Pirate Hunters: Treasure, Obsession, and the Search for a Legendary Pirate Ship (20 page)

But Bowden held firm.

A few days later, Chatterton was back in Maine, making arrangements to dive real shipwrecks, getting to be John Chatterton again. Mattera flew back to the States, too, showing up at a gun range in Pennsylvania, shooting at targets long after they’d shredded and stopped being targets anymore.

A month passed that way. Then, in early December 2008, Mattera received a phone call from Bowden reporting news from Cultura: An archaeologist had found the
Golden Fleece.

At Cayo Levantado.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

DRIFTING AWAY

B
owden sounded shaken on the phone, but this was his information: A report had been filed at the lab in Santo Domingo by a Dominican-based archaeologist who had long researched shipwrecks, and even hunted treasure, in the country. Not only had he found the
Golden Fleece
at Cayo Levantado, he’d supplied the precise location.

Mattera went nauseous. He swore to Bowden that the discovery was impossible—that he and Chatterton had gone over every square foot around Cayo Levantado—but mostly his mind was swimming, searching the area all over again, dragging the magnetometer across Levantado and all that was fair in the world, telling himself it was inconceivable that he and Chatterton had found everything at the island but the one thing that mattered.

Mattera asked if he could get the location the archaeologist had supplied. In a barely audible voice, Bowden said he would try.

Mattera’s next call was to Chatterton. He laid out the facts as he knew them. Chatterton asked how fast Mattera could get to Miami International Airport.

“Why?” Mattera said.

“So we can go back and prove this is bullshit.”

On the airplane, Chatterton and Mattera analyzed the development.
Neither had expected an archaeologist to take a shot at the
Golden Fleece
, and yet it made sense. By making this discovery, the man could make a case, in the name of academia, for the Dominican government to grant him salvage rights over Bowden. He had a fine reputation. No doubt, he would contribute artifacts to a museum or a university to justify his claim jump.

The rest of the flight was spent trying to figure out where on the island the archaeologist had made his discovery, trying to imagine a spot they had missed. Every few minutes, one of the men would ask, “Did this sonofabitch really find it?” and the other would answer, “No way.”

They sat down with Bowden later that day in Santo Domingo. He looked worn, but he came with important information: the place where the archaeologist had reportedly found the
Golden Fleece
. The man hadn’t supplied any GPS coordinates, just a photograph and a description of an area at Cayo Levantado near the western beach. But that was enough for Chatterton and Mattera. They recognized the location. There was nothing there.

“Give us a few days,” Mattera said. “We’ll prove it.”

Before Bowden could object, Chatterton and Mattera were out the door and on their way to Samaná, ready to shoot down the archaeologist’s claim.

On the road to Samaná, Chatterton and Mattera received a call from Garcia-Alecont, who had spoken to a government contact. The new claim was putting pressure on Cultura to seize the
Golden Fleece
from Bowden and declare it an archaeological site—wherever she happened to lie. Officials now understood the rarity and significance of Bannister’s ship, and believed the wreck might be better curated by an academic than by treasure hunters. Chatterton and Mattera had feared these days were coming, when politicians and armchair wannabes elbowed in and stole treasure from real guys who worked the waters every day.

And there was more bad news.

As Garcia-Alecont understood it, the push was intensifying now at
Cultura to cut down the size of Bowden’s lease area. Indeed, the agency had taken similar action recently against another leaseholder, and appeared ready to do it to every treasure hunter working in country. By putting more salvors to work over smaller areas, Cultura could expect better production, along with increased lease payments. There was no telling which areas they would seize first.

“So what do we do?” Mattera asked.

Garcia-Alecont had no answer, just an opinion: Get to Cayo Levantado and deliver the strongest possible proof that the pirate ship was not where the archaeologist claimed it to be. The longer the lab believed it was there, the more likely they were to take it from Bowden. And then none of the rest would matter.

“We’re on the road, Victor,” Mattera said. “We’re already going as fast as we can.”

The next morning, Chatterton, Mattera, Kretschmer, and Ehrenberg took the
Deep Explorer
to Cayo Levantado, wondering how they would live with themselves if someone else had found a pirate ship in a place they’d sworn it could never be.

Chatterton slowed the engine as the boat settled near the westerly end of the island. He navigated the rest of the way by using the photograph Bowden had supplied, trying to match the image to the island, calling out directions to Kretschmer at the wheel. They finally reached the spot, a place a couple hundred yards offshore, and dropped anchor. Ehrenberg reviewed the team’s data files on his laptop. Months earlier, they’d surveyed the entire area and found no targets, and therefore, no shipwreck.

Still, they pulled on their dive gear to make sure.

They set up a grid and searched the bottom—visually and with metal detectors.

Methodically.

And again.

They found ceramic bricks and pieces of wood, all of which came from a shipwreck that was centuries old. But no one worried about
that. They’d discovered these remnants months ago, during one of their surveys of the island. By shape and dimensions, the pieces couldn’t have belonged to a ship larger than one-third of the
Golden Fleece.
This was the wreck of a sixteenth- or seventeenth-century island-hopper, not a great sailing vessel built to cross oceans and carry a hundred pirates.

Back on the boat, the team made a plan. They would send a report to the lab, including photographs, bathymetric surveys, magnetometer histories, and multicolored sonar images, an account so thorough it would rule out the site for good.

Heading back to the villa, the men got to thinking. There was no guarantee that Cultura would accept their proof that the archaeologist was wrong. Even if it did, other salvors or academics or treasure hunters were likely to follow with their own claims to the
Golden Fleece;
to Chatterton and Mattera, it made sense for rivals to show up now, as word must have leaked that Bowden was hot on the pirate ship’s trail. If enough rivals made similar claims, even if those claims were bullshit, Cultura could take the wreck from Bowden. The only defense was to find the
Golden Fleece.
And the best shot to do that was to convince Bowden to finish salvage at the sugar wreck site, and to do it now. If there was smoking gun evidence still under the mud, they would find it.

Mattera called Bowden, assuring him that the archaeologist’s report could not be correct, and imploring him to further salvage the sugar wreck site. Bowden seemed buoyed, but still concerned that others might descend on Cayo Levantado looking to claim the
Golden Fleece
.

“Exactly,” Mattera said. “Which is why you have to act now.”

Bowden agreed that action had to be taken. But he wanted Chatterton and Mattera back at Cayo Levantado. Mattera’s neck tightened so quickly his vision blurred.

“This is really bad, Tracy. There’s no way Chatterton is going back to that island.”

“He’s a hothead—”

“I’m not going to listen to that anymore,” Mattera said. “Chatterton is my partner. You need to forget Levantado.”

But Bowden didn’t sound like he was going to forget the island. When they hung up, Mattera could only think, “He’s lost confidence in us. He doesn’t believe in us anymore.”

That afternoon, at Fabio’s, Mattera told Chatterton about the call. He expected his partner to explode or storm out or to call Bowden and scream or quit, but it was worse than that. Chatterton just sat there, eating his pizza, looking through Mattera and out onto the street. Minutes passed this way, each longer than the last, until a familiar sound came from the television in the corner of the restaurant. Only now did Chatterton glance up, to see himself, starring in an episode of
Deep Sea Detectives
, the History Channel television series about two divers who solve shipwreck mysteries around the world, and he watched it, not because he enjoyed seeing himself on the screen, but because every one of the shows he’d filmed had an ending that made sense.

C
HATTERTON CALLED
M
ATTERA
’
S CELL
phone late that evening. He said he’d given up on Bowden, but could not put up with the idea of poachers stealing something they hadn’t worked for—something they were incapable of finding themselves. And yet, that’s likely what was coming now that word was out that Tracy Bowden was after the
Golden Fleece.

One morning, after Ehrenberg lost data on the computer, Chatterton exploded, accusing his friend and roommate of slovenly work and an unfocused mind.

“Screw this guy. I’m going home. It’s not worth it,” Ehrenberg told Mattera. “I don’t get paid. My payoff doesn’t come until we find something. And we sure as hell aren’t finding treasure now. I don’t need this.”

Before Chatterton could throw Ehrenberg over the villa’s balcony, Mattera stepped between them, pulling the usually easygoing Ehrenberg aside and urging him to stay.

Ehrenberg went inside to cool off. Chatterton followed him a few minutes later, and the men shook hands.

But the peace was short-lived. That afternoon, Chatterton lit into Kretschmer for requesting time off to spend with family.

“Now?” Chatterton yelled. “Are you fucking kidding me, Heiko?”

“You know what, John?” Kretschmer said. “I’m done. I have a job waiting for me at the oil refinery. It’s a steady job. It pays. I’m leaving.”

Again, Mattera jumped in, asking Kretschmer to stay on. But Kretschmer shook his head. His nights were tortured by mosquitos; there was no Internet or hot water in his apartment. He missed his family, and he had an offer for a good job, no crazy bosses.

Mattera couldn’t afford to lose Kretschmer any more than he could Ehrenberg; Kretschmer fixed everything, was the first to work in the morning and the last to leave at night, and was one of the nicest, easiest guys Mattera had known.

“You gotta take the good with the bad with Chatterton,” Mattera said. “He and I have different styles. But he gets more out of people than anyone in the world. He gets things done.”

“He’s making me crazy,” Kretschmer said.

“He’s making me crazy, too,” Mattera replied. “But we gotta remember that this sonofabitch is the one who’s going to help us make history. He squeezes more out of a three-week operation than most guys could in a year. You have to agree with that, Heiko.”

Kretschmer nodded.

“If you leave, we’re done,” Mattera said. “Worse than that: I lose a good friend, because I’ll have to kill you. So stay.”

Kretschmer took a breath and began to laugh.

“Okay,” he said. “For you I stay.”

Lying in bed that evening, sweating because the air conditioning had died, Mattera opened a book he’d read twice already:
Benedict
Arnold’s Navy
, about the American general’s stand against a British fleet on Lake Champlain in 1776. He read into the night, worried for Arnold, a hero in America’s greatest year, and the coming decision that would ruin the good life that Arnold had made.

It was now just a week before Christmas, and no one had to say it: They needed a break, from this place, from this search, from one another. So they decided to go home to spend time with families and do things that counted. No one believed other salvors would show up at Cayo Levantado during the holidays; that’s not how the lazy worked.

I
T TOOK MORE THAN
twenty hours for Chatterton to travel from Samaná back to Maine. When he got home, he kissed his wife, fell onto his living room couch, and marveled at how every light and appliance and toilet just worked. He went scallop diving off the rocky coast behind his backyard, stacked wood for his fireplace, and selected the right bottle of wine. At night, he lay silent in bed, unplagued by mosquitos and sweat. He took long, hot showers in the mornings.

Only after Christmas, when Chatterton had been home for a week, did Carla ask, “So, where’s our pirate?” Of course, she knew he hadn’t found Bannister yet, and she didn’t mind. He’d loved that about her since they met. She’d never complained about his work—the travel, the time away from home, the danger—never asked him to be who he wasn’t. But now, he could see that his life was wearing on her. More than once during the search for the pirate ship, Carla had said, “You work all the time,” and it was true, he was hardly home anymore, but any less effort and he’d lose the
Golden Fleece.
Every day, he wanted to tell Carla he didn’t need this bullshit in the Dominican Republic anymore, that his decision to hunt pirates and treasure now seemed a mistake, that he couldn’t believe the choices he’d made at a stage in his life when days, never mind years, couldn’t be thrown away. But what good would whining do? Instead, he just told her that it’s one thing to go up
against the ocean—if the ocean beats you, okay. But to be held back by a stubborn old man? That’s not how the world should work.

T
HE CROWD WAS LIVELY
for Chatterton’s talk at a northeast dive shop, and he did not disappoint. Jumping into his story about finding the mystery U-boat, he gestured with his hands to describe his first moments inside the lost German sub and twisted his body to show how he’d slithered out with his life.

At the end, people lined up to have him sign books, DVD covers, and T-shirts. They asked his advice and told him he’d been an inspiration. Time went fast for Chatterton here.

At home, he received a phone call from Terry Kerby, the director at the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory. Kerby had an idea for a television documentary: an investigation into whether a two-man Japanese midget submarine had fired torpedoes at the battleship USS
Arizona
during the attack on Pearl Harbor. To Chatterton, the idea was a winner. It had everything he loved: history, mystery, and deep diving. And an ending. He thought it perfect for PBS and its documentary series
Nova
, which he’d been a part of before.

“Sounds like a great project, Terry. Let me get back to you.”