Pirate Hunters: Treasure, Obsession, and the Search for a Legendary Pirate Ship (32 page)

I even did a little treasure hunting of my own.

On a steamy spring morning, Chatterton, Mattera, Kretschmer, and another accomplished wreck diver, Todd Ehrhardt, hiked with me through dense jungle at Cayo Vigia, then up the island’s steep eastern tip, where Bannister’s pirates had dug in for their fight with the
Royal Navy. We hung on to branches to keep from plunging to the rocky shore below. At the top of the island, we saw the channel just as Bannister would have seen it. With cannons and muskets, we could have hit any target in any direction. Kretschmer unpacked an Aqua Pulse AQ1B metal detector and began sweeping it back and forth over the mud. Moments later we were digging, with a hatchet and small shovel and ax. I don’t know how long we worked. I don’t know who did what. I just know that I didn’t fear falling anymore, and that when we reached the bottom, we had four or five cannonballs between us. As a writer, you can do research and ask questions and make notes. But nothing puts you inside a story like finding your own cannonball from a pirate fight.

By ROBERT KURSON

Shadow Divers

Crashing Through

Pirate Hunters

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

R
OBERT
K
URSON
earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin, then a law degree from Harvard Law School. His award-winning stories have appeared in
Rolling Stone
,
The New York Times Magazine
, and
Esquire
, where he was a contributing editor. He is the author of the 2005 American Booksellers Association’s nonfiction Book Sense Book of the Year
Shadow Divers
, and
Crashing Through
, based on Kurson’s 2006 National Magazine Award–winning profile in
Esquire.
He lives in Chicago.

www.robertkurson.com