X is for X Marks the Spot

It's one of those iconic images of a pirate stories: the map with a big X marking the buried treasure. And after almost a full month of bursting bubbles and naysaying everyone's favourite action-adventure tropes, I'm here to tell you that there's real pirate treasure out there for the finding.

Piracy has been around since the first traders took to the ocean, but the hayday of high-seas bucaneering was between [years]. As sailing ships carried good across the Atlantic and Pacific by the thousands, the opportunities to make a quick fortune as a pirate or privateer (a pirate operating under the auspices of a sponsor government) became an increasing temptation. The life of a 17th century pirate was high-risk, which meant that quite a bit of hidden treasure never got retrieved, was washed overboard in storms, or sank with a ship. Add to that the high number of legitimate merchants whose vessels went down, and you have a significant amount of buried or sunken treasure waiting to be discovered.

Worried that the long-sunk booty actually belongs to someone else? As it turns out, international maritime salvage laws are on your side (what good is a Maritime Law class if you can't use your newfound knowledge to go treasure-hunting?), providing you have the time, money, and energy to go looking. For the rest of us, Treasure Island is available as a free ebook from Project Gutenberg, so you can do your treasure-hunting vicariously.