A Deadly Path To Treasure

A Deadly Path To Treasure

Published by Robert C. Moran at Smashwords

Copyright 2011 Robert C. Moran

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prologue

Reviews

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1, The Adventure Begins

Chapter 2, Solitary Confinement ...Mind Games

Chapter 3, Flying

Chapter 4, Sea Duty

Chapter 5, Cold Weather Detachment

Chapter 6, A Dream. The Treasure Ship

Chapter 7, History of the 1715 Treasure Fleet

Chapter 8, Kip Wagner

Chapter 9, Mel Fisher Joins Kip Wagner

Chapter 10, The Swedish Schooner Astrid

Chapter 11, Sand Dredging in the Keys

Chapter 12, My Hippie Days

Chapter 13, The Trouble with Treasure

Chapter 14, The Grumman Widgeon

Chapter 15, The Bronze Cannons

Chapter 16, The Northwind sinks

Chapter 17, The Arbutus

Chapter 18, The Plus Ultra

Chapter 19, The Smuggling Days

Chapter 20, The Santa Margarita

Chapter 21, A Bad Decision

Chapter 22, The Main Pile

Chapter 23, A Tennessee Horse Farm

Chapter 24, Free At Last

About the author

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Prologue:

He's had encounters with drug smugglers, landed his plane in

jungle airstrips and fought modern day pirates. He's faced an

armed robber and only he walked away alive.

Robert C. Bob Moran is the individual authors create as the hero in their novels. The difference is that he actually lived through these adventures and is still around to write about them. He’s been shipwrecked at sea, surviving five days in a lifeboat with little food or water.

His lifeboat landed in Cuba just after the 1962 Kennedy-Khrushchev missile crises and he was arrested as a spy and saboteur and sentenced to face a firing squad by Fidel Castro.

He’s discussed treasure hunting with the Queen of Spain, socialized on the beach at Nice, France with Elizabeth Taylor and drank champagne in Villefranche on the French Riviera with Errol Flynn.

The author is shown here with his Grumman Widgeon amphibian seaplane at Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas.

This is the true story of the incredible adventures of one man that led him to be part of the richest Spanish treasure finds in the history of the New World. It's estimated that the total value of the 1715 and the 1622 Spanish Fleet treasure recoveries could approach $800 million dollars and more is still being found by the divers today.

The Spanish galleons Atocha and Margarita were found in the 1980's by Mel Fisher and his Golden Crew. The story has been the subject of numerous National Geographic print and television specials and also one major Hollywood production starring Cliff Robertson and Mash star Loretta Switt.

****

Reviews

Capt. Bob Moran's, "A Deadly Path To Treasure ", has something for everyone. Do recounts of cold war intrigue interest you? Does being a political pawn after being washed up on Castro's shore grip you? How about flying fast aircraft by the seat of the pants on normal and somewhat dubious missions? Have you ever read a first person account of how the fastest draw walked away to tell the story?

The above stories and many more are laced throughout the book. Oh, I didn't mention the quest and discovery of TREASURE, sunken treasure, the real thing. Capt. Moran is more than a treasure hunter, he is a treasure finder. His book is the latest installment of books being written that convey the work, play, frustrations, rewards, and the heartbreaks associated with the search and discovery of the doomed 1622 fleet sister galleons " Nuestra Senora de Atocha and the Santa Margarita ", located near the magic island of Key West, Fl.

The book is well written, and hard to leave unattended until finished. The photographs are as remarkable as the stories themselves. The CD format is unique and easier to read. I liked adjusting the fonts to a larger size and supersizing the pictures. When I joined Treasure Salvors, I missed meeting Capt. Moran by just a few months. I heard legendary stories about him from the crew. I finally met Bob in 2010. When he told us he was working on his book. We all prodded him over the last year to get it done. It was worth waiting so long to meet him, and it was well worth waiting for the book. It is another link to the puzzle as to what Treasure Salvors Inc. really was! This belongs in your library. They are stories of a giant, written by a humble man.

How about Volume 2 Capt. Bob? Randy Hambone Barnhouse.

Just in from sea Bob. Read your book while I was digging holes on the Atocha. I really enjoyed your life story and what a life it has been. I enjoyed seeing you when you were here. Captain Andy Matroci.

Bob, Received the book/CD today and did a quick speed read. Need to go back at my leisure and do a proper job of reading it. I really enjoyed your writing style. Clean, no bull shit or artifices. Bill Diaz

Bob, I had 3 long airplane flights this week and read your DVD/book on my Kindle (converted it to a .mobi file). What a great story…and what an adventurous life you’ve had. It must have been very entertaining, after the fact, to mull over some of those situations you were in…easy to laugh about them after the fact!!! Anyway, you’ve made a great contribution to the history of Treasure Salvors…and I appreciate that (so will many others). I will add this to my website tomorrow and send a general email to the entire Sunken Treasure Book Club. OK if I send out your address???? Anyway, congratulations on a great work!!!! Dave Crooks

Capt. Bob Moran’s book ‘A Deadly Path To Treasure’, is an insight to an incredible life of which most people only dream about. The author puts the reader in the first person as they flip page after page. This is a marvelous read which should be in any armchair treasure enthusiast’s or seasoned treasure hunter’s library. Capt. Curtis William Erling White

Great book Bob! An easy read. What a life story. You are an original member of The Wild Bunch! A must read for any Atocha buff too. Bill Pearson

Bob just finished reading it and I must say you have led such an interesting life. I had no idea you had gone through so many adventures. Thanks for the read. Karen Hargreaves

This is one of the best books I've ever read. Joy Warshauer

Bob. This is a great read. I cannot put it down! Or should I say, turn it off. Are you (or do you) have this book in print?? Ben Costello

Bob Moran is a true adventurer, a true treasure hunter and the Real Deal. A Deadly Path to Treasure covers the career of this truly interesting pirate, and tells the real story behind finding the huge Atocha treasure. A must read for any genuine lover of adventure. Wayne Gales, author.

Okay, finished the book/DVD. I loved the color photos that are probably much easier to get in this format rather than paying for color printing in a book.

The book was extremely interesting and, I imagine, mostly true. (I have to trust you on the pre-1980 stuff)

This book not only describes the treasure hunt, it is about the treasure hunter. Bob’s life as shown here let’s everyone see what has been known to some degree all along. Treasure hunters are just a little different than most people. Bob seemed to have a knack that if his life got too mundane, he was able to spice it up a little, almost to the point where he wished he hadn’t. I loved it! Laney Southerly

An absolute must read for all sunken treasure hunter wannabes. Captain Robert Moran will set your fantasies on fire and reveal the sometimes brutal truth of treasure hunting. Robert gives fantastic historical details concerning the lost Spanish Fleets. Read about the exciting discovery of the "Atocha and Margarita" and take a look at the photos of the bounty. Brenda Middlebrook. 

The Golden Rule. He who has the gold, makes the rules!

The links in this gold chain from the Margarita shipwreck could be opened up and spent like money.

Gold and emerald jewelry. Gold coins and rare china from a 1715 shipwreck.

Acknowledgements:

This book is dedicated to my compatriots, the men and women of Treasure Salvors, Inc. who showed by their dedication and sacrifice, that anything is possible if you believe that:

Today is the Day.

There have been a number of excellent books written about the 1715 Fleet and 1622 Atocha and Margarita treasure finds and all have been from the authors own perspective and experiences.

I’ve always felt that I had my own story to tell from my own point of view. I thank my friends and family members who have encouraged me for so many years to write these memoirs.

I want to thank my good friends Don Kincaid, Pat Clyne and John de Bry for their generosity in furnishing many of the wonderful photos in this book. Thanks also to my friend Jeff Hanauer for his expert retouching and computer enhancement of some of the faded photos and slides that have survived for so many years in my musty old albums.

Front Cover: 1715 Fleet shipwreck 8 escudo gold coins. Photo by John de Bry. The Center for Historical Archaeology.

Photos of 1715 treasures by John de Bry

Photos of Atocha and Margarita treasures and activities by: Don Kincaid, Pat Clyne, Syd Jones and the author.

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A True Story of a Lifetime of Adventure.

Chapter 1

THE ADVENTURE BEGINS.

It was December 1962. The 50 year old 110 ft. ex Coast Guard buoy tender Shrub, lay at anchor off the Ragged Islands in the lower Bahamas chain north of Cuba. I had just spent over two hours underwater trying to fix a rudder that was making an ominous thumping sound every time the boat rolled.

This is similar to the ex-Coast Guard buoy tender Shrub.

My partner, Jack Browne, and I had picked up the ship on the Miami River six months earlier. We had spent a lot of time and not enough money trying to get her ready for this trip to the Dominican Republic.

Jack and I met in Bimini, Bahamas earlier that year. My then partner, George Hudson and I were running our dive charter boat through the Bimini harbor entrance when I looked down and saw an airplane on the bottom of the channel in about 15 feet of water. That was a startling sight.

Later, I saw Jack sitting at a table in a local Bimini bar. Since he was the only other non-native guy in the place, I started a conversation. That’s when I learned that it was his Seabee amphibian seaplane that was sunk in the channel.

On my next trip to Bimini the following week, I noticed that the plane was gone and upon running into Jack in the same bar later, I learned about the unusual method he had used to re-float it.

Jack had enlisted the help of a local fisherman and his boat. When they got over the plane, Jack tied one end of a line to the stern of the boat and then dove down and tied the other end to the bow cleat on the plane. Upon surfacing, he told the fisherman that the next time he went down, he wanted the guy to count to 10 and then take off and keep going towards Chalk’s seaplane ramp half a mile away on shore.

Jack made his dive down to the plane and got in the cockpit. The fisherman took off at high speed as instructed. The fisherman, however, wasn’t prepared for the sight of this big orange and white apparition that came surging up out of the water, piloted by Jack Browne.

This so startled the fisherman that he chopped his throttle and the plane promptly dove straight back to the bottom. Jack told me that after he got the fisherman settled down, he was able to use this technique to finally work his way back to the seaplane ramp.

I asked Jack how the plane sank in the first place and he told me he had punctured the hull on a reef nearby and was taxiing towards the seaplane ramp but didn’t make it before the plane sank.

Over the next few months, I brought Jack the parts he needed to make repairs to his plane. The Bahamas has a high import tax on boat and airplane parts, so I had to smuggle them in. My charter business and tropical fish collecting was slow and we supplemented our income by buying cases of tax free scotch wholesale in Bimini, then bringing them back to Miami where we sold them at discount prices to the bartenders along Miami Beach. They would skim by refilling their bar bottles, then get rid of the non-tax stamped bottles, misleading the owners and the tax men in keeping track of sales.

Jack later flew the plane to Puerto Rico. Apparently he didn’t get all the sea water out of the plane’s tanks because he had to make three forced water landings on the way. He drained water out of the carburetor each time and then took off again.

Jack was a well known name in the diving industry. He held the world deep diving record for awhile and invented the popular Jackie Browne shallow water dive rig, which was named after him.

I ran into him again along the Miami River, which is a great place to meet unusual characters. He had just returned from the Dominican Republic, and planned to return again to get signed leases from the government. He told me about this scheme he had to take over the lobster fishing industry by leasing all the government owned ice houses in the country, but he planned to do some treasure hunting on the side.

Jack asked if I wanted to go in with him as a partner and showed me the 100 ft. ex Coast Guard buoy tender, Shrub, which a friend of his had just given him. My job was to put a crew together and get the vessel into sea going condition. That seemed simple enough. I had always wanted to do some treasure hunting anyway. I had no idea what I was getting into.

My decision to cast my lot with Jack was costly. My partner in the charter boat wasn’t pleased when I asked for my $3,500 loan back. He came by the Shrub dock one day and took a hammer to the hood of my Sebring Twin Cam MGA sports car. It got ugly after that and my crew and I ran him off.

I finally got my money back by putting a lien on his boat and having the sheriff seize it.

During our fitting out period, I would concentrate on the Shrub and getting a crew together, while Jack roamed up and down the river wheeling and dealing. He was a master at it. He had a sincere demeanor that engendered trust in people. They usually gave him anything he needed with just a promise of pay back sometime in the future.

Jack was 46, and had an insatiable appetite for women, though he had a very attractive wife, Betsy, who owned a dance school in town. I helped her out once in while with her Friday night dance parties, having once been a dance teacher in Coral Gables several years earlier.

The Miami River was a hotbed of Cuban revolutionary intrigue at that time, which was shortly after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. I had mentioned to a crewman that my cousin was a gun collector, so one of my Cuban crewmen brought one of his buddies by one day.

This guy was looking for a .50 cal. machine gun and wondered if I knew where they could find one.

It’s illegal to own these things as a private citizen, but my cousin Roger was a dealer so I gave him a call thinking he might know where to find one. Sure enough, he had one.

I didn’t like Castro. And Jack really hated Castro. In fact Jack had lost his converted PT boat in Cuba when Castro seized it after his takeover of the country. I figured I’d do what I could to help out the anti-Castroites.

I drove a couple of them up to Stuart, Florida, where they bought the gun from Roger for about $700.00

I didn’t hear anything for a couple of months and then there was an article in the Miami Herald about some revolutionaries shooting up the harbor in Havana from a speedboat. My Cuban worker later told me that it was our gun that did the job.

The days spent on the Miami River were quite an education for me. The drifters came and went, usually working just long enough to buy a bottle.

Willie was typical of the crew I hired. He was good with refrigeration equipment, and one night after having a little too much to drink, he confided to me that he was an ex-con and had picked up the knack of safe-cracking, while in stir, from a cell mate and was waiting for the right opportunity. He even paid me the dubious compliment by saying, Bob, if you ever want to pull a job, let me know. With your coolness and brains, we would make a great team.

We decided the "Shrub" needed a shakedown cruise to check everything out before leaving for the Dominican Republic. It was nearly a disaster. I had crewmen Willie, wharf rat, Cliff Burns, and young 17 year old Steve Baird for crewmen.

We anchored up off Plantation Bay south of Miami. Jack and I went ashore to visit Art McKee, who Jack had met several years previously. I consider Art to be the first generation of modern treasure hunters.

Art had just undergone a very scary experience when his car went off one of the Keys bridges during a heavy rain storm. He ended up in the water, pretty banged up, with both shoulders dislocated. He managed to make his way to the mangrove lined bank of the waterway and wedged himself among the roots to keep from being swept out to sea on the outgoing tide.

Fortunately, rescuers found him the next morning.

Art McKee was born in Bridgetown, New Jersey. He was an adventurous boy, but a reader as well, especially of books by treasure hunters and divers, such as, On the Bottom, by Commander Ellsberg and I Dive For Treasure by Lieutenant Harry E. Riesenberg. I had also read both of these books as well.

He graduated from high school, but did not go on to college, instead working at various jobs, including summers as a lifeguard at a lake in South Jersey.

In 1934, when he was 24, a massive storm struck the town and destroyed the lake. In addition, the bridge that connected east Bridgetown to west Bridgetown was severely damaged.

A hard-hat diver was hired by the city to survey the damage, and he hired McKee to tend his lines. McKee continued to work for this diver on other projects along the Delaware River,