There’s a number of treasure stories surrounding St. George Island, Florida. I hope you enjoy them, and if you ever find any of them, especially the whiskey cache, let me know!

The Buried Gold

Eastern tip of St George Island

• It’s said that there is $6,000,000 in pure gold bars, hidden on the eastern tip of Saint George Island. The Spanish gold is buried in an eight-foot deep pit, stored in clay crocks.
• In 1796 the pirate William August Bowles, the “King of Florida”, is said to have buried a treasure on St. George Island, worth a cool $10,000,000. Alpheus Hyatt Verrill mentions this treasure cache in his book, Romantic and Historic Florida. The book is long out of print, but you can find used copies by searching on Amazon.
• 5 Chests with an unknown content is said to be buried at the western end of the island, no one knows who buried it.
• The pirate, William “Billy Bowlegs” Rogers, has supposedly buried a couple of chests near the old lighthouse on the island. The first lighthouse was built in 1833 on the western edge of Saint George Island. That lighthouse was destroyed in 1846, so in 1848 a second lighthouse was built at the southern tip of Little St. George Island. 3 years later it was destroyed by a hurricane. The third lighthouse was finished in 1852, it was built 500 yards inland from the second lighthouse. This last lighthouse collapsed on October 21, 2005.
• There’s also rumors of a shipwreck in the West Pass, between Little St. Georges Island and St. Vincent Island, belonging to the pirate William Billy Bowlegs Rogers.

Now you’ve read about the hidden gold, but here comes the good part…

The Lost Whiskey Cache

• In 1763 a ship was on its way from Ireland to New Orleans, on board was 160 barrels of fine Irish whiskey. When the schooner passed by St. George Island it was caught in a hurricane and was smashed against the island. The captain and crew of the ship buried the whiskey kegs in a large pit back from the beach on the eastern end of the island. According to local stories they also buried the ship’s strong box just west of the location where they buried the whiskey.
• There’s another whiskey treasure near Saint George Island as well. The steamer “Alice”, which had 300 barrels of  delicious whiskey on board sank, up the river from Apalachicola. This treasure is worth at least $500,000 today. The steamer should lie under at least 28 feet of clay and sand today, a diver still claims he’s reached the hull of the ship two times. The next time he says he’ll take the cargo with him.

Tags: Billy Bowlegs, Gold, Pirate, Whiskey

There’s several stories about treasure buried on Cocos Island, also called Isla del Coco. One of them is probably one of the largest treasure hoards of all time!

The Lima Treasure

Treasure on Cocos Island?

This is the biggest and most famous treasure on Cocos Island, it’s worth over $20 million. The items below is just a part of the treasure hoard:

• 113 religious gold statues
• 200 chests of jewels
• 250 swords with jeweled hilts
• 150 chalices
• 300 bars of gold
• 600 bars of silver

How it got there

In 1823, a group of Spaniards plundered Lima of the Peruvian state treasure. They then put in on board of the ship Mary Dier. Under the command of Captain William Thompson, they killed the accompanying Governor of Lima, then they sailed to Cocos Island and buried the treasure in a cave. When they left the island with Mary Dier, they were attacked by a Spanish frigate, Espiegle. Captain Thompson and another crewmember was taken to the island to reveal the location of the treasure, but Thompson fled into the jungle and hid. After a long and unsuccessful search the Spanish frigate left. Thompson stayed on Cocos Island for a month, he then was rescued by the crew of a whaler.
He never returned to Cocos Island, but he gave a chart and the exact location of the treasure to his friend, John Keating.

The Treasure Expeditions

Keating actually found the treasure together with a companion, but the crew of their ship suspected this and mutinied. Keating and the friend fled to the island and went into hiding. He, like Thompson, got rescued by a whaler, while the other companion died.

Next in turn to search Cocos Island for another treasure was the German August Gissler, who searched for the pirate Benito Bonitos buried gold for 20 years, from 1889-1909. He didn’t find the treasure, but he did find other interesting things, for example a stone carved with a K(Maybe John Keating left a mark?).

Since then a number of expeditions have scoured Cocos Island for that treasure, some say there’s been as much as 300 expeditions. In 1897 Admiral Henry Palliser and 330 of his men searched the island and damaged it greatly in the proccess. A 30-man Austalian expedition consisting of mountain climpers tried their luck, but failed.
Another man who had more luck than the previous expeditions was Colonel J.E. Leckie, who supposedly found some of Bonito’s gold with the help of a Metallaphon(An early kind of metal detector).

Cocos Island today

If we fast forward to the present day, Cocos Island has become a National Park and is also a World Heritage Site. The only people allowed to live on Isla del Coco are the Park Rangers, who have two encampments on the island. Tourists can not stay overnight, are not allowed to camp, can not collect anything from the island, they even need permission from the Park Rangers just to be allowed ashore. So if you’re planning to go after this treasure, be ready for some serious sneaking around in the jungle.

Tags: Cocos Island, Gold, Treasure

One of the most famous and evasive treasures of the last 200 years is the one that is supposedly buried on Oak Island in Nova Scotia, Canada. Some say it’s the legendary treasure of the Knights Templar, others say it’s the pirate Captain Kidds buried gold. As there’s so much recorded history on this treasure, I’ve decided to split the story up in several parts, starting with the earliest history.

The Money Pit

The known history of the so called Money Pit starts in 1795, when 16 year old Daniel McGinnis stumpled over a circular depression next to a tree on the southeastern end of the island. There were tales of pirate treasure in the area, so he decided to excavate the depression with the help of some friends. It didn’t take alot of digging before they discovered something, just a few feet below the surface there was a layer of flagstones, covering the pit.

They continued past the flagstones and at 10 feet they found a layer of oak logs. They encountered another layer of logs at 20 feet and yet another layer at 30 feet, where they abandoned the project for the moment.

8 years passed before the search continued, now together with a company called The Onslow Company. They digged to around 90 feet, still finding layers of logs every 10 feet. They also encountered layers of charcoal, putty and coconut fibre at 40, 50 and 60 feet.

At 90 feet they supposedly found a stone inscribed with mysterious symbols. Several people tried to decipher the meaning of the symbols and one person claimed he succeeded. According to him the inscription meant forty feet below, two million pounds lie buried.. After they found the stone and broke through the layer of logs at 90 feet, water started rushing in and flooded the pit up to the 33-foot level. They tried to drain the pit with pumps, but failed. The year after they tried a different approach and dug another pit next to the Money Pit to the depth of 100 feet and then dug a tunnel into the original pit.

That also failed and it would take another 45 years before another company would continue the hunt for treasure. To be continued…

If you want the full story right away I recommend that you check the books about Oak Island in my bookstore.

Tags: Knights Templar, Oak Island, Treasure

Not many things can spellbind you more than a good old story about lost treasure. Just the thought of gold has made alot of men(and women) commit the most sinister crimes. Think of all the stories about buried pirate treasure you’ve heard as a child, or seen more recently in pirates of the carribbean. Think of the rumors of long forgotten gold mines in the nearby mountains. Think of the outlaws in the wild west and the loot they got from the countless robberies, where is it buried? There’s more buried treasure out there than you can find in your lifetime, some has calculated the worth to several, several billion dollars.

It happens now and then that some unaware person stumbles upon a treasure cache and dont have to worry about money for the rest of their lives. Some people even hunt treasure for a living, like the late Mel Fisher, who in 1985 found the shipwreck of the famous spanish galleon Atocha, which contained over 40 tons of silver and gold worth approximately $450 million. They’re still haven’t salvaged all the items from that ship.

So what do I plan to write about on this website?
Anything from lost gold mines, sunken shipwrecks, buried outlaw gold to tons of gold hidden deep in the djungle by ancient civilizations.

I suggest you come back and read the stories about buried treasure in your neighbourhood, because you might get lucky!

Check back tomorrow for the first story!

Tags: Atocha, Gold, Mel Fisher, Treasure