Pirate Hunters

Pirate Hunters: Treasure, Obsession, and the Search for a Legendary Pirate Ship (2015) is a nonfiction book by Robert Kurson detailing the story of two divers searching for the long-lost pirate ship Golden Fleece. Kurson explores these two men’s stories, the technologies they employ to find shipwrecks, and the history (and misconceptions) surrounding pirates. Kurson is best known as the author of the bestselling Shadow Divers, the story of two men who stumbled upon a sunken German U-boat dating back to World War II. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Esquire, the New York Times Magazine, and other publications.

By 2008, noted wreck-divers John Chatterton and John Mattera had spent two years of their lives researching a seventeenth-century Spanish galleon, San Bartolomé, which had been shipwrecked and purportedly contained over $100 million in treasure somewhere beneath the waves. Chatterton is considered one of the world’s greatest scuba divers, obsessed with shipwrecks and diving deep to explore them. Mattera, who grew up almost next door to members of the mafia, is the founder of Pirate’s Cove, a resort designed for scuba divers like Chatterton. It was their dream to find hidden treasure on a shipwreck.

But when Chatterton and Mattera meet treasure hunter Tracy Bowden, everything changes. He asks them to use their expertise to help him uncover a different lost ship, the Golden Fleece. Bowden is convinced this ship, once captained by little-known pirate Joseph Bannister, is located off the island of Cayo Levantado near the Dominican Republic. He offers Chatterton and Mattera twenty percent of whatever they find in the ruins if they can locate the wreck for him. There’s a chance they might find untold wealth. Or nothing. At first, the two divers aren’t particularly interested in abandoning the wreck they’re already searching for. But they’re intrigued. Soon, the thrill of possibility draws them in. If they are able to find the Golden Fleece, it would be only the second sunken pirate ship ever recovered. The first was the Whydah, discovered in 1984. So, they accept Bowden’s offer and pair with two more crew members to explore the waters near Cayo Levantado on their ship, the Deep Explorer.



Kurson digresses to offer history on Joseph Bannister and his ship, as well as the history of the golden age of piracy. As he explains, Bannister began as a respectable gentleman, an English merchant, and captain of his own ship. That ship was the Golden Fleece, which sailed twice a year back and forth between England and Jamaica. But in 1684, something changed for Bannister. He turned rogue and became a pirate.

It happened at the worst possible time. The English government was determined to wipe out the scourge of piracy in the Caribbean. England and Spain had signed the Treaty of Madrid, which called for a total ban on piracy, including privateers, pirates that were sanctioned by the government. Six weeks into his piracy, Bannister was ambushed by an English warship in the Cayman Islands. Bannister, his crew, and his ship were herded to Port Royal, Jamaica to await trial. The jurors acquitted Bannister, and the governor decided, illegally, to retry him.

In the meantime, Bannister was free on bail. And before his second trial, Bannister and fifty of his men managed to escape on the Golden Fleece and sail away. The following May, the governor learned Bannister was stashing his ship in Samaná Bay by Cayo Levantado and sent two Royal Navy vessels after him. After a two-day battle, the Golden Fleece was nearly wrecked, and Bannister was forced to abandon ship with his crew. Soon, he was recaptured and hanged for his crimes. The abandoned ship is presumed to have sunk somewhere in the waters of Samaná Bay.



In the present, Chatterton and Mattera delve into research for clues to the Golden Fleece’s location. They pour over ships’ logs from the 1680s. In 1687, Captain William Phips reported seeing the wreck of the Golden Fleece. But the maps of Phips’s time weren’t nearly as precise as today, and sometimes they were riddled with inaccuracies. The divers began surveying the area, looking for cannonballs as evidence that they were near the site of the long-ago battle. Mattera began to wonder if the ship was really near Cayo Levantado at all. He saw no place on the island for Bannister to hide his ship. It made no strategic sense.

The truth, they realize, is that there isn’t much information to go on. They knew the ship had been near a hidden cove off the Dominican Republic and that the ship had been scuttled in twenty-four feet of water. It is all but impossible to find a centuries-old wreck based on so little. But Chatterton and Mattera don’t back down from a challenge. They gradually realize that the accepted history is wrong. Bannister couldn’t have had his ship stashed where the historical record said he had. They need to think like a pirate, like someone hiding from the law.

Technology helps them, along with rethinking where to look for the ship. Pings from a magnetometer, which detects variations in the earth’s magnetic field, steer them in the right direction, toward iron ship’s anchors and cannonballs. They find the Golden Fleece in an unexpected location elsewhere off the Dominican Republic and not near Cayo Levantado at all. And, indeed, there is loot: guns, pikes, jewelry, silver, and stranger items such as dice carved from bone and a bowl that somehow still contains uneaten porridge. Chatterton and Mattera do exactly what they set out to after painstaking research and many dives.



Pirate Hunters received praise for its gripping story and portrayal of what it takes to find a shipwreck. Some were critical of Kurson’s digressions and sometimes, unfounded theories on the workings of pirate society. In 2018, Kurson released his latest book, Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon.