When you least expect it

Chapter 1

Today, lunch with David was unsettling to say the least. We have been meeting for lunch regularly for as far back as I can remember - well, at least since the publication of 'The Forgotten Children' in 2008 anyway. He said, “Aldrich, I dreamt of Fairbridge Farm last night .. again. Something you said that didn’t make sense. And I can’t quite put my finger on it.” The statement was followed by a good minute of silence. It felt like Remembrance Day and the lumps that popped up in the throat were visceral.

A cheerful waiter interrupted the moment with, “can I get you guys anything else?.. or…” – just a top up, please, I said.

For years, I played flashbacks of my early youth in Surrey before the mid 50s with some relish. The characteristic war-time hatred and craving for power that men like our own dads paraded were well beyond my comprehension. Happiness for me then was having a football or a bagful of marbles. Dad had been away for months and at often times I could sense fear in the adult air. Then came peace and dads were greeted back at the bus stop. Mine somehow wasn’t and my mum changed. I remember the feeling of change being overwhelming. Then one day, I found myself on a ship with other boys. On the one hand, it was a dream come true to be on a huge ship but on the other, there was a haunting sense of foreboding.

Chapter 2

One afternoon in December 1803, Captain Matthew Flinders left the schooner Cumberland to go ashore to meet the French governor Captain-General Charles Decaen. Flinders was in port in the island of Mauritius. Unbeknownst to him, while the British and the French had been bickering for quite a while, Britain had declared war on France in May that year. The power game between him and Decaen started from the get-go. The Captain-General kept Captain Flinders waiting until 8:00pm; after dinner. Decaen received Flinders in uniform, head uncovered, but the British Captain presented himself with his hat firmly on his head; he was immediately asked to remove it. This was a sign that the English commander was about to play it tough with the Frenchman, whose immediate superior was none other than Napoleon Bonaparte. Flinders’s behaviour was immediately locked in as arrogant; that did not augur well. Over the next few weeks, the relationship remained strained and while a few English captives were allowed to leave the island on passing ships, Decaen decided to hold on to Flinders. In fact, he did so for six and a half years.

During his long detention, Flinders kept a diary. Decaen allowed him to move about on the island and he made quite a few friends. Of particular interest, notes in that diary reveal the presence of Robert Surcouf. French corsair Surcouf was essentially a pirate who was paid by the French to highjack the British vessels that were on their way to England from India and the far East. In fact, Flinders's notes mention the sighting of Robert Surcouf in April 1808.

Now, Surcouf was not the first corsair to be on the high seas. The infamous Olivier Levasseur, known as 'La Buse', had also been around when it became too hard to operate in the Caribbean. Surcouf, as did his predecessor, had amassed quite a large fortune from commandeering English vessels. Given the absence of banks – and probity – in those days, the prevailing practice for these corsairs and pirates was to hide their loot on the islands of Mauritius, its small dependency Rodrigues or on nearby Réunion.

Chapter 3

For my early childhood in Surrey, life was a mix of home chores and play on the streets. One easy way of raising money was panhandling or petty theft. One day, a top-hatted gentleman approached me amiably. He appeared quite engaging and asked some probing questions. When I hesitated, he introduced himself as if to solicit trust. His name was John Petrie. He was clearly an educated man; a mathematician, he said. Petrie seemed to know the value of learning and had had those values instilled in him by his father and grand-father. Petrie’s grand-father, as it turns out, had married Anne Flinders who was Captain Matthew Flinders’s daughter. Young Petrie the mathematician did not have children of his own. As he came from a family where self-discipline was taught from a young age, he offered to mentor me. Once or twice a week, my new tutor would meet me near a public square nearby and bring food and .. pittance. He spoke about the world, about war and about the wonder of numbers.

A few months went by until one day, Petrie decided to introduce me to what he called, fine books. One of the books he chose for me was Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. That story hit a chord. I was hooked. I was now Jim Hawkins, dreaming of life on the high seas and, at times, would even imagine myself as Long John Silver.

After a few meetings between Petrie and me, an important handoff occurred that was to change my life down the road. Petrie handed me a little black book. It was about 10cm x 7.5cm, covered in black cloth and had a faded inscription on the cover which was in cursive style. On the inside of its back cover a fragile old sheet of paper had been folded in; it looked like an old map. Petrie said that the little black book had been handed down from Matthew Flinders. That little black book, he said, contained information that could be life changing one day. He unfolded the map inside the back cover and said, “this refers to a spot on an island in the Indian Ocean where a treasure might have been buried.” The map came with directions but the instructions were in a strange code that needed deciphering. As a mathematician, Petrie seemed to find animated delight in those puzzles and I was awestruck.

Chapter 4

One of the first items on Flinders’s mind after his return home in 1810 was to complete with renewed energy, his work on mapping Terra Australis. He worked very hard at gathering all the information he had had from his exploration days in the South East. He had done much work on the documentation while in detention in Mauritius but sadly, the long hours now spent completing his book, ‘A Voyage to Terra Australis’ led to a recurrence of the health problems he had had on the island.

Flinders never saw the finished book. The first copy came out in July 1814, on the day before he died. His wife, Ann, was able to bring the books to his bed and place them so that he could touch them; his last words were, “my papers.” On his death bed, Ann was by his side, as well as his two year old daughter, Anne. Before slipping away, Flinders gave Ann a few other items that he had gathered on his stay in Mauritius and asked that they be given to his little girl when she would turn sixteen. Among those other items, was the very little black book that John Petrie had given me after the end of the war. That little black book, Flinders said, contained information given him by Robert Surcouf two years before. Surcouf had made note of the location of burial of his own loot as well as that of his predecessor La Buse.

Chapter 5

Over the years, the little black book was put away in the bottom of the lower drawer of my various bedside tables. With the advent of the internet and search engines, I decided it was time that I research treasure hunting in Mauritius. In 2003, I read about the efforts of a man by the name of Bécherel, a dedicated treasure hunter, who claimed to have known of the whereabouts of a Panama Treasure, hidden by pirates in Mauritius in late 17th Century; these pirates were known to be La Buse and his men. My childhood dreams of the high seas came back to me and, having retired from employment, I decided to study carefully the map and drawn lines and arrows that were in the little black book. Soon, the notion of making a treasure find turned into an obsession. I would leverage the newly released Walt Disney movie Curse of the Black Pearl to prompt interest from people at parties and it didn’t take long before a soup of nascent collaboration started to brew.

One summer day, while on an organised tour of Kakadu National Park I made my way into a company of scientists. At an introductory presentation at the Information Centre, a few speakers spoke of their research on conservation biology and wetland management. During evening refreshments designed for socialising the work of the scientists, I introduced myself to a couple of ecologists who exuded infectious enthusiasm in the subject. The relaxed jovial atmosphere of the evening somehow gave rise to a discussion on the subject of 17th Century treasure hunting. The conversation would have meandered along on to other topics had I not produced the little black book with the map and instructions. Given their training, the ecologists sought information on the provenance of the material I had produced, and sought to satisfy themselves of its authenticity.

It felt like I had stumbled on real life Indiana Jones and Marion Ravenwood; I decided to leverage the situation. I offered as much background information I had and felt that my new ecologist friends were developing quite a sharp interest in my story.

A few months passed.

At an organised Blue Mountains walk with a team of dedicated bush walkers, my phone rang one morning. I baulked at the caller’s foreign number and declined the call. Thirty seconds later, a voicemail alert pinged. My interest stirred by the unusual call led me to stop and listen to the caller’s message. It was my ecologist friend. He wanted me to call back and said that he had a fantastic offer for me; yes, the type that typically carries spammers’ signatures. In this case, I decided to take the bait. At lunch time, I wrote a text in reply to my Indiana Jones friend and arranged for a subsequent call by video.

At the assigned time, I called in to the zoom. My eager callers were already there. I remember the opening comments, “Hi Aldrich, you look like you’re sitting down. That’s good cause you need to brace yourself for what we’re about to say..”

Two weeks later, the US$0.8million deposit into my bank account was confirmed; it was early 2018. The size of any final settlement would be negotiated, based on the outcome of negotiations with the Mauritian Government on the fate of any treasure found on the island.

That day was a watershed moment. Meetings were being hastily arranged between media and government organisations and me. I needed a Public Relations firm to help me with the management of the onerous whirlwind I was now caught in. More importantly, I had to secure the little black book in a safe deposit box in a bank’s private vault. I made a few calls and completed the secure placement.

In August 2018, a significant find was made on the island of Rodrigues. Two ecologists stumbled on etched rock markings. Behind those rocks was a large cave in which they found large chests and various objects such as a goat’s skull mounted on a golden body along with rope and pulley material. The story which John Petrie had told me sixty five years ago in Surrey had proved to be gold.