The Lost Legacy

The year was 1985 when Teddy Lee looked up from the diesel engine parts that surrounded his feet and littered the boat deck. It was a bright sunny day in February; the height of the southwest Florida tourist season, but Teddy Lee was out of work. The engine in his fishing boat was shot and dead in the water. The engine was as old as Methuselah, and for the last year, every charter was worrisome - because even if the antique did start at miles offshore - prayer was just about the only power that brought him and his passengers back to the Coon Key Light and home to Goodland.

“Hello there!” the voice came from the dock. “Ahoy!”

When Teddy Lee turned toward the greeting, he blinked in the sunshine. Standing next to his boat was an obvious tourist. The man was middle age and stocky with a fresh haircut and he was wearing the standard boat kakis that most of the fishing guides wore. The foregone conclusion that the man was a tourist was that his hands, and kaki shirt and trousers, were clean.

“I don’t want to bother you, but I’ve been asking around and I hear you’re one of the best captains in these waters. I’ve also heard that your dad and your granddad knew everything about this coast. Everyone says ‘go ask Teddy Lee. He’ll take you out to find what you’re looking for.”

Teddy rose to his feet. He needed a break. He knew the engine was beyond repair and he knew there was no money to buy a new one.

“I’m sorry,” Teddy began. “My old diesel has gone Humpty Dumpty. No one will ever put this thing together again. I’m beached. I don’t have a boat to go anywhere. Not anymore.”

The stranger nodded his agreement. “I’ve heard that too,” he said with an accent that was starting to sound like Chicago. “But I have a proposition for you if you care to listen. I’ll be happy to buy you a new engine and get you back on your feet, but I’m not looking to go fishing. I want something else.”

Teddy Lee began to wipe his hands with a rag. “Sounds like you’re ready to run some dope or have me do it for you.” Teddy moved under the shade of the wheelhouse and shook his head. “I might be broke and I might be out of work, but I’m not stupid enough to go to prison.”

The stranger laughed. “It’s not anything illegal. I swear!” The newcomer moved next to the boat and joined Teddy Lee under the shade. He lowered his voice even though no one was around. “There are rumors of a lost treasure ship out on the Cape Romano Shoals. Out past Coon Key, in shallow water. An old Spanish gold ship. A ship that was part of the 1713 treasure fleet that left from Havana but never made it to Spain. Ever hear of anything like that in these waters?”

“Sure.” Teddy Lee smiled with the memory. “My granddaddy stumbled onto that - or something like it. That old wreck site for us was a regular family outing. We went out there all the time when the weather was fair. We found big iron spikes, forged iron rings, and more cannonballs than we wanted to bring home. Once, grandad found three gold coins next to a worm-eaten wooden crate, but he always believed there was more gold deeper in the sand. I know where that Spaniard is but I haven’t been out there for years. Daddy sold grandad’s coins in Miami to help buy a new motor for his boat.”

The stranger from Chicago smiled and opened his arms. “And now,” he said, “that old wreck is going to buy you a new engine if you promise to show me where it is. I promise, we’ll split everything we find. I am ready to find that lost ship and bring home a big payday!”

“Mister,” Teddy Lee smiled for the first time in days, “you got yourself a deal!”

After the new friends shook hands and Teddy learned his benefactor was Frank DeCrow from Peoria Illinois; a Caterpillar diesel engine arrived in a shipping crate two weeks later.

When the new diesel was in the old boat and happily chugging away, Teddy Lee and Frank DeCrow cast off the lines in Goodland and headed out to the Cape Romano shoals. Because the winter cold fronts were almost over, and the dry season was being stingy with the clouds and rain, the water over the shifting shoals was as clear as a swimming pool. After sighting the southwest Cape of Marco and taking bearings on a stand of Australian pines that had weathered every hurricane since 1935, Teddy Lee anchored in five feet of water and the two men paddled a dinghy to a sandy beach where black mangroves were rising behind a spooky shoreline.

When the dinghy was secure on the beach, Teddy produced two long lengths of steel rebar and two big hammers. “This is where my granddaddy showed my daddy and me.”

After a few more confirming sightings on the distant Cape and the rising pines, Teddy walked into the gulf and stopped when the water was two feet deep. “Here we go,” he explained. “The wreck is right here under the shoal.”

With Frank looking puzzled, Teddy began to hammer his steel spike into the water and the sand below. With Teddy’s encouragement, Frank also began tapping through the sand until the bar was submerged. As the day progressed, the two men slowly moved toward the distant pines until Frank’s bar rang out and suddenly stopped. After another audible note of metal on metal, Frank began tapping his hammer on the mysterious contact again and again.

With Frank beaming with excitement and Teddy Lee smiling with relief, the sand below Frank’s steel probe became an object of excavation until a rusting ball of iron appeared.  The rust on the old iron was bright orange and the sphere about the size of a softball. Teddy Lee was happy and justified, because Frank had just found a cannonball from the 1700s and the rest of the Lost Legacy could not be far away.

Frank was more than delighted with his proof and his find, but whether it was a pirate’s curse, haunted gold, or misadventure, the stranger from Peoria Illinois never came back to look for the Spanish shipwreck and Teddy Lee’s legacy that was not really lost.