VICTORIA, Seychelles -- As legend has it, the 18th century French pirate, The Buzzard, buried a treasure worth millions in a granite cave in these islands. One man already has taken his obsession to find it to the grave.
His son is out to prove his father wasn't wrong and an American, his identity kept secret, believes enough in the obsession to back another hunt for the 250-year-old treasure. It begins this week.
'It's not for the money. I want to prove my father was right,' said John Cruise-Wilkins, standing on a huge boulder overlooking the white sands of the Seychelles' leading beach resort of Beau Vallon.
A few yards away is the cave in which Cruise-Wilkins is convinced the legendary French pirate Oliver le Vasseur, known as 'La Buse' (The Buzzard), buried millions in gold and jewels before his death on the scaffold in 1730.
Legend says that the hoard includes the 'fiery cross' of the Bishop of Goa -- a gold crucifix encrusted with diamonds -- that fell into the buccaneer's hands with the plunder of the Portuguese vessel 'Vierge du Cap' in the Indian Ocean in 1721.
The Seychelles is a group of islands off the east African coast, in the Indian Ocean northeast of the island nation of Madagascar.
Cruise-Wilkins's father, Reginald, a former British army officer, spent more than a quarter of a century scouring the granite cliffs on the north coast of the main Seychelles island of Mahe for the fabulous hoard.
He died broke in 1977 after spending all his money on the vain quest. But he remained convinced to the end that the booty lies in the granite cliffs just a few hundred yards from the family home at Beau Vallon.
'He uncovered enough evidence during all those years to be convincing,' said Cruise-Wilkins, whose own attempt to solve the mystery is to begin this week.
He said the hunt was being funded to the tune of $100,000 by an American he refused to identify and had the blessing of the Seychelles government, which will take a half share of any proceeds.
Reginald Cruise-Wilkins started his search for the treasure in 1949 after moving to the Seychelles from the east African country of Kenya. He learned of strange markings on rocks at Beau Vallon and was told of two coffins unearthed there in 1923 containing skeletons wearing pirate earings.
The Briton also studied a cryptogram thrown from the scaffold on the French island of Reunion, then Bourbon Island, by 'La Buse' before he died. It held the words, 'Find my treasure who can.'
Several copies of the coded document exist and one is in the national library in Paris. Cruise-Wilkins concluded that the signs used in the cryptogram were linked in some way to Greek mythology and based on the labors of Hercules.
He linked a cow's skeleton he found at Beau Vallon with the labors and eventually dug up a flintlock pistol and a set of 300-year old jars.
Convinced he was right, Cruise-Wilkins persuaded about 500 shareholders to sink $60,000 into his search. The then-British colonial government in the islands lent him squads of convicts as laborers.
By the time he died at 63, he had removed 700 tons of granite from the cave and thought he finally had located a cavern beneath the cave floor -- below sea level and protected by specially positioned rock slabs - where the treasure lay.
John Cruise-Wilkins expects to have to dig down 30 feet or more in the new project. Modern pumping and diving equipment will be necessary, he said.
'There are many tunnels here going off in different directions and we will have to pump them clear of water and sand,' he said.
The people of the Seychelles, brought up on centuries of fireside treasure tales, will be watching the attempt. Cruise-Wilkins is undaunted by the fact that not one of the dozens of folk stories of buried fortunes ever has led to the recovery of so much as a single doubloon.
'Removing the treasure should not be difficult,' he insisted. 'My father did the donkey work.'
