts from the wreck of the SS Republic off Savannah, Ga., in 2003, making millions. But Odyssey posted losses in 2005 and 2006 while using its state-of-the-art ships and deep-water robotic equipment to hunt for the next mother lode.
“The outside world now understands that what we do is a real business and is repeatable and not just a lucky one-shot deal,” Stemm said.
Other sunken treasures
In January, Odyssey won permission from the Spanish government to resume a suspended search for the wreck of the HMS Sussex, which was leading a British fleet into the Mediterranean Sea for a war against France in 1694 when it sank in a storm off Gibraltar.
Historians believe the 157-foot warship was carrying nine tons of gold coins to buy the loyalty of the Duke of Savoy, a potential ally in southeastern France. Odyssey believes those coins could also fetch more than $500 million.
But under the terms of an agreement, Odyssey will have to share any finds with the British government. The company will get 80 percent of the first $45 million and about 50 percent of the proceeds thereafter.
Odyssey also is seeking exclusive rights to what is believed to be an Italian-registered passenger vessel that sank during World War I in the Mediterranean Sea east of Sardinia, and to another discovered in the Mediterranean about 100 miles west of Gibraltar.
Source: msnbc. msn. com

18th Century Amber Room Discovered by German Treasure Hunters


Has the Amber Room, the 18th-century chamber decoration the Nazis stole from the Soviet Union in World War II, finally been found? German treasure hunters say they may have solved the decades-old mystery.

Treasure hunters in Germany claim they have found hidden gold in an underground cavern that they are almost certain contains the Amber Room treasure, believed by some to have been stashed away by the Nazis in a secret mission in the dying days of World War II.

The discovery of an estimated two tonnes of gold was made at the weekend when electromagnetic pulse measurements located the man-made cavern 20 meters underground near the village of Deutschneudorf on Germany's border with the Czech Republic.

The team, which used heavy digging equipment, hasn't been inside the room but analysis of the electromagnetic test has led it to believe that the cavern contains gold.

"I'm well over 90 percent sure we have found the Amber Room," the mayor of Deutschneudorf, Heinz-Peter Haustein, who led the search, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "The chamber is likely to be part of a labyrinth of storage rooms that the Nazis built here. I knew it was in this area. I just never knew exactly where."

Haustein, 53, is a member of Germany's federal parliament for the opposition liberal Free Democrats and has been searching for the Amber Room in the Ore Mountain region of eastern Germany for a decade.

"A friend told me before he died that the Nazis sent truckloads and trainloads of valuables to this area throughout the spring of 1945," he said. The excavation site is next to a long-abandoned railway station.

He said the coordinates for the chamber had come from fellow treasure hunter Christian Hanisch, who had found them when he was going through the documents of his father, a Luftwaffe signaller, after he died in October.

"There was a note written next to the coordinates that the site contained Nazi party gold in 12-kilo bars. If the gold is there, the Amber Room will be too," said Haustein. He said he had dug in exactly the same spot a year ago but had not conducted any electromagnetic tests that time.

Haustein said it would probably take him until Easter to get into the chamber because it may contain booby traps and has to be secured by explosives experts and engineers.

"This has got too risky for us to do it alone. There could be mines down there." He said the regional authorities had agreed to help with the excavation.

The Amber Room, made of amber panels backed with gold leaf, was created by German and Russian craftsmen in the early 18th century and given by Prussia's King Friedrich Wilhelm I to his Russian ally Czar Peter the Great in 1716.

In October 1941, four months after the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, they disassembled it from the Catherine Palace near what was then Leningrad and brought it to East Prussia, to Königsberg -- now the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. Part of it was exhibited in Königsberg Castle during the war. It disappeared in 1945.
There have been hundreds of theories about its fate. Some historians claim it was destroyed in bombing raids on Königsberg, others that it was lost at sea.

Over the years, various searches have failed to uncover it. Haustein said he had received many leads over the years that the Amber Room was hidden in crates along with a trove of other treasures somewhere in the network of copper, tin and silver mines of the Ore Mountains along what is now the German-Czech border.

He has spent tens of thousands of euros of his own money on the hunt.

"If we find the treasure it will probably be declared the property of the Federal Republic of Germany as legal successor to the Third Reich," said Haustein.

"It would be good if the state could hand it over to the Russians without preconditions and if the Russians could then hand over the art they looted from Germany. That would be a sign of national reconciliation. That's my goal."

Haustein he had received hundreds of emails since the find had become public, including some from Chile, Argentina and Bolivia, where many Nazis fled after the war.

One email he received on Tuesday contained a claim far-fetched enough to be amusing. "It said that the Nazis burnt a doppelgänger of Hitler outside the Berlin bunker and that the body of the real Hitler was buried with the Amber Room," Haustein says. "So who knows what else we may find?"
Source: spiegel. de

Pirate's Treasure Buried in the Connecticut River


Clarke's Island, which lies in the Connecticut River in Northfield, Massachusetts, just off the upper end of Pine Meadow, has a legend attached to it. According to Temple and Sheldon (1875), the story goes this way: Captain Kidd and his men ascended the Connecticut River searching for a place to bury a treasure of gold, somewhere secluded but distinctive. They buried the chest of gold and drew lots to see which of their number would be killed so that his body could be left on top of the chest to protect it from all treasure hunters. Over the years a legend grew up around the treasure - the gold could be dug up only by three people at midnight when the full moon was directly overhead. They must form a triangle around the exact spot and work in absolute silence, words would break the charm!

In the early 19th century, Abner Field and two of his friends attempted to find the treasure by following the directions exactly. At midnight, under a full moon shining directly on them, they sweated and dug, silently. Shovelful by shovelful, they dug deeper and deeper. The sweat poured off their bodies even in the chill night air. The mosquitoes swarmed around, biting, but the three men were afraid to kill them for fear the sound would break the charm. Any amount of discomfort could be tolerated in order to find the buried treasure chest. Suddenly there was the echoing sound of crow-bar striking against iron. Just as the men saw a corner of the chest emerge from the dirt, someone exclaimed,"You've hit it!" and the trio of treasure hunters watched in consternation as the chest immediately began to sink out of reach.

Who was Captain Kidd, where did he get this chest of gold and why was he trying to bury it on an island in the Connecticut River? To answer some of these questions, we must go back to the Age of Piracy.

After 1492, Spain claimed all of the territory "discovered" by Christopher Columbus. During the next two centuries, England, France and The Netherlands would try to gain a foothold in the West Indies in order to share in the vast wealth found there. These nations employed every possible means to obtain their objectives, e.g. officially sanctioned wars during which the privateering commission (letter of marque) allowed privately owned ships to attack enemy vessels or, in peace time, the letter of reprisal that could be used to attack ships of a former enemy in order to recover any commercial losses incurred in an earlier war. The line between officially sanctioned acts and actual piracy was always a fine one. Were you a legitimate privateer or a pirate when a corrupt government employee on an obscure island in the Caribbean gave you a commission to sail and then claimed a share of the captured goods? Were you legitimate or a pirate when commissioned by local merchants and government officials who invested in your voyage and took their share of the profits from that voyage? Were you legitimate when Queen Elizabeth I of England sanctioned your voyage as she did Francis Drake's and then took a share of the loot brought home? Because the profits to be made were so large, central governments so weak and greed and corruption so rampant during this period, it was very difficult to control the situation. Actions that were condoned by one group were often looked on as illegal by another.

Unlike Jean Fleury, Sir Francis Drake or Sir Henry Morgan who sailed when governments sanctioned acts of piracy and, more frequently than not, benefitted economically from such acts, William Kidd sailed in the last quarter of the 17th century at a time when governments and investors were no longer willing to condone the unruly actions of a few rogues but preferred to invest in regular, organized commerce. In other words, governments and investors now had more to gain through established trade than through acts of piracy. It was William Kidd's misfortune to sail the seas as a privateer/pirate just when the rules changed and the privateer/pirate became an outlaw. But William Kidd could not know any of this when he began his life upon the sea.

Before 1689, Kidd was a member of various buccaneer crews and eventually captained a privateer ship that was commissioned to protect the English colonies in the Caribbean against French attacks. He soon learned that patronage (i.e. making friends with influential men who could help him) was the best method of advancement. For the next half dozen years Kidd was in New York (a haven for pirates) doing favors for, and accepting favors from, powerful friends. In 1695 he set sail for England, hoping to obtain a royal commission as a privateer. He took part in a plan to capture some pirates who had sailed to the Red Sea and to bring their loot to England where the investors (who included King William) would divide it among themselves. Little did he know that he had made a fatal mistake!

Kidd sailed aboard the Adventure Galley, which resembled the ship pictured here, leaving London in April, 1696, bound for New York City and then on to the Red Sea in August. The hunt was on and any ship belonging to a country at war with England was fair game. Sailing with the prevailing winds, Kidd headed south and west until he could pick up the southeast trade winds near the equator. By mid December, the Adventure Galley was in the South Atlantic, wallowing in a dense fog. Suddenly the mist cleared and Kidd found himself in the middle of a Royal Navy Squadron out of England and in desperate need of new sailors to replace those lost to scurvy during their voyage. By law, the Royal Navy had the right to take half the men from any ship flying an English flag. Captain Kidd knew that his voyage could not continue if this happened so in the still of a windless night, he had his ship rowed away from the squadron. Because Kidd left in such a stealthy manner, the captains of the Navy ships were convinced he was up to no good. They spread the word that he was a pirate when they landed in Africa. Now fighting scurvy on his own ship and desperately in need of fresh food and water, Kidd rounded the Cape of Good Hope, unable to land because the Royal Navy Squadron was bound there. Instead he headed for Madagascar, the haven for pirates in the Indian Ocean which lay another 2,000 miles to the northeast, and landed there in late January, 1697. All the ships of commerce in the East Indies were available to Kidd and his crew. The race was on: could they capture enough ships to make the voyage worthwhile before succumbing to the ever present dangers of disease and a rotting ship. So William Kidd made the decision to go to the Red Sea to capture one of the ships bearing rich pilgrims going to Mecca. From there he continued his unsuccessful quest down the coast of India - always looking for the elusive treasure that would turn his voyage into a success. By this time all thought of legal methods was gone; success was all that counted because treasure was necessary to pay off the restive crew.

Finally in late January, 1698, the Quedah Merchant was sighted rounding the tip of India. Flying French colors in order to trick the quarry, Kidd and his crew attacked: the prize yielded money plus a cargo of silk, muslins, calico, sugar, opium, iron and saltpeter which could be sold at the nearest port for a rumored 7,000 pounds. The Quedah Merchant, renamed the Adventure Prize, was kept by Kidd as he made plans to leave the area in his by now leaking ship. The date was March, 1698, nearly two years after leaving London. Unfortunately for Kidd, those two years had brought a change of attitude in England toward piracy. Officialdom now wanted to stamp out piracy in favor of legal trading procedures. And to make matters worse, the Quedah Merchant was not just any cargo ship. It belonged to Muklis Khan, an influential and highly placed member in one of the eastern kingdoms, and he demanded that the East India Company, the English trading company in the East Indies, make restitution. Not only had William Kidd committed an act of piracy he had made an enemy of the commercial establishment in England! He would be made to pay.

Kidd arrived in the West Indies in April, 1699, in the Quedah Merchant, the Adventure Galley having succumbed to rot. The word had been sent out from England -- Kidd should be considered a pirate. Realizing that he would not be safe in any of the normal ports, Kidd headed for Mona Island, an uninhabited island found in the channel between Puerto Rico and Hispaniola (present day Dominican Republic). Because Mona belonged to no one, it was a safe place to hide. Speed was necessary now, no place was safe. Kidd had to get to New York City, where he had influential friends, and try to save himself.

The Quedah Merchant was abandoned in the River Higuey in Hispaniola, its cargo unloaded and sold on the spot. Gold was much easier than bulky goods to transport. Kidd, now captaining the Saint Antonio, headed for New York City. But what happened to the Quedah Merchant you may ask. Because its appearance was so distinctive, no one would sail it in the Caribbean. It was burned and left to sink slowly where it lay, far from the home water of the Indian Ocean.

The mood in the American colonies at this point could be characterized as one of pirate fever. Up and down the coast, everyone was on the hunt for pirates. Kidd successfully made his way to Block Island where he began negotiations through his contacts in New York to gain a pardon for his actions, claiming he was forced by his crew. Could this have been Kidd's chance to travel up the Connecticut River and bury some gold? In July, 1699, Kidd was captured and thrown in jail in Boston and then sent to England aboard the frigate Advice in February, 1700, to stand trial. Once in England, Kidd became a political pawn to be used to bring down powerful men in the government. The trial started on May 8 and was completed the next day -- the verdict was guilty of murder and multiple piracies.

Captain William Kidd was hanged on May 23, 1701, but not easily. The first rope put around this neck broke so he had to be strung up a second time. Captain Kidd would never sail again, but a legend grew up around his treasure. How much gold did he a actually have? What happened to it? Did he bury some part of it while he lay at anchor at Block Island? Could he have gone up the Connecticut River, portaged around the falls he encountered, and found a good hiding place on Clark's Island? We can't know for sure, but present day maps of the Connecticut River label the island as Kidd's Island. Next time you're there, bring a shovel -- and be quiet!!
Source: bio. umass. edu