AT THE AGE OF SEVEN, LITTLE Herbo Humphreys found a gold coin on the beach in front of his father’s villa in the Bahamas. He’s been going for the gold ever since.
James Herbert “Herbo” Humphreys Jr. is the son of the late James Herbert Humphreys Sr. — “Big Herb” — who was co-founder of Humko, a successful cooking oil and shortening company which merged with Kraft in 1951. (Humphreys Boulevard in Memphis is named after the family.) Young Herbo attended Presbyterian Day School and Memphis University School, graduating in 1966. He had many opportunities to travel as a youth and, partly to feed his insatiable curiosity about the world (his hero was Memphis writer-adventurer Richard Halliburton), he joined the Navy in 1967.
Humphreys’ business sense surfaced early on. When he was just 16, he invested $5,500 that he won in an equestrian jumping contest, buying Philippine gold stock at 25 cents a share; it soon rose to $30 per share. Later, on his travels, he was intrigued by the beautiful warm waters off Grand Cayman and predicted that in the future the island would become a tourist mecca. Putting his money where his mouth was, at the age of 22 he developed a Holiday Inn franchise on Grand Cayman — at a time when the island had only two hotels — and parlayed its success into a business empire that today employs between 500 and 700 people in a variety of enterprises, among them the Holiday Inn Grand Cayman, the Treasure Museum in Grand Cayman, and another treasure museum being built in the Bahamas. In Memphis, his home base, the 43-year-old Humphreys is a majority stockholder in the Summit Club and part owner of George Garner/Ask Mr. Foster Travel, Inc.
But these days, 80 percent of Humphreys’ time is spent on M-A-R Ltd. and its associated corporation Marex International. M-A-R Ltd., founded by Humphreys in 1984, is dedicated to searching for sunken treasure. Marex International, an adjunct of M-A-R founded in 1990, looks for investors to help fund the treasure-hunting expeditions.
The flagship of Marex is the R.V. Beacon, a super-sophisticated salvage and recovery ship currently anchored off the Bahamas, where it is salvaging the wreck of the seventeenth-century Spanish galleon Nuestra Señora de la Maravillas, potentially one of the greatest treasure troves of all time, with perhaps $1 billion in gold, silver, and gems waiting to be found.
Far from being a swashbuckling adventurer, Humphreys is a boyish-looking, low-key man with a speaking voice so soft you sometimes have to strain to hear it. His cabin on the Beacon reflects his unpretentiousness: It looks more like a library with a bunk thrown in as an afterthought. The books on the shelves reflect his interest in adventure and his love of the sea. One of his most prized volumes is a copy of Fell’s Guide to Sunken Treasure Ships of the World, a gift from Big Herb on Herbo’s sixteenth birthday. On the inside cover it says, “Hope you find $10 million. Love, Dad.”
Humphreys, a husband and the father of two small children, prefers to keep his family life private, but he has gone public on most of his other ventures, including his longtime support for the Nicaraguan contras (he is a major general in the FDN Legion, a contra organization).
It’s his treasure-hunting exploits, however, that have brought Humphreys his real celebrity. In 1983, he made his first important undersea discovery: the wreck of the H.M.S. Thunderer, a British warship that went down in 1780 off Honduras. He calls the discovery “one of my biggest thrills.” Several cannons from the Thunderer were donated to the Royal Naval Engineering College near Plymouth, England.
Humphreys’ current expedition to uncover the treasures of the Maravillas is likely to be followed by others equally exciting. He is exploring wreck sites in Central America, South America, Madagascar, and the Mediterranean — as well as others in the Bahamas. Through a company called Marex-Houlder, he also plans to begin exploring deep water wrecks, including sunken World War I and World War II cargo ships, with a view toward recovering their gold, silver, copper, manganese, and aluminum cargos.
Two months ago, Humphreys announced what will be perhaps his most celebrated expedition: the search for the Santa Maria, Christopher Columbus’ flagship, which sank off Haiti on Christmas Day, 1492. Humphreys wants to recover the Santa Maria and present it to the world. If he succeeds, this Memphian will no doubt earn his own place in history.