The next morning was too rainy to work. Inside Mattera’s dive center, the men tried to keep busy, but mostly they swore at the sky.
Early that afternoon, Mattera’s phone rang. It was Bowden.
“I have news,” he said. “Meet me at Tony’s.”
As Chatterton and Mattera waited for Bowden at the restaurant, they braced to be told that Cultura had awarded rights to the Golden Fleece to another company, or had taken back parts of Bowden’s lease. By now they’d heard enough treasure-hunting stories to know how many of them ended a day short of the prize.
At Tony’s, Bowden opened a Ziploc bag and handed the men a piece of paper. It was a photocopied drawing of the battle scene between Bannister’s Golden Fleece and the Royal Navy, done by John Taylor, the Falcon’s clerk, who’d been aboard the navy ship during the fight. An eyewitness. It showed a group of masted ships set against a swirling island backdrop, and had been sent to Bowden by a historian he’d recently commissioned to do research on the Golden Fleece. The man had discovered the drawing in a newly published book, Jamaica in 1687, by noted historian David Buisseret.
Drawing of the battle between Royal Navy ships the Falcon and the Drake, and Bannister’s Golden Fleece, by eyewitness John Taylor, June 1686.
Chatterton and Mattera could hardly believe what they were seeing. The black-and-white drawing, done in striking detail, showed the Royal Navy’s Falcon and the Drake, in a small channel, facing down Bannister’s Golden Fleece, with another ship, L’Chavale, nearby. The vessels were beautifully rendered, but it was the topography that struck the men most of all.
The Golden Fleece was tucked into the middle of an island, labeled “Banister’s Island,” that appeared, in shape, size, flow, and lines, to be Cayo Vigia. The channel’s northern coastline, too, was a match for the real thing, as was the western end of the bay. Just to the east of the Golden Fleece in the drawing, Taylor had labeled a small landmass “Hog Island.” Chatterton and Mattera knew it as Paloma Island, for the hundreds of white doves that roosted there, but it was one and the same. Even the spot on the island where the man placed the Golden Fleece matched the spot where the ballast pile and muskets had been found. In this single drawing, it was as if Taylor had reached back through time and told Chatterton and Mattera, “You were right.”
And there was more. Taylor had written an account of the battle, which was also in the book, though Bowden didn’t yet have a copy.
“I’ve got a book dealer in London who will overnight me anything,” Mattera said. “We’ll have it tomorrow.”
The men got a table and studied the drawing. It did not show a ship in the area of the sugar wreck, between Banister’s Island and Hog Island. But that didn’t bother anyone. The sugar wreck—whichever ship she was—had probably sunk early in battle, or was too inconsequential for the eyewitness to draw, or might have been unrelated to the event.
But what of the ship L’Chavale? The name was French, but Mattera didn’t remember reading about a French ship. He did, however, recall that Bannister had worked with several French pirates, including the infamous Michel de Grammont. And that the French pirates had been loyal to him.
“Maybe that’s how Bannister made his getaway,” Chatterton said. “Maybe he escaped on L’Chavale.”
Chatterton and Mattera shook their heads at the luck of it all—an illustration and account of the battle by an eyewitness. Bowden loved the drawing, too. Yet he still wished for more proof from the wreck itself.
“That,” Mattera said, pointing outside toward still-stormy skies, “is up to the gods.”
Up early the next morning, Mattera walked down to the beach and looked out over the channel, envisioning the Royal Navy frigates and the Golden Fleece where the eyewitness had put them. It all looked like he’d imagined it from his thinking and research. He wondered if the remains of dead seamen and pirates still lay under the mud at the bottom of the channel.
Skies were clear, and soon Mattera and Chatterton’s team, along with Bowden’s crew, had anchored over the ballast pile at the middle of the island. Soon, there were nine or ten divers in the water.
Much of the day’s work was devoted to moving ballast. Some stones were pebble-sized; others weighed more than twenty pounds. They all required work. The smaller ones could be moved by hand or bucket, but there were thousands of them. Larger ones were carried off by lift bag, a device that used straps and an inflatable bladder to move heavy objects underwater. Big stones had to be handled carefully; if dropped, they could break artifacts buried below. Mud, sand, and coral were sucked up by an airlift, a device that used compressed air and a length of PVC pipe to create a powerful underwater vacuum.
As ballast was cleared, the divers began finding artifacts. Many were modern detritus dropped by fishermen, sailors, and tourists. But they also found shards of centuries-old pottery, another musket barrel, and an iron canister, which looked to Bowden like the kind that contained metal shrapnel and was fired by cannons during the Age of Sail.
The men were back moving ballast the next morning. Currents made work difficult in the afternoon, so Chatterton and Mattera invited Bowden to come onto the island to search for more cannonballs. They expected Bowden to decline—his lease extended only to the waterline—but Mattera had had such fun the first time out he couldn’t help but ask. An hour later, Bowden was pushing with them through brush, sweeping a metal detector around the eastern end of the island. Chatterton found two cannonballs and half of another, which appeared to have sheared on impact. Mattera tried to remember if he’d seen Bowden smile like that before.
When they returned to the boats in late afternoon, some artifacts had been laid out by divers and rinsed. There were onion bottles (named for their shape) that had once held Madeira wine. One of them was still full. All of it was of historic value; all of it was period to Bannister.
“Save that wine,” Ehrenberg said. “We might need it tomorrow.”
On March 9, 2009, the men went back to work on the ballast pile. Digging through mud, one of Bowden’s crew saw pieces of burnt orange spackled into the dull greens and tans of the surrounding coral and stone. He put several of these orange pieces into his glove, then surfaced and climbed back aboard the boat. When he removed his glove, the pieces spilled onto a table. These were beads, just like the pirates wore, barrel-shaped and each a quarter of an inch long, orange with fast streaks of black, still as bright as the day they’d been made, still capable of terrifying merchant captains who saw them around the necks or braided into the beards of violent men.
But the beads were just signals of what lay below. Divers began to find pikes, cutlasses, daggers, musket balls, cannonballs, sword handles made of coarse bone, and the fifteen-pound wrought iron blade of a boarding ax, the most fearsome weapon of them all, which pirates used to pull target ships close, cut lines, or, with its gruesome and oversized head, hack at opponents during battle. They could have spent hours admiring each of these pieces, but didn’t dare risk missing the chance to find more. They discovered Delftware china, smoking pipes, small hourglass-shaped medicine bottles (sealed by lead tops and with remedy still inside), soles of boots, and coins from several countries, as one would expect from pirates, who were egalitarian enough to steal from all nations. All of it was historic. All of it was period to the late seventeenth century. All of it was the stuff of pirates.
Near the end of the day, Mattera found a simple wood plank, about three feet by one foot, and with one distinguishing feature: It was burned. Captain Spragge of the Drake, Mattera remembered, had returned to the scene of the battle after refitting in Jamaica, only to find the wreck of the Golden Fleece burned to her decks.
“I’m holding a piece of Bannister’s ship,” Mattera thought. “I’m holding a piece of the Golden Fleece in my hands.”
The charred top of the wood disintegrated and blew away in the current. It had remained intact for 323 years, just long enough for Mattera to find it.
Topside, the divers were thrilled
by the quality of their discoveries.
“What do you think, Tracy?” Mattera asked.
Bowden didn’t look cautious anymore.
“This is even better than I dreamed,” he said. “Guys, we have the Golden Fleece.”
—
THE TEAMS CELEBRATED THAT night with dinner at a fine Italian seafood restaurant. One mystery still lingered as the men raised toasts to long-ago pirates: the identity of the sugar wreck. She’d sunk less than two hundred yards off the island, and was full of period artifacts, mostly Dutch, not one dating later than 1686, the year of the battle. Bowden had always insisted that the sugar wreck, lying in forty-four feet of water, was too deep to be the Golden Fleece, and he’d been proved right. The men raised a toast to Bowden. But if the sugar wreck was not the pirate ship, which vessel was she? And what was she doing there?
Bowden had an idea about that. The historian he’d commissioned to research the Golden Fleece had uncovered the log of Charles Talbot, the captain of the Falcon. Talbot had reported firing not just on the Golden Fleece, but on another, smaller ship—a Dutch ship. So maybe the sugar wreck was present during the battle, after all.
“Bannister must have taken a Dutch prize before he got to the island,” Chatterton said. “The Royal Navy would’ve sunk a sitting duck like that right away. Maybe that’s why the eyewitness didn’t draw her.”
“Everything fits,” Mattera said. “That’s history.”
After dinner, the men ferried Bowden back to his boat. But when they returned to shore, they were too excited to call it a night, so they went to the villa for drinks.
Sitting on the veranda under a nearly full moon, Chatterton, Ehrenberg, and Kretschmer could see all of Cayo Vigia, as it must have looked after the first day of battle. Mattera joined them, but he wasn’t carrying drinks. Instead, he had a copy of Jamaica in 1687, the new book by David Buisseret, which contained not just Taylor’s drawing, but his eyewitness account of the battle. Mattera read aloud from Taylor’s description:
About fore in the afternoon, the boats return’d, and informed us that at the bottom of that bay, in the gulfe, Banister was, and another small ship with them, and they were on the careen, and further that they had pitch there tents on the island, and had hal’d their guns ashore and fortified themselves with two baterys, the one of six, and the other of ten gunns….
Being enform’d thereof, the Faulcon and Drake wayed about three a’clock, all things being put in a fighting posture and in less than half an houer we came to anchor within musket-shott of Banister. They immediately fier’d at us (without shewing any ensigne) from their batteries, and with their gunns shott very furiously, and wounded one of our men. Being come to anchor in 5 fadom watter, we with all expedition bent out our best bower, and brought our broadside to bear on them and fier’d with our uper and lower fire of ordnance and our small shot on the quarter deck with good success, soe that we shattered the bowes of the Fleece all to pieces, and utterly distroyed his great ship Fleece and soon beat them from their cannon, which they plied violently against us, with little damage.
Yet they being beat from their small ordnance, did nevertheless with greatest resolution imaginable continue firing with their small arms against us (being befrinded and shelterd by the thick woods) untill such time as the sable night had cover’d the earth with hir silent vaile; then seased they from their obstinat resistance, and all was silent. In this conflict we had three men kill’d outright, and two wounded; what number of Banister’s wer slain, we could not learn. Thus night being come, we clens’d the ship and prepair’d all things in redyness to fight the morrow morning….
Thursday the first of July, in the morning before that Aurora had fully withdrawn the sable curtain of night and illuminated this western world with hir refullgent raies, did this obstinat pyratt sound a levet with his trumpets, and fiered fouer cannons and severall volies of shott at us, with little hirt, not wounding one man. Then the Faulcon brought hir starbourd side to bear on them, and soon return’d them satisfaction from the mouth of their cannon, upon which they forsook their batteries, and betook themselves to their small arms, for this our broadside of double and catridge did them much damage, yet still they continued fiering at us graduallie six musquets at a time from the woods about the middle of the island, thereby to withdraw us from distroying their battery (which was built of stones and old trees) with our cannon. Soe we kept all day long fiering at the Fleece, and theirby reducet hir to such condition that ’twas imposible for hir evermore to swim. For oftentimes we plac’t 20 shots of our lower fier in hir bowes and quarter, soe that we saw both planck and timbers fly from hir. But as for the L’Chavale the French privater she goot in soe near to the shore that we did hir but little damage.
In fine we demolish’t their batries, and fire their ships all to peices. Yet they continued fiering at us with their musquets, and we at them with our cannon, as long as light would admit. This night we had continuall rain with the wind at north and northeast. Now haveing little wind we wayed our best bower and (with the Drake) warp’d off in the night, ’till we were out of their shot, (for we could lie here noe longer, because we had verey litle powder and shoot left). But now the wind encreaseing we came to anchor about two cables’ lenght to the westward of Cabbadg Island in 75 fadom water near Hog Island.
Saturday the 2d we had aboundance of rain, thunder and lightning, with the wind at east, soe that we could not turn out of the Gulph of Samana at break of day. Banister fiered severall great and small shot, but hurt us not, soe we kept warping out untill we goot about two miles from the island….
Sunday the third we had abundance of rain, thunder and lightning, tho’ the sun shin’d for the most part, with ye wind at east, and northeast by east. This morning we heard a great noise from Banister’s island, and saw a great smoak, which continued about half an houre. I suppose they blow’d up somwhat and fired their great ship.
When Mattera finished, the others made him read it again. They loved the drama of it all, the pirates’ toughness, how it gave Bannister his due. The writer hadn’t accounted for many of the navy casualties—by official count, there were twenty-three dead and wounded—but they couldn’t blame him for putting a hometown spin on events. And they learned things no one but an eyewitness could have told them: that Bannister had fired at the frigates even as they were sailing away. And that it was Bannister himself who had burned the Golden Fleece.
Mattera checked the book’s index for further mention of Bannister. There was just one more story, this one of the pirate captain’s demise. According to the account, most of Bannister’s men deserted him after the frigates withdrew, and he was forced to give over his command to the captain of the French pirate ship, who spirited him and some of his crew off the island. After stealing a small ship, the French captain put Bannister and his men aboard, gave them some provisions and weapons, and sent them away.
To “ease his dejected spirits,” Bannister sailed to the Mosquito Coast, where he was welcomed by Indians. Soon, all but six of his remaining men ran away with his ship, leaving Bannister at the mercy of the natives. Captain Spragge in the Royal Navy’s Drake tracked Bannister to this hiding place, where he found the pirate captain disguised as an Indian, roasting a plantain in a wigwam. One of Bannister’s men fired a musket at Spragge, but missed and slightly wounded another navy man. Bannister, along with three of his cohorts and two boys, were taken prisoner and put aboard the Drake. In sight of Port Royal, Bannister and the other pirates were hanged, their bodies dumped in nearby Gun Cay.
But something seemed wrong with this part of the story. It was neither consistent with historical accounts of Bannister’s character, nor with the spirit Taylor himself ascribed to the pirate captain in battle.
“You think Bannister really surrendered without a fight?” Mattera said. “This guy? Who stole his own ship twice? Who stood toe-to-toe with two navy warships?”
“Well, they hung him,” Ehrenberg said.
“Did th
ey?” Mattera asked.
He allowed the question to linger. Then, he laid out his thinking.
The English government wanted Bannister dead. He was a top priority. He’d embarrassed them, not once but twice, by stealing his own ship and then by cheating the hangman under their noses. Then he defeated the Royal Navy in battle. Maybe Spragge did catch him on the Mosquito Coast. But maybe not. Maybe Bannister got away after the fight with the frigates. Would the English want to admit that, and risk making him a folk hero forever?
Chatterton picked up Mattera’s thinking.
The navy supposedly hanged the pirates on a ship off the coast of Port Royal. But who saw it? How did the witnesses know it was Bannister? For all anyone knew, it was an unlucky Indian chosen by the navy to stand in for Bannister. The bodies were cut down and thrown overboard, so who could say?
Mattera opened the book and again read the last line Taylor had written about Bannister:
Thus wee have given you a full account of the overthrow of the misserable Banister, who not long befor was a welthy captain of good repute in Jamaica, and might have lived long and happy had not he turned pyrat.
To Mattera, that sounded like a warning to would-be pirates, directed by the powers that be.
“So what do you think really happened to him?” asked Kretschmer.
Chatterton imagined that Bannister might have taken on a new identity, put together a fresh crew, and continued pirating, taking even bigger ships, maybe moving operations to the Mediterranean or the American East Coast.
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