Buried Treasure:
Most experts on piracy tend to argue that maps to buried treasure are a work of fiction. They also believe that pirate would not have buried treasure on deserted islands. There are two sound reasons for not believing in buried treasure. 1) There has never been a legitimate treasure map found and 2) pirates tended to spend all their money as soon as they hit port and would return to pirating in order to raise more money. Probably the most famous treasure map is that of Captain Flint, the fictional pirate in Stevenson's Treasure Island. Almost every famous pirate captain has a legend about a treasure map to his secret stash of booty. Blackbeard and Black Bart both have several legends about buried treasure.
With that said, the romantic in me says that buried treasure may indeed exist. Some pirate managed to sack and pillage great amounts of gold and silver. I can't imagine a pirate with 10,000 pieces of eight to carry it with him everywhere he went. Where is he going to put the money? Would he put it in a Bank? Probably not. Would he trust his ship mates to watch it for him when he went to tavern? Probably not. Would he find a place to hide it? Yeah, probably. So maybe somewhere on some spit of land, or hidden in a grave yard, or perhaps in a isolated patch of land near an old port or river bank, a pirate buried a barrel or wooden chest with a bunch of doubloons inside. He probably wouldn't draw a map to where it was unless he knew he was going to die and was giving his shares to a partner. |