Pirate Hunters: Treasure, Obsession, and the Search for a Legendary Pirate Ship

Pirate Hunters: Treasure, Obsession, and the Search for a Legendary Pirate Ship by Robert Kurson
Published: 2015
Narrated by: Ray Porter
Length: 08:24 (275 pages)

I’ve always been obsessed with stories of treasure hunting. I used to dream of being Indiana Jones as a kid, searching the world for artifacts of historical significance (it’s not always about the money, as any self-respecting treasure hunter will tell you). I still remember my disappointment when it occurred to me that satellites had mapped out the world and the chance of coming across a disused temple somewhere was slim to none.

Well, it turns out treasure hunting has been alive and well, it’s just been taking place in the ocean. John Chatterton and John Mattera are two such treasure hunters and have spent their lives diving wrecks around the world. They’d been preparing for a potentially lucrative dive, one on a time-limit due to changing shipwreck laws, when they received a call from a friend who said he knew the general location of a wrecked pirate ship.

The pirate wreck was a long shot, so it was a risk to change their plans, but the prestige that would come along with a successful mission was enough to draw them in. Only one other pirate ship had ever been discovered before this. Even when found, they are notoriously difficult to properly identify, but to do so would be a dream come true. They abandoned their treasure and left to the Dominican Republic in search of the Golden Fleece, the lost pirate ship of Joseph Bannister.

This jumps around between the search itself, the backgrounds of both men, and the history of Joseph Bannister. I read some reviews that felt the story meandered too much, and I think if you’re only interested in the wreck that would be the case, but I loved everything about this. Both Chatterton and Mattera have fascinating stories, as you’d expect of people working in such dangerous careers, and the story of Joseph Bannister is a lot of fun. He was respected man who just up and stole the merchant ship he was captaining, picked up a new hundred-man crew, and lived this rest of his life as a pirate. After being caught, he managed to escape the English, steal his ship back, sail away, and eventually fight off two British frigates.

Throughout the book, we also essentially get an overview of the golden age of piracy, the rise and fall of the pirate safe haven that Port Royal became, Captain Henry Morgan (now of mediocre rum fame), and how the English basically permitted state-ordered piracy. I also enjoyed the small insights into how a buccaneer crew operated as a democracy – everyone on board voting on where to sail, the captain being voted in and needing to fight alongside his crew, and sharing any loot equally among everyone on board. There was even standard compensation for a loss of limb, with the rate depending on which limb, if they were successful in capturing loot. 600 pieces-of-eight or 6 slaves was the going rate for a lost (or rendered unusable) right arm, for example.

I actually came across this after looking for treasure hunting fiction, something along the lines of the Indiana Jones films or the Uncharted and Tomb Raider games. If anyone has recommendations along those lines, fiction or more non-fiction, I would very much appreciate it. Most of what I found were dodgy novelizations that looked absolutely awful. Robert Kurson has an earlier book following the same two men, called Shadow Divers, which I will be reading.

I loved this. It’s written like fiction, if that makes any sense, in that the writing is paced in a way that you would expect from a fictional story. Ray Porter was a fantastic narrator, and this was great as an audiobook, but I do wonder if I missed out on photos. The writing isn’t dry at all, and I was hooked from the very beginning. Definitely recommended if you have any interest in the topic.