The Secret Treasure Hunters

On occasion, when the time is right, and circumstances create a perfect scenario, secrets can slip, and the best stories can fall into the category of the unexpected but not surprising. Ghost stories are always fun, and accounts of heroism have a certain appeal, but tales of lost treasure can cast a spell on anyone. 

Veteran hairdressers and barbers spend decades standing beside customers and listening to the best and worst of anything that can possibly happen. These helpful souls certainly deserve a degree in family counseling. Bartenders are another profession where the highest achievements and the most crestfallen tragedies are daily conversations. Bartenders should receive a degree in patience and understanding. 

When it comes to dental professionals, the listening role for patience and understanding is mostly for the person trapped in the chair. Hygienists might share highlights of their lives as they force cleaning instruments into a one-sided conversation. A dentist with a secret might be too excited about a recent weekend to not slip and fall into a story of a possibly forbidden adventure. 

No one can be certain where the story of The Secret Treasure Hunters and the modern pirate captain began, but the narrative made the twist from fantasy into reality when the proof of the truth came out on a dentist’s desk in the form of several gold and silver coins. 

The dentist might have finished his story by revealing his booty of gold and silver coins to a friend and patient of many years, but his tale began when several local scuba divers became interested in shipwreck diving. The group of like-minded professionals fell into a club of sorts, which met most weekends. The divers soon became enamored with the tale of Calico Jack, his two beautiful women pirates, and the lost treasure of the Ten Thousand Islands containing 300,000 Mexican pesos. 

When inquiries from the divers began traveling around the docks between Naples and Everglades City, a strong current of rumor, gossip, and opportunity began to rise with more than the tide. After searching through the surface of many local legends and antiquated reports of treasure ships wrecked in the region, deeper queries led to a battered and rusting fishing trawler and captain with a dubious nature. After meeting the master of the aging vessel in the corner of a local bar, the would-be treasure seekers agreed on a pact with the gnarly old mariner after a declaration of dangerous revelations came to the surface. 

“I know what you’re looking for,” the cantankerous navigator began, “There’s always been plenty of scuttlebutt about Captain Calico Jack and his cutthroat women. The beach treasure is certain on that account, but I’ve found something else. A wreck that must have foundered in a hurricane. I found my wreck by accident when hauling in crab traps. After a strong February cold front, a parcel of my traps moved until they snagged on something that was not sand. 

I marked the chart with GPS, and once the summer came, I went diving on the snag when the water was clear. I never been out to that wreck without coming back with something. It's Spanish pieces mostly. Silver but gold, too, and plenty of glassware all over the bottom. I’ll take you out, but not without circumstances and maybe consequences. I need the money because my luck has gone south. I’ve been in some terrible trouble.” 

After the captain told his tale, the treasure seekers of the makeshift diving club agreed to the crabber’s demands: There was to be total secrecy about the dives, the boat, and the captain. No hidden GPS units or compasses were to be aboard. The greedy crabber finished with an ominous warning: any who broke his rules might not come back with the boat. 

The divers reluctantly agreed to the price of a thousand dollars per head and the crabber’s terms and went out on the first dive. The boat always cast off at night and was only underway under the cover of darkness. No landmarks were visible by anyone aboard until the boat was at anchor at first light, and a distant line of mangroves was waiting below a hazy sunrise. The water was not deep at the dive sight, but the bottom was treacherous with a rubble field that might have been the stone ballast of a large sailing vessel. 

In the shallow water, the bottom time for safe diving was half an hour and each of the divers returned to the surface with the hand-held metal detectors that were the tools of the day. Every diver also came up with either artifacts or treasure. Most of the relics were ship nails or badly rusting iron bolts, but as promised, broken bits of glass and pottery were not hard to find. Also brought aboard, with the crab captain greedily watching, were several pieces of tarnished silver and a few small coins of shining gold. 

After the rust-streaked and battered trawler made several trips to the rubble field and the wreck, every diver - in his own way - began to emulate the cynical and paranoid behavior of the nefarious captain. With every expedition out and back to the dock, the old man of the sea did indeed collect his extraordinary amount of cash per diver, but without exception, the divers began to collect bad luck and trouble. Divorce, bankruptcy, and crippling health issues were a few of the problems that seemed to gather alongside the shipwrecked booty. The dentist with the treasure in the office no longer dives, although he nervously will share his belief that bringing up shipwrecked misfortunes and tragedies from the past might be more than a group of Secret Treasure Hunters was hoping to find.