Psychic Detective
Each month, ex-cop and psychic Nicky Alan teams up with her spirit guides to investigate an unsolved mystery. Here she delves into the ‘hidden treasure’ of the French pirate, Olivier Levasseur…
It’s an irresistible story: a notorious pirate, about to be hanged for his crimes, tosses a secret code into the watching crowd and makes a declaration: Whoever can solve it will discover his hoard of pirate treasure!
That’s what’s said to have happened on 7th July 1730, on the island of Reunion, in the Indian Ocean, moments before the French pirate Olivier Levasseur was executed.
Almost three centuries on treasure hunters are still searching for Olivier’s loot, with the cache now believed to be worth around £100 million in today’s money!
So, is there really a fortune in pirate treasure concealed somewhere out there, just waiting to be found?
Olivier Levasseur was born in Calais, France, around 1690. After learning navigation from his seafaring father, Olivier is said to have joined the French Navy, before becoming a ‘privateer’ – a sailor with official permission to raid enemy ships.
Sometime around 1714 he’s said to have lost that ‘permission’ and crossed over into full-blown piracy.
For pirates in the 18th Century, image and reputation was everything. If enough tales of your brutality and bloodlust got around, you’d barely have to raise your sword before your enemies surrendered, simply for fear of what you might do!
Olivier went by the name ‘La Buse’ – The Buzzard – a bird of prey known for swooping mercilessly on its unfortunate victims. His flag, which flew on whichever stolen ship he was sailing in, showed the figure of a dead man.
Sailors who saw this flag approaching surely knew this was no friendly visit...
There are numerous reports of La Buse plundering ships or holding them to ransom, but his most famous raid took place in April 1721: the capture of the Portuguese galleon Nossa Senhora do Cabo.
The ship was reportedly weighed down with riches belonging to the Bishop of Goa and the Viceroy of Portugal; silver and gold, diamonds and pearls, artworks and religious artefacts... including the Flaming Cross of Goa, made of pure gold and inlaid with diamonds, rubies and emeralds.
By any measure it was a massive haul, thought to be the biggest in pirate history – even when divided equally between the crew, as was the custom according to the pirate code. Not long afterwards an official amnesty was announced. Pirates could walk free as long as they gave up piracy and handed over their ill-gotten gains.
Understandably not keen on handing over his hard-won fortune, La Buse is said to have gone into hiding.
He was finally captured on Madagascar in April 1730. From there he was taken to SaintDenis, on what’s now Reunion, a rugged volcanic island south of Mauritius.
Official records state that La Buse was interrogated three times before being hanged in front of a cheering crowd on 7th July, 1730 at 5pm.
Legend has it that as La Buse approached the scaffold he tossed a sheath of parchment containing a cryptogram or code into the waiting crowd, crying: ‘My treasure, for he who understands this!’
Almost 200 years later, in 1923, a massive storm hit the island of Mahé on the Seychelles and the driving winds and rain are said to have exposed mysterious markings on boulders, on the property of a woman named Rose Savy.
Rose’s nephew, who worked at the Reunion archives, linked the strange markings to the papers Olivier had tossed into the crowd. The documents were retrieved from storage.
La Buse tossed a code into the crowd
Over a decade later historian Charles Bourrel de la Roncière published a book called Le Flibustier Mysterieux including 17 lines of code in ‘pig pen cipher’ which Roncière argued was La Buse’s famous cryptogram. However, when decoded the lines appeared to be a French folk remedy of some kind, rather than directions to buried treasure.
In 1949 a neighbour of Rose Savy, a British soldier called Reginald Cruise-Wilkins, is said to have acquired the original papers from her, working out that the code was based on Masonic symbolism and included links to the position of the stars and references to the Twelve Labours of Hercules.
Cruise-Wilkins spent the next 27 years looking for the treasure. After Reginald’s death in 1977 his son John took over.
John, a history teacher, remains a notorious figure in the Seychelles – still searching for Olivier’s loot.
But despite lives – and life savings – spent searching, as far as anyone knows the apparently lost riches of the long-dead French pirate have still not been found.
It’s possible there never was any treasure to begin with. One fellow pirate’s account of his own life, published 14 years after Levasseur’s death, claimed that Olivier had actually lost his share of the raid on Nosa Senhora de Cabo after being caught conspiring against his shipmates... and it was largely this haul that led to the rumours of his vast wealth.
Did La Buse really leave a fortune behind – along with a genuine code identifying its location? If so, is the treasure and the code to locate it still around? Can my guides help me answer these riddles at last?
Theory 1
Is the legend of La Buse’s ‘secret code’ simply an entertaining story, manufactured by others after his death? Although there are official records of Olivier’s life, piracy and death by hanging, the accounts of him tossing clues to the location of his hidden treasure into the watching crowd are based on hearsay. Connecting, I feel Olivier did carry parchment in a necklace after burying his treasure.
Theory 2
Was the ‘code’ thrown into the crowd simply a last cruel joke by La Buse? I am sensing a narcissistic streak in him. He certainly wanted his legend to live on – and he knew that the mystery of his hidden treasure would ensure that.
Theory 3
Could the legend of hidden pirate treasure and a secret code be true? And if so, is the genuine code still in existence today? I feel the parchment originally obtained by Reginald and now used by his son John to hunt the treasure does date from Olivier’s lifetime. Whether its contents can ever be fully understood is less certain.