How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems

by Randall Munroe

In 1699, Scottish privateer* William Kidd was about to be arrested for various maritime crimes.* Before sailing to Boston to confront the authorities, he buried some gold and silver on Gardiners Island, off the tip of Long Island in New York, for safekeeping. It wasn’t exactly a secret—he buried it with the permission of the island’s proprietor, John Gardiner, along a pathway west of the manor house. Kidd was arrested and eventually executed, and the island’s proprietor handed the treasure over to the Crown. Believe it or not, that’s the entire history of buried pirate treasure. The reason “buried treasure” is such a well-known trope is that Captain Kidd’s story helped inspire Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Treasure Island, which almost single-handedly* created the modern image of the pirate.