?EUR~Find my treasure, ye who may understand it?EUR(TM) ?EUR" a tale of buried treasure in the Seychelles.
AppId is over the quota
Of the old breed, Olivier Levasseur was a pirate of classical proportions, a seafaring rogue and contemporary of stars of the pirate age, including Benjamin Hornigold and 'Edward 'Blackbeard' Teach. Born into a privileged and educated background in late 17th Century Calais, Levassuer made his name as a Caribbean privateer in the pay of the French King Louis XIV during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14). However, it was after defying an order to return France that his career and notoriety really took off.
In 1719 Levasseur headed east away from the increasingly crowded Caribbean, plundering slave ports in West Africa before then rounding the Cape to spend the next few years harassing the merchants and mariners of the quieter seas of the Indian Ocean. It was in 1721 that 'The Buzzard' hit the mother load as he swooped on one of classical piracy's greatest prizes. The Nossa Senhora do Cabo was a bloated Portuguese galleon returning to the homeland from Portuguese India. On board was the Bishop of Goa as well as the Portuguese Viceroy of India himself, along with a vast fortune derived from the Viceroy's years in colonial service. Bulging with gold and silver bars, thousands of golden 'Guineas' and piles of diamonds, pearls and priceless religious arts, the Nossa Senhora do Cabo has been estimated to have been carrying, in modern conversion, a bounty worth as much as ￡100,000,000. Some estimates have even guessed at two or even three times this value. Whatever the truth, the cargo represented a staggering amount of treasure - the golden Guineas alone, once divided, reputedly netted each crewman a modern windfall equivalent of ￡7,500,000 to a man.
Levasseur, after secretly stashing his loot, kept a low profile for most of the remaining decade, before he was finally captured in Madagascar in 1730. He was subsequently removed to the island of Reunion and then hanged on the 7th of July the same year, thus ending an illustrious piratical career. As he was paraded before the gallows, if the legend is to be believed, he brandished and then flung with a theatrical flourish a necklace containing a secret code to the crowd gathered before him, exclaiming as he did his final, famous challenge 'Find my treasure, ye who may understand it!'. Since that fateful day, treasure seekers and adventurers have been seduced by the allure of this plundered hoard that's hiding somewhere amongst the vastness of the Indian Ocean.
For some 200 years, the necklace's secret code seemed lost to all but history and legend, until, in the early 1920s a storm revealed a series of strange stone carvings on Bel Ombre Beach on the Seychellois island of Mahe. Ancient papers that subsequently surfaced on Reunion seemed to imply 'La Buse' (Levasseur's moniker) as the owner of land on Bel Ombre Beach and also included a strange coded cryptogram. Could this be the lost code of Levasseur? Having acquired the documents in 1949, British Soldier and big game hunter Reginald Cruise Wilkins spent the best part of the next three decades obsessively digging and trying to crack the code. On his passing in 1977, his son John resumed the search. He searches to this day.
Thus, Levasseur's vast fortune perhaps still lies out there, waiting for that fateful day of discovery. Should you be considering Seychelles holidays, imagine yourself taking time to linger a while, perhaps on Bel Ombre beach, turning over a stone or two, or snorkelling in the bay. You just never know what you might find.
Bruce Giles writes for a digital marketing agency. This article Seychelles holidays has been commissioned by a client of said agency. This article is not designed to promote, but should be considered professional content.
Category Article buried, EURFind, itEURTM, Seychelles, treasure, understand
