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IT HAPPENED! In 1750, fifty-five chests of silver pieces of eight were stolen from a Spanish galleon at Ocracoke, North Carolina, and carried to the West Indies where most of it was buried on Norman Island, a deserted key in the Virgin Islands. The islands of St. Kitts, St. Eustatius, St. Thomas, St. Croix, Anguilla, and Antigua also found themselves embroiled in the aftermath. Afterwards, the embassies of four European nations became engaged in conflict over the piracy perpetrated by Owen Lloyd and his peg-legged brother, John, two merchant captains from Hampton Roads, Virginia.
How many of us have not heard of Robert Louis Stevenson? Or Long John Silver, a fictional pirate, more well known that the infamous Blackbeard? Treasure Island, published in 1883 by Robert Louis Stevenson, is a fictional tale of adventure about a young teenager named Jim Hawkins who discovers a treasure map in a dead seaman's trunk. Hawkins shows the map to the town officials which leads to an organized expedition to an unnamed Caribbean island to recover a treasure that had been buried there in 1750.
On August 18, 1750, the Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe had left Havana, Cuba, for Cadiz, Spain with a cargo valued at nearly a million pieces of eight. She had come from Veracruz, Mexico, where she had loaded her precious cargo. The Guadalupe had just completed another historic journey: she had delivered twenty Franciscan priests from Spain, one of which was the legendary Father Junipero Serra, who, through a miracle, saved the ship, her passengers, and her crew from certain doom. Father Serra went on to build nine mission churches in Southern California, leaving us with San Diego, Santa Barbara, and San Francisco, among others today. Without this miracle, no treasure would have been buried on a deserted Caribbean island in 1750.
After departing Havana, the hapless galleon encountered the fateful wind of a West Indian hurricane, driving the Guadalupe over five hundred miles from her intended course that would have taken her across the Atlantic to Spain. Instead, she was delivered to Ocracoke Inlet, North Carolina, in early September 1750, for her historic rendezvous with destiny. Just after the hurricane, Owen and John Lloyd had departed Hampton Roads, Virginia, for St. Kitts unaware of the detour their lives were about to take. Their sloop sprung a leak and diverted to the safety of Ocracoke Inlet where they encountered the disabled galleon. By an extraordinary chain of events, the Lloyd brothers found themselves entrusted to the rescue of over eight tons of silver pieces of eight and other riches by the bungling and arrogant galleon captain. It was at this same location that the notorious Blackbeard had been killed thirty-two years before. But Blackbeard had to take a back seat to what was about to take place: the two brothers, who had been ravaged at the hands of the Spaniards in the recently ended King George's War, exacted their revenge on the galleon and sailed away with the treasure with a haul that outdid the legendary pirate. The haul was worth nearly fifty million in today's dollars making it one of the greatest crimes in Colonial history.
Now, after nine years of investigation by an international team of researchers, Treasure Island: The Untold Story takes us back to Treasure Island just as Stevenson did in 1883. Only this time, it's not doubloons and pieces of eight that were uncovered but rather an incredible tale that up until now has remained buried in the dust of time. Treasure Island the Untold Story is Part II of the authors complete history of the 1750 Spanish fleet.

Part I is The Hidden Galleon