Undersea explorer Barry Clifford holds the barrel of a partially crushed blunderbuss he salvaged from the wreck of the pirate ship "Whydah" during an interview in Brewstar, Mass in September 2013. He calls it "the yellow brick
road" because it's literally sprinkled with gold dust.
This road runs along Cape Cod's
shifting seafloor, and undersea explorer Barry Clifford believes it leads to
undiscovered treasure from the wreck of the pirate ship Whydah.
About two weeks ago, Clifford and his
dive team took a trip back to the wreck site, and Clifford returned more
convinced than ever that the road he's exploring is a path to riches.
"We think we're very, very
close," he said.
The Whydah sank in a brutal storm in
1717 with plunder from 50 ships on board. Clifford discovered the wreck site in
1984 off Wellfleet and has since pulled up 200,000 artifacts, including gold
ornaments, sword handles, even a boy's leg.
But just this year, Clifford learned
far more treasure may be resting with the Whydah, the only authenticated pirate
shipwreck in U.S. waters.
Colonial-era documents discovered in
April indicated the Whydah raided two vessels in the weeks before it sank. Its
haul on those raids included 400,000 coins, the records said.
A Sept. 1 dive during what was
supposed to be Clifford's last trip of the season uncovered evidence he was
near those coins. That convinced Clifford he had to make another trip before
summer's end. So Clifford and a seven-man crew went back on a three-day trip
that ended Sept. 13.
Clifford headed for the "yellow
brick road," which refers to a gold and artifact-strewn path extending
between two significant sites at the Whydah wreck that are about 700 feet apart
— a cannon pile and a large chunk of wood that Clifford thinks is the Whydah's
stern.
The trove of coins and other treasure
likely poured from the stern as the ship broke up and the stern drifted to its
rest 300 years ago, he said.
Divers searching the path on the
recent trip pulled up several concretions, which are rocky masses that form
when metals, such as gold and silver, chemically react to seawater. Diver Jon
Matel said one discovery was following another, even though divers were working
in "black water," or zero-visibility.
Matel says several feet of a fine
seaweed called mung settled in the excavated pits and it was like diving in a
vat of black gelatin dessert.
"You're going by your feel, your
touch, your hands, and the ping of a metal detector," Matel said.
"When that thing goes off, it's a great feeling."
X-rays show all the newly retrieved
concretions have coins and gold inside. To Clifford it's more proof of high
concentrations of metals and coins being dumped en masse on that spot of sea
floor.
Clifford believes two examples that
were pulled up on the previous trip are particularly compelling evidence: a
cannonball piled with 11 coins and a foot-and-a-half long piece of iron stacked
with 50 coins.
"Did all of those coins just
happen to fall on this one little piece of iron? Or were there thousands of
coins there, and this is just an example of what's left?" he said.
Clifford has no doubt it's the
latter, but he'll have to wait until next summer to try to find out.
He's taken 21 trips this summer at a
cost of more than $200,000. But the worsening weather and lingering boat
problems after a recent lightning strike make another visit impossible until
June.
Clifford doesn't sell Whydah
artifacts, though he knows the treasure, both uncovered and hidden, has
monetary and historic value. He anticipates the delay until the next trip will
be somewhat maddening.
"I'll wake up in the middle of the night this winter
and go, 'Oh my God, I know what that means,' when I'm reviewing something from
the Whydah," he said. "And then I can hardly wait to get back there
in the spring."
Stephan Savoia AP
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