The curious case of Captain Kidd's treasure

More than three centuries after pirate captain William Kidd’s legendary ship sank off Madagascar, a US explorer claims to have located it and to have found a huge silver bar onboard – but United Nations experts have cast doubt on the authenticity of the discovery.

The underwater expedition sponsored by History channel was carried out without adequate authorisation and only aimed at quickly producing a treasure of dubious origin, says Ulrike Guerin, underwater specialist with the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco).

The allegations were quickly denied by October Films, the British producer of a television series on the expedition, which says that “any suggestion that the ingot was brought to the site from elsewhere and its recovery somehow staged is both ludicrous and libellous.”

The discovery of the 45-kilogramme silver ingot at a depth of seven metres off the island of Sainte Marie was announced last week.

Explorer Barry Clifford presented the treasure to Madagascar’s President Hery Rajaonarimampianina.

The team headed by Clifford believes the wreck – whose existence had already been known – is Adventure Galley, which travelled thousands of kilometres in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans between 1696 and 1698. Kidd had been hired by the British crown to fight pirates, but failed and became a notorious pirate himself, allegedly amassing a fortune in gold, silk and jewels.

By the time Adventure Galley reached Madagascar, its hull was leaking and it sank in 1698, three years before Britain hanged Kidd for piracy and murder.

“I touched the roof [of the wreck] and I felt something. I started feeling with my hand to see what it was and the roof fell on me. Something hit my head and arm, and it was a huge block of silver,” is how Clifford described his experiences inside the dark wreck.

But Unesco criticised the expedition, with its assistant director for Culture Alfredo Perez de Arminan saying he is “very worried about the situation in Madagascar”.

“The preservation of underwater cultural heritage sites from pillage, commercial exploitation and unscientific excavations is of utmost importance,” he says.

An expedition like the one off Sainte Marie requires detailed documentation to be presented to the government in question, but that was not done in this case, Guerin adds.

The explorers “used metal detectors to produce a treasure as quickly as possible”, according to the Unesco expert.

“I suspended the shoot because their documents were not complete ...Then they used a motor-pump which they did not have the right to do... There was no underwater archaeologist with them,” Culture Minister Brigitte Rasamoelina told DPA.

October Films denies such claims, saying that a “detailed plan” had been approved by the government, the exploration was led by a “respected marine archaeologist” and marine archaeologists were always at hand.

 

Fake treasure?

President Rajaonarimampianina – apparently in conflict with the Culture Ministry – hailed the silver bar as a “historic find”. 

“This famous vessel had been searched for during centuries ... and the treasure that was inside has been found,” the president told DPA.

Guerin nevertheless cast doubt on the origin of the silver ingot, saying she wondered how it could have been inside the wreck of a ship from which everything valuable is believed to have been removed before it went down.

October Films dismisses any suggestion that the ingot may not be authentic, saying that “the team exploring the site has a huge amount of experience in identifying and carefully recovering artefacts from historical wrecks”.

It insists the expedition was overseen by government observers and that the expedition is funding a museum to preserve the treasure.

The UN estimates that more than 3 million undiscovered shipwrecks are spread across ocean floors worldwide, with more than 12,500 ships and war vessels lost at sea between 1824 and 1962 alone.

Modern diving and submarine technology is making them increasingly accessible to treasure hunters. Many of the explorers do not respect the 2001 UN convention setting out the principles to protect the underwater cultural heritage, but only seek fame and economic benefits, Guerin says.

Objects that are taken out of the sea after a long period can deteriorate rapidly if they are handled without adequate protection measures, she warns. 

Last year, Clifford announced the discovery of the Santa Maria, one of the three ships Christopher Columbus led on his historic crossing of the Atlantic in 1492 and that sank off Haiti. But Unesco says the wreck is from a much later period.

A Unesco team is now due to visit Madagascar to investigate the results of Clifford’s expedition there.