Matt Lamers, Unsplash
Captain Henry Morgan swore. Then, eyes dilating, he put his head in my hand, let loose a string of gibberish, and begged to have his neck rubbed.
That was my official welcome aboard the R.V. Beacon on a bright, clear July day last summer, somewhere in the Atlantic about 45 miles north of Grand Bahama Island and 60 miles east of the Florida coast.
The Beacon is a 120-foot floating wedge of steel so packed with electronic sensing equipment it would turn the CIA green with envy. Its job, however, is not to spy, but to search — to search for sunken treasure. These days, the Beacon is in the middle of excavating one of the richest shipwrecks of all time: the Nuestra Señora de las Maravillas (Our Lady of the Marvels), a 150-foot triple-masted Spanish ship which sank off the Little Bahamas Bank exactly 336 years ago this month. The Maravillas carried a cargo of gold, silver, and jewels which by today’s standards is estimated to be worth over $1 billion. Since 1983, Memphis James Herbert Humpheys Jr. — known to his friends as “Herbo” — and his company Marex International have been working the site to recover the Maravillas’ treasure trove of coins, ingots, and historical artifacts. As a writer and professional scuba diver, I was invited along for the fun.
Oh, yes, as for the flirtatious Captain Henry Morgan, did I say? — he’s an emerald-green Amazon parrot named after one of history’s most notorious pirates, and he’s the Beacon’s mascot. His welcome was the first, but by no means the last, exotic experience I had while hunting for sunken treasure with Herbo Humphreys and his crew.
ON THE NIGHT OF JANUARY 4, 1656, THE Nuestra Señora de las Maravillas and eight other Spanish ships were passing north of Grand Bahama Island on their way from Havana to Spain. In the Maravillas’ hold was reported to be 30 tons or more of New World treasure heading for the war chests of King Philip IV. According to the ship’s manifests, the Maravillas was carrying gold, silver, silver, and gems from Colombia, Panama, Peru, and Mexico. On board, legend says, was even a life-size solid-gold statue of the Virgin Mary and Child. Also on board were 650 flesh-and-blood passengers — church officials, politicians, merchants, soldiers, servants, and crew.
Sometime in the middle of that cold January night, the Maravillas changed direction to avoid running aground and was accidentally rammed by another ship. She faltered for about two hours, her timbers splitting. Finally, she shank in about 30 feet of water. All but 45 of her passengers were lost.
The next year, the Spanish government tried to salvage the wreck and her cargo. They recovered about a quarter of the treasure, but before they could retrieve the mother lode, their crude grappling hooks caused the wreckage to break up even more, scattering it — and the bulk of its gold and silver and gems — over a wide area around the Little Bahamas Bank. Soon sand covered it all, time and tides spread it even more widely, and for 316 years the wreck, and its treasure, remained lost.
Finally, in 1972, the celebrated treasure-hunter Robert Marx, using historical documents he discovered in Spain, rediscovered the site of the Maravillas wreckage, now lying under 30 to 50 feet of shifting sand. Marx recovered some of the treasure, but never found the stern of the ship, which was said to contain the bulk of the riches. In the end, a falling out with the Bahamian government forced Marx to give up the project.
Then along came Herbo Humphreys.
A Memphis-born, Memphis-based International businessman (see sidebar), Humphreys, 43, is an adventurer whose boyhood hero was the adventurer-writer Richard Halliburton. From childhood, Humphreys has been fascinated by the idea of hunting for sunken treasure, and in 1983 he purchased the Beacon, a cable-laying vessel which he refitted and turned into one of the world’s most sophisticated underwater salvage ships. That same year he recovered the Caribbean wreck of the H.M.S. Thunderer, a large British warship lost at sea in 1780.
The next year, 1984, Humphreys officially founded a treasure-hunting firm called Maritime Archaeological Recovery Ltd (M-A-R), which worked out an agreement with the Bahamian government that gives the company treasure-hunting rights over the area where the Maravillas went down: 161 square miles above the Little Bahama Bank. In return, the Bahamian government gets 25 percent of all he recovers. Starting in 1985, Humphreys went after the wreck of the Maravillas with a vengeance — an enterprise that in five years has recovered an estimated $3 million in treasures . . . with the mother lode (Humphreys hopes) yet to come.
“TREASURE HUNTING IS 2 PERCENT glamour and excitement,” says Herbert Humphreys, “and 98 percent sweat.” Indeed, there is a saying among treasure finders that every day begins with hope and ends with exhaustion. In Humphreys’ world, hope and exhaustion are especially part of daily life on Marex’s flagship: the Beacon.
My first glimpse of the Beacon came on a hot, sticky, overcast day in Freeport, the Bahamas, where she was tied up at the dock. Her huge twin blowers — used to move sand under water — were turned skyward, and she loomed over the pleasure vessels in the slips around her. Laundry hung from lines on the upper deck (the ship has her own washing machine), and cables were strewn everywhere like umbilical cords, connecting her tenuously to land.
Every inch of usable space on the Beacon is occupied. She carries a working crew of up to 20 and is equipped with state-of-the-art remote sensing instruments, a bank of metal detecting devices, sonar equipment, computerized mapping equipment — even a fax machine for the latest weather updates. But perhaps her most dramatic features are the two huge blowers, also called “blasters” or “mailboxes.” When lowered, the blowers redirect the ship’s prop wash (the turbulence created by the propellers) and can “blast” 20-foot craters of sand on the ocean floor, right down to the bedrock. A diver hovering in this underwater sandstorm will sometimes see gold coins or gems swirling by; quick reflexes can sometimes make the difference between recovery and frustration.
It costs about $7,000 a day to support the Beacon’s activities, and the crew takes great pride in her. Nevertheless, Kim “Doomsday” Jackson, Humphreys’ Caymanian business partner and the chief engineer of Marex, is fond of saying, “There’s never a dull moment. On the day I arrive, everyone on the Beacon is repairing something, making ready to depart the next morning.
“Before we leave for the site, would you like to see the gold bars we found last week?” asks Corey Carlson, Marex’s promotions director at the time. “The Bahamian treasure officials will meet us there tomorrow at nine.”
At nine o’clock the next morning, it’s blazing hot. We stand outside the Freeport bank with the regular customers waiting for the door to open, while Carlson explains the procedure for gaining admittance to the artifacts. Only Bahamian treasury officials, designated Marex personnel, and a few numismatists, historians, and archeologists get to see them. And now and then a fortunate journalist. Security is tight; no one sees the artifacts alone, and representatives of both Marex and the Bahamian treasury must sign in and out of the vault. Tom Posey, director of security for Marex, squints from under his military-style cap and guardedly answers my questions about how the Maravillas recovery site is protected from poachers. “Let’s just say we have the full cooperation of the Bahamian government and the U.S. Coast Guard,” says Posey. “Our security is in evidence everywhere.”
Humphreys himself is not along; he’s still in the States conducting business. Accompanying us is Rene Charette, chief preservationist of Marex, a stocky, muscular man with silver hair. He is one of the world’s experts in the preservation of artifacts. Among his many other duties, it is his job to clean the multitude of silver coins that have been recovered from the Maravillas, which he does by a process called “reverse electrolysis,” which entails putting them in a special solution and passing an electric current through them.
Alan Greenspan, chief radio officer for Marex, paces back and forth. Dr. Daniel Koski-Karell, Marex’s consulting archeologist, waits patiently. Finally a small white car pulls up and two Bahamian treasury officials (who insist on remaining anonymous) join us in the sun. It’s well past nine; the Bahamians seem to work on a more flexible time schedule than we do.
As the bank doors swing open, a welcome wave of cool air rushes out. We troop in behind the treasury officials. As we pass one bank officer, she looks perturbed and proceeds to turn every paper on her desk face down. Then we are ushered into a room the size of a walk-in closet. This is not exactly the 2 percent “glamour” that Humphreys talks about. The louvered blinds on the window are shut (more security), and we are left for a few expectant moments as the officials and the representatives of the Beacon enter the vault. After a minute, they return with a mismatched collection of panels wrapped in towels and brown paper.
The parcels are sealed with tape and are marked by the signatures of those officials present the last time the items saw the light of day. Charette, the preservationist, reverentially peels off the humble wrappings. There is a collective gasp. Even after three centuries on the ocean floor, the 25 or so gold bars are as bright and seductive as they were on the day they were struck.
Koski-Karell, the archeologist, explains the markings. The Roman numerals indicate the purity of the gold. The weight and the mint marks are stamped in the bars. The assayer’s bite, a small chunk taken out to check the purity of the bar, leaves a notch in the side. These gold bars, up to a foot long and weighing approximately 189 total pounds, are the largest underwater find the Beacon has made so far. At current market rates, the gold alone would be worth more than $1 million, and the bars may be worth two or three times that as collectors’ items.
Also unwrapped are emeralds, looking more like pieces of old green bottles than priceless gems. And approximately 1,300 silver coins each one in its own small, clear-plastic envelope. A 60-pound silver bar dwarfs the smaller pieces.
The treasury officials are smiling. The Marex representatives are smiling. We are looking at a table groaning under a king’s ransom of gems and precious metals.
The sea is yielding her treasures.
LATER THAT MORNING WE BOARD the Beacon and weigh anchor for the recovery site of the Maravillas, about 45 miles north of Grand Bahama Island. The crossing takes about six hours. Humphreys, still involved in business talks, will join us tomorrow.
When we arrive, it is sunset. The horizon looks clear, but the radar is indicating two large storm systems nearby. On the bridge radar, we watch the storm fronts head our way, like two fried eggs slowly slipping across the screen.
The weather and time of day mean there will be no diving until tomorrow, so I am ushered to the ship’s wardroom for some more background.
The wardroom is a combination of library, workshop, display area, and rec room. The library contains an impressive collection of volumes about the sea: about ships, treasure hunting, treasure hunters, mapping, and technology. On the walls are photographs of Humphreys and the crew in dive gear — coins, emeralds, and artifacts in hand, fresh from 335 years on the ocean floor. There are also photos of Humphreys and his military friends in the jungles of Nicaragua; he has long been an outspoken and generous supporter of the Nicaraguan contras.
The wardroom table is laden with recently found artifacts that haven’t yet been fully examined. The most impressive artifacts is a “conglomerate,” a gray and rocky chunk of stuff that looks like a huge lump of leftover oatmeal. Dr. Koski-Karell points to a V-shaped object in the mass. “That is a very important find,” he says. “It’s an astrolabe, an instrument used for measuring the sun’s height to determine latitude.”
He then points to another object in the mass. “This is the hilt of a left-handed dagger,” he says, “and this entire chunk is laced with coins. The reason why this is so important is that the only person on the Maravillas who would have had an astrolabe and this dagger would be the admiral. The admiral’s quarters were in the stern of the ship. The stern is where the majority of the cargo was stored — more indication we’re onto the mother lode.” The other crew members smile. If the Beacon finds the mother lode, it could be worth billions. The crusty conglomerate has raised the hope factor several notches on board the Beacon.
That evening, Pablo Martinez, the ship’s animated cook and one of her treasure divers, serves a hearty dinner, complete with leg of lamb, then the crew go about their individual pursuits. David Greenspan, Alan’s son, is repairing regulators and threatens to do serious damage to anyone who plunders his stash of frozen Kit-Kat bars. Koski-Karell, the archeologist, is studying charts and making plans for the next city’s search. Art Villar, captain of the Beacon, is pacing the bridge watching the storms approach. Soft-spoken Chief Engineer Kim Jackson asks me if I would like to see some magic tricks. I reply yes, then try to figure out how a coin placed in my own hand can disappear.
As the evening wears on, the seas grow choppy. The crew in the wardroom seem indifferent to the weather as they patiently watch a tv network fade in and out. I go below and gingerly, hand over hand, pick my way to my bunk before everyone sees that I am turning as green as Captain Henry Morgan. Between the hum of the generators and the tossing of the ship, I am soon rocked into a sound sleep.
THE NEXT MORNING IS CLEAR, calm, and dazzling. I appear to have slept through a serious squall. “Worst storm we’ve had out here, as far as I can remember,” says Kim Jackson. Various crew members are recounting a semi-sleepless night.
Captain Art Villar has been awake through the night and is sporting bags under his eyes. He is pleased that a fine day is dawning. He checks the weather fax to confirm today’s weather conditions. The ocean is flat as a mirror, electric blue, with perfect visibility. From the deck we can watch fish feed off the sandy bottom, 30 feet down.
The divers are eager to hit the water. On deck, amid the flurry of activity, scuba divers are suiting up. Oscar “Manchester” King, the second mate, has all the compressed-air cylinders filled. Bob Soto, a 65-year-old scuba diving legend (he helped pioneer night diving and underwater filmmaking) and vice president and chief dive master for Marex, helps Jackson and Chief Diver Arnie Chevalier operate the crane that fits a small, single-engine boat — the crew has nicknamed it “the Corvette” — into the water. With an anticipatory splash, the long dive ladder is also lowered into the sea. We are anchored on a side previously identified as “target rich.”
Soon the divers are in the sea, myself among them. Most of the divers (except me) are carrying metal detectors. The water is clear, a delightful 80 degrees with a slight current. At a depth of less than 30 feet, visibility is excellent. Within minutes everyone is finding silver coins.
I decide to try my luck. I wave my hand across a crevice to blow away the sand, and there they are: two black, irregularly shaped “cookies” that are in fact silver coins. There is something to be said about being the first person to touch an object after more than three undisturbed centuries. It is a mingling of the pure thrill of discovery with reverence for the last person who held them in 1656 — and who shortly thereafter found himself “in God’s presence.”
Diving conditions are not always this good. In fact, from November through March, weather conditions make it impossible to salvage this site. So, on good days like this, the divers work hard all through the daylight hours, each stopping only for a brief lunch.
From 11 o’clock on, a lunch buffet is laid out on the galley table, and Pablo is asking if anybody needs anything. The crew is kidding Arnie Chevalier about making the world’s largest sandwich. It has been, I’m told, a good morning of recovering treasure, but not a spectacular one. By my estimate, a couple of hundred silver coins have been retrieved. (Once, the divers found 511 silver coins in a half hour of diving.)
After lunch, Dan Koski-Karell and diver Andrew Skinner are preparing to go “magging,” and they invite me along. Magging, I learn, is a vital, tedious, and hot part of treasure hunting. “Ninety-eight percent sweat and two percent excitement,” Koski-Karell reminds me as we climb into the Corvette. I soon learn how accurate that assessment is.
The “mag” (short for magnetometer) is an instrument that measures variations in the magnetic field of the ocean floor as it is dragged slowly across the ocean bottom. Koski-Karell sits under an awning, crunched at the helm, rudder in one hand, the long cord of the mag in the other, patiently trolling in a specific pattern, eyes glued to the chart recorder. Suddenly, the needle jumps and so do Koski-Karell, Skinner, and I. The mag has detected ferrous metal, and Skinner throws out a buoy to mark the spot.
The Corvette then turns around, makes another pass at the buoy, and the process is repeated to home in on the exact spot where there might be metal. The needle jumps again, and Skinner, now in full scuba, jumps over to investigate. He returns with a large encrusted chunk. Koski-Karell immediately identifies it as an iron spike that held together the wooden timbers of a ship. He explains that not all finds are as valuable in one in terms as gold, silver, and jewels. Some, like this huge spike, have historical value and are pieces of greater puzzles. With the wood timbers of the ship long since eaten away by worms, metal objects such as spikes and cannons help archeologists identify wrecks and offer clues as to how the ship broke up and how far the wreck has scattered.
“The historical importance of the research and recovery is not just taking [treasure] from the sea,” says Koski-Karell, “but documenting for historical purposes.” To this end, Koski-Karell and the other historians carefully document all their finds and their locations, often turning their discoveries into papers for academic journals.
The afternoon sun is intense, and the awning offers little shade. The needle on the chart recorder jumps across the paper several times, and Koski-Karell tells me that lightning in the area is affecting the reading. “The graph pattern would be different if it were an actual metal object,” he says, seeing my hopes mount. My untrained eye can’t see the difference. Patiently, Koski-Karell guides the Corvette through the area he marked on his chart earlier that day. He seems oblivious to the scorching sun, the sweat pouring into his eyes, and the fact that he has not stretched his legs in several hours. He explains that for weeks, even months, this laborious process can be repeated without significant findings.
As we return, the late afternoon sun is slanting off the horizon and casting a golden glow over the Beacon. The last of the divers are coming up the ladder. The aft deck is strewn with artifacts — a few iron spikes, unidentified conglomerates — and with black silver coins as the day’s final inventory is made.
Recovery operations come to a halt when the sun goes down. It’s not just the lack of daylight — it’s the sharks, who tend to come trolling at dusk. (None of the divers has ever been hurt by the sharks, who are more inquisitive than aggressive, though some crew members tell tales — perhaps tall — of beating sharks off with their metal detectors.)
Over dinner, the conversation turns to dreams. Everyone on the Beacon, it seems, dreams vividly when on board. I ask if there are any legends or ghost stories associated with the Maravillas. No, the crew shakes their heads in a collective gesture — just two-footed seamen on late-night prowls to the galley refrigerator for leftover dessert.
That evening Humphreys arrives on the Beacon via a fishing boat used as a shuttle between Freeport and the recovery site. He’s accompanied by Hank Hudson, vice president of business development for Marex, and Tim Hudson, vice president of finance. Such money men are becoming more and more important in the treasure-hunting business.
In the last year, Marex has ben trolling for investors to support the enormous costs of advanced technology and equipment fo Humphreys’ treasure hunts. (Marex is backed by a group of private investors, including some from Memphis, who invested through a private placement.) To be precise, Marex International is the investment arm of M-A-R-I Ltd. and is, as a separate entity, only a little over a year old. Today, Marex has more than 100 employees in Memphis, the Bahamas, London, and the Cayman Islands.
After enthusiastic greetings and quick updates, Humphreys and the crew retire early.
The next morning at sunrise, Humphreys turns the galley into headquarters for a meeting. Assignments are given and strategies planned over coffee and breakfast. At the morning briefing, Humphreys, a soft-spoken man with a quiet demeanor and boyish looks, is wearing khaki shorts, a light blue shirt, and dog tags. Dog tags? “If a shark gets me while I’m down there, he says, “some day when they find that shark and he spits out the dog tags, they’ll know who I was.”
The galley table is covered with maps, charts, graphs, compasses, and fax transmissions. Because of the time difference between the Bahamas and Europe, Humphreys has been up since 4:30 making international calls to associates in London and elsewhere.
Humphreys runs a tight ship. No alcohol is permitted on board, even when the Beacon is tied up in port. Only one or two of the crew smoke cigarettes. The members of “Herbo’s Navy” (as they have been dubbed by the media) have interesting and diverse backgrounds. Some are businessmen in their own right, trading their coats and ties for wetsuits and diving gear when out on the Beacon. Allen Mueller, vice president and chief technician of Marex, founded a business that distributes motorcycle fairings and boat windshields. Alan Greenspan, who is responsible for electronic systems on the Beacon, owns a marine electronics business in Florida. Hank Hudson, vice president for public relations and business development for Marex, manages real estate in Arkansas.
After the morning meeting, the day’s business begins. Today, a Sunday, is a pristine duplicate of yesterday. “This is highly unusual,” says Kim Jackson. Tim Hudson adds: “You’re lucky . . . or maybe we’re lucky. Usually when we have guests on board the weather is bad and we find absolutely nothing.” Bad weather, I’m told, can blow the Beacon off site, and sometimes weeks go by with nothing being found. Other times the ship is forced into port for repairs. No one knows how long the gods will smile.
On deck the crew is securing the Beacon with a special four-point anchoring system, whereby four separate anchors are dropped in preparations for “blowing” an area. A crane slowly lowers each of the two giant blue elbows into the water. These are the blowers, or “mailboxes,” used to clear sand from the ocean bottom. Humphreys, in scuba gear, is the first into the water to secure them from below. The rest of us divers follow. Bob Soto has given me a warning: “Three hits with the hammer on steel means we’re getting ready to blow,” he says, “so clear the area.”
After the divers are in the water and away from the ship, the blowers roar to life. Below the Beacon a giant, boiling soup of sand wells up and covers everyone and everything in the water. It is (to shift metaphors), an underwater blizzard so dense it’s almost impossible to see more than a foot or two in any direction. From the deck, scuba divers floating just above the blown sand look like sky divers suspended in thick white clouds.
The blowing continues for several minutes until there is a shallow crater revealing bedrock at the bottom. The sand is still settling as the divers swim in with their metal detectors. A pair of inquisitive dolphins zoom by Humphreys and he looks up, surprised. They disappear as quickly as they came.
The area is alive with schools of fish, rays, turtles, barracuda, and an occasional shark. The fish delight in the blowing process. To them it is a free lunch — a floating buffet of edible morsels pried loose from the ocean floor.
(While environmental groups decry the desecration of delicate undersea environments like coral reefs, the Maravillas operation, which takes place in relatively barren sand, has not received any specific criticism. Marex literature says the company is “totally opposed” to such excavation tools as explosive devices, “for the protection of the reef and respect for marine life are always top priorities.”)
It is in the swirling sands after an area is blown that some of the most valuable treasures have been found. In 1987, Arnie Chevaier was hovering in blinding sand when he saw something green roll by. His arm disappeared into the cloud, and he grabbed the golf ball-size object. It turned out to be a 100.85-carat emerald, thought to be the largest ever found on a shipwreck. Over the last five years, the Maravillas site has yielded, among other things, 87 gold coins (some worth perhaps as much as $3,000 apiece), about 7,000 silver coins, gold and silver ingots, 13 feet of gold chain, a gold brooch with eighty emeralds, a silver bannister, and an exquisite gold cross studded with 66 emeralds. Sooner or later, Marex will sell the booty at auction, keeping 75 percent of the take for itself and giving the Bahamian government its 25 percent cut.
UNTIL SUNSET, THE BLOWING PROCESS is repeated again and again. As we finally climb up the ladder, a frosting of sand clings tenaciously to us. The tiny grains have worked themselves into every crevice of our equipment. We are chewing on sand, our boots are full of sand, the soft lining of our wetsuits has turned to sandpaper.
The abrasive moment is broken by loud conversation coming from the ladder. Diver Duane “Dewey” Engstrom has recovered two silver bars, one weighing in at 59 pounds, the other at ten pounds. The bars are lugged to the upper decks, where Tim Hudson brushes their surfaces with an acid bath to reveal their markings. Dan Koski-Karell appears with a copy of a Maravillas manifest in his hand. The markings on the silver bars match the markings in the manifest. Humphreys congratulates Dewey, who smiles, shrugs, and says matter-of-factly, “On Sundays we usually find silver.”
It is a fine way to end a long day.
Such successes are celebrated briefly on the Beacon before everybody returns to business. Recovery from the sea is not the end of the tale for these coins, jewels, and other pieces of history that began their odyssey 336 years ago. After each salvage season, an accounting is held between Marex and the Bahamian government. Jerry Chavetz, vice president of retail sales, then handles the “disposal” of the treasure through Marex’s Antiquities and Coins Division. The rarest and most well-preserved gold and silver coins will go on the auction block at elite houses like Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Coin collectors will pay top dollar for rare collectibles. Other coins will be turned into jewelry. Some will be mounted in simple gold bezels, others will be set with precious stones and sold through prestigious retail jewelry houses. (In Memphis, some of the jewelry is sold through Wright Jewelers and Vance Boyd & Son Fine Jewelry.) Artifacts will be sold, donated, loaned to museums or become part of touring exhibitions. The public, it seems, has an unquenchable thirst for the romance of sunken treasure.
Meanwhile, the Beacon rocks gently on the sea. Early Monday morning, another day of treasure-hunting begins — with hope and enthusiasm among the crew — as I leave aboard a small charter boat to Freeport. Soon we head into a blinding squall, and the crystal water turns angry and gray. As we cross the choppy seas, I can’t help but wonder what lies beneath the surface at every mile. Perhaps at this moment we are over a solid-gold, jewel-encrusted table. Or perhaps, just a few yards below, is the Golden Madonna and her Child. As I think about these possibilities, I remember the words of Captain Nemo, hero of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea: “There is more wealth at the bottom of the sea,” he said, “than there ever was or will be on land.”
