X Marks the Spot

Pirate means different things to different people. Before Hollywood rehabilitated their image and romanticized them in the past century, they were known and feared as despicable humans. When the job requirements are rape, pillage, and plunder the candidates don’t add up to much. Privateers, pirates under a different name often get a pass, especially when their sponsors write the history books. Operating under a letter of marque, they traded their anonymity for legal protection in exchange for a percentage of their loot. Sir Francis Drake may be the most famous of the group which includes notable names such as Edward Teach, William Kidd, Calico Jack, and John Paul Jones.

Photo by Sergey Semin on Unsplash

Pirates and privateers needed safe ports to hang out, spend, and in some cases stash their ill-gotten gains. Port Royal Jamaica and New Providence in the Bahamas were famous as pirate havens. They were not alone. In the late 1600s, under the protection of the Dutch governor Adolph Esbit, St Thomas in the US Virgin islands harboreded several pirates. Jean Hamlin, captain of La Trompeuse, was known to have a business relationship with the governor. He was even known to dine with him and sleep in his house.

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In Wood’s Justice, I use that friendship, which is laid out in a book: The Burning of a Pirate Ship. Though Hamlin’s ship was rumored to have been burnt and sunk along with another ship taking a large cache of silver to the bottom, the treasure Mac searches for is from a sentence-long entry from 1683.

Esmit sent Hamlin with a barque and fishing net to mosquito bay. Riffles, ammo, provisions, five chests and boxes carried by 4 slaves.

This was immediately after Hamlin and his crew took a ship off Jamaica and captured 500 lbs of gold. I combined the events to create the cache Mac searches for.

Copy of chart from The Burning of a Pirate Ship

Mac’s main hurdle was in locating Mosquito Bay. The chart shown above taken from the book clearly shows the bay with an arrow pointing to it. As he discovers the name of the bay was changed to Lindbergh Bay, shown below.

Screenshot from Navionics

Finding the bay is not the last hurdle. As evident from the two maps, the shoreline has been altered and filled over the years.

Once he locates the bay, Mac has to think like a pirate, something Trufante is more suited for. The Cajun didn’t make this trip though, so Mac is on his own.

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