Though the political wrangling and in-fighting over the recently discovered pirate treasure has (to nobody’s surprise) continued in Mauritius and Rodrigues, more tangible details of the find have begun to creep out.

For one, the location of the cavern (‘grotto’) is now widely reported as being in the Vallée St François in the East of Rodrigues (though given that there are often queues of visitors driving up to have a look now, it’s hardly a secret). This is a valley dipping eastwards towards the sea between two radiating arms of the mountain that makes up the central part of the island. It runs down to the Auberge St Francois B&B on the plage de St François, which one website droolingly describes as having “Miles of fine sand, warm and transparent water, filao trees as far as the eye can see [… and] three of the top ten Rodrigues restaurants on Trip Advisor“.

So, when we read (in the Mauritian press) about the two hikers walking down a dried-up river bed (strong echoes of Bernardin Nageon de l’Estang there, you might say, hohum), I think this is basically the foot of the valley you can see running down the centre of the picture above (facing East).

Incidentally, one nearby cove beach is called “Trou d’Argent”, about which Lonely Planet helpfully notes: “Local legend has it that a pirate once hid his treasure here“. And there’s an identically named “Trou d’Argent” on Mauritius’ east coast. So perhaps nobody should have been shocked if pirate gold turns up in, errrm, a hole here. Or indeed there. No, wait… 🙂

A Private Notice Question (PNQ) to the local administration (which I saw reported here) also revealed some things I didn’t know:

  • The two hikers reported their find to the (Mauritian) authorities on 15th and 22nd March 2019
  • Their names are Roger de Spéville and Georges Désiré Némorin
  • The find was reported to the Rodrigues authorities on 11th June 2019

Anyway, in other news reported in the last few days, the roof of the cavern had supposedly collapsed due to heavy flooding since last year (though I’m not sure that’s true). Another news report suggested that the ‘treasure’ may well have just been a mirage, a trick of the light.

And – in a strange update in the last day or so in l’Express – a photo taken in the last few days seems to imply that the cave may have been robbed out. Even former chief commissioner Johnson Roussety is one of those who now believe the treasure has been moved.

Moreover, Roussety is one of those who believe that the “hikers” were (contrary to their affidavit) actually treasure hunters, and has posted (undated) pictures on his Facebook feed showing a bearded person on the beach (presumably de Saint Francois) using a metal detector (though whether this is one of the two hikers he doesn’t say).

(Having said that, I should point out that almost all people who use metal detectors on beaches primarily use them to find jewellery and coins dropped in the sand by modern tourists, not to find pirate treasure. Just so y’know!)

So… while all the politicos have been shouting at each other, might the Lady have quietly vanished in the night? Or might the Lady never have been on the train in the first place? We now seem to have entered a properly Hitchcockian zone, where you would be unwise to trust that anything anyone tells you will leave you any wiser. (Apart from me, of course. 😉 )

PS: given that Rodrigues has beautiful beaches but a desperately struggling economy, why has nobody yet pointed out that the appearance of pirate treasure here is almost too good to be true? (Or indeed ‘to be Trou‘?) Any conspiracy theorist worth their salt should surely now be suggesting that the goat skull and treasure were only ever touristic stage props designed to bring footfall to the island’s beaches. Just a thought! 😉

Back in the 18th century when Île de France was owned by France, the French gave the island their laws. And when the British took it over (and renamed it ‘Mauritius’) at the start of the 19th century, they left (as I understand it, please correct me if I’m wrong) almost all existing laws intact.

Further: because of all the destructive treasure hunting activity that went on in Mauritius in the early 20th century (imagine large groups of overexcited treasure hunters with hundreds of sticks of dynamite, and you’re basically there), additional modern legislation has been passed forbidding treasure hunting: or, rather, making it almost impossible for anyone to benefit from deliberately going treasure hunting.

All which has the side effect of making the Republic of Mauritius – arguably one of the best places in the world to go treasure hunting, in terms of artifacts that are probably buried there (e.g. pirate treasure) – one of the worst places to benefit from being a treasure hunter. Because if you do find something that you went looking for, you then automatically lose the right to benefit from finding it. And so Mauritian treasure hunting lore is full of stories of people not just finding treasure, but also stealing that treasure away to sell via the black market.

In a very significant way, this has had (I think) the effect of criminalizing treasure hunting. Hence the only clear way you can honestly benefit from finding lost treasure in Mauritius is if you literally stumble upon it while doing something else. (Article 716 of the Mauritian Civil Code says that, in this case, 50% should go to the accidental discoverers, and 50% to the Mauritian state.)

What The Two Hikers Found

Back in August 2018, the ‘something else’ that two ecologists were busy doing (while definitely not looking for pirate treasure) was hiking around the island of Rodrigues. (Just so you know, this is according to the affidavit the two filed with Juristconsult Chambers, which L’Express had seen.)

The first thing they did was stumble upon three nearby rock faces with curious signs and marks, and took some photographs. However, when they (later on) enlarged those photos, it became quickly clear to them that the marks were not natural marks, but were instead man-made ones (made using a chisel). Hence they decided to return to take a closer look.

On their next hike to the same place, one of the two squeezed into the narrow gap between the three rock faces and took photographs of the cavity behind them. This time when enlarged, their new photographs revealed (drum roll, please) a rusty chest, decayed rope from a pulley setup, a metal rod that had fallen from the chest, and finally (leaving the best until last) a goat’s skull mounted on a shiny metal body, that might possibly even be gold.

As far as I can tell, this was as far as our two intrepid (and as-yet-not-named-in-public) Mauritian eco-hikers went: that is, they didn’t try to excavate the find (no, not even with dynamite, even if that has become something of a ridiculous Mauritian tradition).

For a bit of local colour, I found this 1:38-long video (that doesn’t, to be honest, show a great deal of interest, apart from blurry shots of the cavity, queues of people driving to visit the site, plus excited locals being interviewed) on MBC here:

    
        
    
                   

What has become clear this week is that the site (in the East of Rodrigues) is very much as the two hikers described it, and that what they found there is indeed almost certainly pirate treasure, all of which the local administration now has soldiers guarding 24/7. Which is nice.

Treasure Finding (Not Treasure Hunting)

Because the two ecologists found their (probable) pirate treasure while hiking (i.e. they weren’t looking for it), this almost certainly counts, under Mauritian law, as a genuine treasure-finding scenario (as opposed to a treasure-hunting scenario).

But here’s where the whole story gets more than a tad political.

By way of background: though Rodrigues was taken over by the British at around the same time as Mauritius, it was made a district of the Republic of Mauritius in 1968 (when Mauritius gained independence); and was then made an ‘autonomously administered region’ within the Republic of Mauritius (though under Mauritian law) in 2002. So even though it’s still part of Mauritius, its politicians like to think of themselves as largely independent of Mauritius.

Hence you can probably guess how the three-way battle is now unfolding. On the one hand, you have the two ecologist hikers, for whom Lady Luck (and indeed Mauritian law) currently seems to be on their side. On the other hand you have the Mauritian central government who is (by way of its own law) the find’s other 50% beneficiary. And on the third hand (just to muck up the whole hand-based thing), you have pretty much everyone in Rodrigues’ autonomous administration, who feel that Mauritian law is clearly an ass, because Rodrigues should obviously benefit from this whole affair, even if the Mauritian treasure-finding legal computer says no.

And so many Rodrigues politicians are now desperately spinning round in circles trying to concoct quasi-legal ways by which ‘their’ pirate treasure can become less of a Mauritian cash cow and more of a Rodriguan regional asset. The word on everyone’s lips seems to be “patrimoine” (patrimony), though the specific details of how that can be mobilized remain rather more than a little challenging. For example, there is talk of applying to make the cave a UNESCO site of special historical significance, even if this perhaps seems a tad optimistic for what seems to be little more than an unexcavated rocky hole in the ground.

How will this whole affair now play out? Even though SAJ (better known as Rodrigues’ Ministre Mentor Sir Anerood Jugnauth) is keen to stress that the Law is King of this particular jungle, it would seem that there are plenty of legal eagles hovering above this piratical carcass, eager to pick the bones clean for themselves. Anyone who would happily bet on the ultimate outcome at this stage would, in my opinion, be fairly unwise.

Pirate Treasures of the Indian Ocean?

It should be no surprise that virtually every news report so far has name-checked Olivier Levasseur (AKA “La Buse“) and the mysterious cryptogram speculatively linked to him by Charles de la Roncière (and since then by several generations of gullible treasure hunters), all of which I’ve covered numerous times on Cipher Mysteries. (e.g. here, here, here, here, etc).

Some reports have further tried linking the story to Bernardin Nageon de l’Estang, with many claiming (about as incorrectly as can be) that Bernardin was some kind of royal pirate treasure collector (not even close, sorry, and where does that misinformation even come from?) *sigh* (Again, all of which I’ve covered too many times to even link here.)

But in fact, arguably the most genuinely interesting (and apparently unasked) question here is whether any of the curious marks that the two hikers found link up in any way with other stories of curious marks that the Indian Ocean pirate treasure literature abounds with. Most notably, Le Clézio’s “Voyage à Rodrigues” (why do I seem to be the only person commenting on this that mentions Le Clézio? How bizarre is that?) has plenty of specific interest here, but once La Buse gets mentioned, everyone’s minds seem to turn to mush, which is a shame and a half.

For me, there’s a huge amount of historical and research interest to be had here, but the reportage surrounding the story so far just isn’t cutting it yet. I normally like L’Express, but their plucky journalists only seem to have got their teeth into 10% of the (much bigger) story so far. Let’s hope things starts to pick up soon.

Of course, if anyone out there wants to fly me to Rodrigues (purely in the interests of historical research, you understand), I’m sure I could be reasonably accommodating. It really wouldn’t take me that long to pack my factor 50 and special pack of piña colada straws research laptop, I swear. 😉

“La Buse, l’or maudit des Pirates de l’océan Indien” is a two-part (i.e. 2 x 52 minutes) documentary with fictional re-enactments (you get the idea) made by Kapali Studios, and due for release around January 2019 (so no need to get too excited just yet).

If (like me) you’re a pirate museum trivia fan, you’ll be interested to hear that the film-makers did their talking heads interviews in the Musée de la Marine and the Musée Cognacq-Jay (both in Paris), as well as on “L’Étoile du Roy“, a 46m replica of an 18th century British sixth-rate frigate that is a well-known tourist attraction in Saint-Malo (it was previously used as HMS Indefatigable in the TV series “Hornblower”).

Of course, as a cipher historian who cannot for the life of me see any actual connection between La Buse and “his” cryptogram, there could be no place set for me at that particular table – for realistically, where would the mystery be without the cryptogram? But while I don’t hold out a lot of hope for cryptological accuracy here, I’m sure the production will look beautiful. 🙂

The Eye Candy Bit

There are some nice behind-the-scenes images on the Kapali Studios website which I thought it would be nice to share here:

There were some other images here:

There’s a big controversy at the moment about bloggers and vloggers who get paid to promote products but who do not declare it (or, perhaps more often, do declare it but in what can easily be perceived as misleading ways). For the record: though I have been given a small number of books to review here, arguably the biggest favour I’ve ever returned is that of tactical silence, i.e. not posting a review at all when I really couldn’t comfortably say a good thing about the book.

But all the same, I must confess that there’s a tiny evil homunculus deep inside my psyche that secretly yearns – much as Britten’s Ploughboy dreamt of – to sell off my Ayes and Nos to the highest bidder. Though I’d never actually do such a thing, when certain objects contrive to present themselves before me, I do find my homunculus jumping up and down like crazy

La Buse Vanilla Rum

A few days back, I was delighted to stumble across a German drinks site offering a “La Buse” pirate-themed rum distilled in Réunion by J. Chatel S.A.R.L. [history here] (image from drinkology):

Here’s my translation of their effusively rum-soaked copy:

La Buse Vanilla Rum embodies rum’s typical character yet in a stylish way. A white rum from Réunion, it impresses with its clear line and simplicity: light and pleasantly sweet, it brings a summery feeling to your home. Indispensable for the bar and for the kitchen, it instantly refines desserts, cakes, drinks and cocktails. Drunk straight on the rocks, it refreshes the stomach and cools the head.

OK, I’m sold already. But the copywriter, clearly licking his or her lips in a very old-fashioned way, continues riffing on its ‘real vanilla’ USP:

La Buse Vanilla Rum has been flavored with real vanilla to make it unique. For gourmets, it is in great demand for use in high-end kitchens and is often used to add the ‘final touch’. Bright, clear and freshly fruity, it is particularly well-suited as a basis for great cocktails. The bottle is particularly elaborate and stylishly decorated, with a large picture of an old pirate reminiscent of the origins of rum: for old sailors and seasoned men would have lost all control at the sight of this noble drink. La Buse Vanilla Rum continues this tradition and would certainly have been a favorite drink of pirates and sailors. Anyone today who does not want to be able to drink tough sailors under the table would prefer not to drink it neat, because it is good and strong and heats the throat and stomach powerfully. And there’s no need to miss out on cold winter days, because a slug in your cup of black tea refines it splendidly.

Unfortunately…

However, before you get too excited, I should add that it seems that J. Chatel has stopped making this particular rum, which is a huge shame (particularly because I was going to order a case, in the interests of cipher research, of course). But I thought you’d like to see it anyway. 😉