Pirate Hunters: Treasure, Obsession, and the Search for a Legendary Pirate Ship (31 page)

NOTE ON SOURCES

T
his project began over late-night burgers at a steak house in New Jersey, where divers John Chatterton and John Mattera told me of their quest to find a pirate ship—and a pirate captain—unlike any history had known. Over the next two and a half years, I spent hundreds of hours interviewing the men, in person and on the phone.

I also made two trips to the Dominican Republic with the men. In Santo Domingo, I handled piles of treasure and priceless artifacts, interviewed experts in archaeology and nautical history, and read books in buildings that dated to the sixteenth century. In Samaná, on the country’s north coast, I saw Bannister come to life. It was there that the divers took me by boat to search the bay and investigate islands, hike into treacherous jungle, and wade into shipwreck-laden waters, all as they had done in their search for the pirate captain and his ship, the
Golden Fleece.
“You’ve gotta know the place to know the pirate,” they told me, and they were right.

Captain Tracy Bowden, and crewmen Howard Ehrenberg and Heiko Kretschmer, granted me interviews, both in person and by phone. Victor Francisco Garcia-Alecont spoke to me in cafés and at his home in Santo Domingo. Carla Chatterton and Carolina Garcia de Mattera met with me to share memories and give insight into their husbands’ adventure.

The business of treasure hunting, along with its rich history, legend,
and lore, were explained to me in Florida by Carl Fismer, Robert Marx, Sean Fisher, Kim Fisher, and Dave Crooks. I am convinced that treasure hunters are the best storytellers.

The fast-changing state of international maritime, admiralty, and salvage law was laid out for me by attorney David P. Horan of Miami, who prevailed in the Supreme Court of the United States on behalf of Mel Fisher, the treasure hunter who discovered and salvaged the
Atocha
, the richest shipwreck ever found.

Much of the historical research that appears in this book was done originally by John Mattera as part of his team’s search for the
Golden Fleece.
I consulted all of his sources, along with my own (including interviews with experts), to confirm Mattera’s work and to fill in details where necessary.

Much of what is known about Joseph Bannister comes from the correspondence of the governors of Jamaica in the 1680s, contained in the
Calendar of State Papers
,
American and West Indies
, now at the British National Archives in England, and in the manuscript collections at Colonial Williamsburg, in Virginia. Many of the relevant letters, along with other details on the English government’s pursuit of Bannister, can be found in two stellar books by historian David Buisseret:
Port Royal Jamaica
(written with Michael Pawson) and published by University of the West Indies Press; and
Jamaica in 1687
, from the same publisher. It was the latter book that provided the eyewitness drawing and account of the battle between Bannister and Royal Navy frigates, and which confirms the discovery of the shipwreck at Cayo Vigia to be that of the
Golden Fleece.
Professor Buisseret also spent dozens of hours with me, in person and by phone, answering questions, assisting me with research, and pointing me in good directions. His assistance was invaluable.

(A note on spelling: Sources contemporary to Bannister often spelled the pirate captain’s name “Banister.” Modern sources, including those written by historians David Buisseret and Peter Earle, almost always spell it “Bannister.” The reason, as explained to me by Buisseret,
is that seventeenth-century spelling was quite random, and that the latter spelling has become more conventional and more readily familiar to modern readers.)

On the Golden Age of Piracy,
The Buccaneers of America
by Alexandre Exquemelin, originally published in 1678 (and later published by Penguin Books), was essential reading, an eyewitness account of pirate life by a man who sailed with Henry Morgan, and it’s a page turner. Peter Earle’s
The Pirate Wars
, published by Thomas Dunne Books, gave a first-rate and highly readable account of how and why navies did battle with the buccaneers.
The Invisible Hook
, by Peter T. Leeson and published by Princeton University Press, provided a compelling look at the economics of pirate life, and shed new light on why, beyond the obvious reasons, pirates might have chosen such risky lives. As a general primer, David Cordingly’s
Under the Black Flag
, published by Random House, was indispensable and a pleasure to read. Two fun and useful books about pirate language, terms, and sayings added color to an understanding of the era:
The Pirate Primer
by George Choundas, published by Writer’s Digest Books, and
The Pirate Dictionary
by Terry Breverton, published by Pelican. Also useful were
The History of Piracy
by Philip Gosse (published by Burt Franklin);
Pirates of the Caribbean
by Cruz Apestegui (Chartwell Books);
Pirates: Predators of the Seas
by Angus Konstam (Skyhorse);
Villains of All Nations
by Marcus Rediker (Beacon Press); and
Pirate Hunting
by Benerson Little (Potomac Books).

Seventeenth-century naval warfare, weapons, ships, and tactics is a rich and exciting subject. Much was learned by reading Jonathan Dull’s
The Age of the Ship of the Line
, published by the University of Nebraska Press. Mr. Dull was also kind enough to grant me a telephone interview, which was very helpful. I referred often to
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Royal Navy
, edited by J. R. Hill and published by Oxford University Press;
The Line of Battle: The Sailing Warship 1650–1840
, edited by Robert Gardiner and published by the Naval Institute Press;
The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History
of Britain
,
1649–1815
, by N.A.M. Rodger, published by Norton; and a small pamphlet by Albert Manucy titled
Artillery Through the Ages
, published by the U.S. Government Printing Office. In addition to Mr. Dull, two other experts granted me interviews: I spoke via Skype to British maritime historian Sam Willis, and by phone on several occasions to naval researcher Frank L. Fox, whose vivid and cinematic descriptions helped me envision the kind of fighting that took place between Bannister’s pirates and the Royal Navy. Fox, also an expert in the work of Dutch marine painters Willem van de Velde the Elder, and his son Willem van de Velde the Younger, directed me to copies of drawings done by these men of the navy frigates
Falcon
and
Drake.
After months of reading about these great ships, it felt like a small miracle to be given illustrations drawn by men who had actually seen them.

In learning about the rarity of finding and identifying sunken pirate ships, I relied on an April 2005 article from the
International Journal of Nautical Archaeology
, “ ‘Ruling Theories Linger’: Questioning the Identity of the Beaufort Inlet Shipwreck,” by Bradley A. Rodgers, Nathan Richards, and Wayne R. Lusardi. I also read Barry Clifford’s
Expedition Whydah: The Story of the World’s First Excavation of a Pirate Treasure Ship and the Man Who Found Her
, published by HarperCollins;
X Marks the Spot: The Archaeology of Piracy
, edited by Russell K. Skowronek and Charles R. Ewen, published by University Press of Florida; and a review of the Skowronek and Ewen book by Michael Jarvis in the journal
Caribbean Studies
, volume 36, number 2, July–December 2008. (During the writing of
Pirate Hunters
, I checked media for reports of new pirate ship finds. As expected, there were almost none. In 2011, researchers at Texas State University discovered cannons and wreckage in Panama they thought might belong to one of Henry Morgan’s ships, but, like almost all suspected pirate wreck finds, no conclusive evidence of the ship’s identity was uncovered.)

On the subject of amputations at sea in the seventeenth century,
there is an excellent website: The Pirate Surgeon’s Journals (
piratesurgeon.com
). The author of that page cites several Golden Age sea-surgeon texts, which a research assistant helped me access via Gale’s Eighteenth Century Collections Online and Google Books. They were
The Navy Surgeon; or, Practical System of Surgery
by John Atkins, London, printed for Henry Woodgate and Samuel Brooks, at the Golden Ball in Pater-Noster-Row, 1758;
A Course of Chirurgical Operations, Demonstrated in the Royal Garden at Paris
by Pierre Dionis, London, printed for Jacob Tonson, within Gray’s-Inn Gate next Gray’s-Inn Lane, 1710;
Chyrurgic Memoirs: Being an Account of Many Extraordinary Cures Which Occurred in the Series of the Author’s Practice, Especially at Sea,
by John Moyle, London, 1708;
Chirurgus Marinus: Or, the Sea-Chirurgion. Being Instructions to Junior Chirurgic Practitioners, who Design to Serve at Sea in this Imploy
, by John Moyle, London, Three Bibles on London-Bridge, 1702. More recent texts, also useful, were John R. Kirkup’s
A History of Limb Amputation
, published by Springer; and John Ashhurst’s
The International Encyclopaedia of Surgery: A Systematic Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Surgery
, volume 6, published by W. Wood, 1886.

To learn the history and lore of Samaná, I consulted Encyclopedia Britannica online, and
History of the Panama Canal—Its Construction and Builders
by Ira E. Bennett, published by Historical Publishing Company. I also read “Historical Synthesis of Biophysical Information of Samaná Region, Dominican Republic,” by Dr. Alejandro Herrera-Moreno, Center for the Conservation and Ecodevelopment of Samaná Bay and Its Surroundings, 2005. (This paper notes that 34 percent of fishermen in the Dominican Republic operate in Samaná, the majority of whom work from wooden rowboats or kayaks. It is these fishermen who often know more about the location of old shipwrecks than archaeologists, historians, and treasure hunters combined.) Finally, I referenced an obscure book,
Samaná, Pasado y Porvenir
, by Emilio Rodriguez Demorizi, published by Sociedad Dominicana de Geografia, second edition (1973). Mattera discovered the
volume in a small Dominican hotel; despite the warning stamped inside,
“Por favor no retirar de esta area”—Please do not remove from this area
—he borrowed the volume and later gave it to me. Written mostly in Spanish, it mentions Bannister and makes some interesting claims, few of which Mattera or I could substantiate in the historical record. For more information, please visit my website at
robertkurson.com/piratehunters
.

For information on Port Royal, Jamaica, the “Wickedest City on Earth,” I relied on the book by Pawson and Buisseret,
Port Royal Jamaica;
Buisseret’s
Jamaica in 1687;
Cordingly’s
Under the Black Flag;
Breverton’s
The Pirate Dictionary;
Earle’s
The Pirate Wars;
and Buisseret’s
Historic Jamaica from the Air
, published by Ian Randle. Robert Marx was kind enough to talk to me in Florida about the historic excavation he did at Port Royal in the 1960s. I also watched a useful documentary produced by National Geographic,
Sin City Jamaica
, from 1998.

Captain Tracy Bowden’s historic work on three Spanish galleons was chronicled in two
National Geographic
articles. The first, “Graveyard of the Quicksilver Galleons,” was written by Mendel Peterson and published in the December 1979 issue. The second, “Gleaning Treasure from the Silver Bank,” was written by Bowden himself in the July 1996 issue. Bowden was kind enough to answer questions about these wrecks for me in person, too.

On the history of shipwreck and treasure hunting, I was helped by Joe Porter, Dave Crooks, Robert Marx, and Carl Fismer. I also read
The Devils Gold
by Ted Falcon-Barker, by Nautical;
Pieces of Eight: Recovering the Riches of a Lost Spanish Treasure Fleet
, by Kip Wagner as told to L. B. Taylor, Jr., published by Dutton; and two books by Robert F. Marx,
The Lure of Sunken Treasure
, published by David McKay, and
Shipwrecks in the Americas
, published by Dover.

These excellent books helped me understand the wreck of the Spanish galleon
Concepción
and the generations of treasure hunters, including William Phips, who searched for her:
The Hispaniola Treasure
by Cyrus H. Karraker, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press;
The Treasure of the Concepción
by Peter Earle, published by the Viking Press; and
The New England Knight: Sir William Phips
,
1651–1695
by Emerson W. Baker and John G. Reid, published by the University of Toronto Press.

For the life of shipwreck historian and researcher Jack Haskins, I relied on the memories of his closest friend, Carl Fismer. Everyone should have a friend who remembers him like Fizz remembers Jack.

Many of the events in the book were recounted to me by the participants from their memories. If there was doubt about the order of things, I used my best efforts.

Mattera continued to research Joseph Bannister and the
Golden Fleece
even after the discovery of the pirate captain’s wreck. Among his finds were logbooks from Captain Talbot and Lieutenant Smith of the
Falcon
for the dates that Royal Navy ship did battle with Bannister; letters by English officials and others noting the fight and its aftermath; even a log entry reporting word of Bannister’s hanging off the shores of Port Royal. All of it added bits of detail and color, and was consistent with what Mattera had learned during his search for the
Golden Fleece.
For details and illustrations, please visit my website at
robertkurson.com/piratehunters
.

Finally, during my trips to the Dominican Republic, I saw and handled artifacts from the wreck of the
Golden Fleece
. Those I did not observe in person I saw in excellent photographs taken by Mattera and Ehrenberg. Mattera’s collection of old maps and charts of Hispaniola and Samaná Bay, which hang on the wall of his apartment in Santo Domingo, also helped take me back in time to the era and place described in the book.