Pirate treasure trail led to jail

Press, 2 September 1983, Page 14

Pirate treasure trail led to jail

By

Colin Simpson,

‘Sunday Times’

At dawn on June 13, 1983, a Vietnamese naval patrol spotted a motor launch bobbing inside the coral inlet of Hon Tre Lon, a tiny, uninhabited island just off Vietnam’s southwest coast Suspecting that they had intercepted a boatload of escaping refugees, the Vietnamese cruised in. Instead, they found two treasure hunters. Richard Knight, aged 46, a former actor from Shoreham, Sussex, and his 19-year-old sidekick, Frederick Graham, a freelance photographer from California, were digging on Hon Tre Lon for the lost plunder of Captain Kidd. Scottish-born William Kidd was a pirate-chaser who turned pirate, terrorising ships in the Indian Ocean in the late seventeenth century. The tale is all the more bizarre because Knight claims that on a previous trip to the island, he had unearthed part of the treasure — three chests containing rubies, gold, and jade. These he removed from the island and hid somewhere along the Gulf of Thailand. A year later, he embarked on a second expedition with Graham to uncover the remaining loot from Hon Tre Lon. But they were stopped by the Vietnamese navy. Knight and Graham were hauled off to Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, to face possible charges of espionage, smuggling, and illicit dealing in antiquities. The British Embassy in Hanoi has failed to obtain any details of their arrest. A Foreign Office spokesman commented: “It’s all very mysterious.” Captain Kidd’s treasure is perhaps the most tantalising of all pirate plunder. A true map has been around since 1930, when an antique collector in Eastbourne uncovered a tightly-rolled parchment secreted in the bottom of Captain Kidd’s sea chest. Even with a treasure map, no one has ever managed to find Kidd’s loot. What set Knight apart from hundreds of other treasure seekers is that he used satellite photos to help locate the island. Because there was no evidence that Kidd had sailed further east than Madagascar, Knight was the first to try searching in the China Sea — even though it was clearly marked on Kidd’s map. An unemployed actor in Hollywood, Knight spent his spare time browsing in the local libraries. He learned that Kidd had tried to bargain his way out of the hangman’s noose in London in 1701 by promising to turn over £lOO,OOO in treasure hidden in “the Indies.” His plea failed. Kidd was executed and his body was left to dangle by the Thames’ docks as a grim warning

to all considering the trade of piracy. Kidd, by his own accounts, was a, reluctant pirate. A gentleman and' a respected New York merchant, Kidd was commissioned by the British government to rid the Indian Ocean of pirates. When his own crew threatened mutiny over a lack of wages, Kidd joined his former adversaries. Previous expeditions had searched for Kidd’s treasure in the Caribbean and along eastern Canada. However, Knight discovered that seventeenth century navigators in the Pacific calculated longitude from their port of departure. So he was then able to narrow down the island’s location to a thin band stretching from the Gulf of Thailand to Guam in the Pacific, a distance of several thousand miles covering as many islands. Using satellite photographs obtained from the United States space agency, N.A.S.A., Knight spotted Hon Tre Lon among this galaxy of islands. Its reef, lagoon and ridge matched Kidd’s map exactly.

Knight wasted no time in scraping together enough money to fly to Malaysia. There, he smuggled his treasure hunting equipment aboard a hired fishing boat and set

sail for the minute, crescent-shaped island located no more than five miles off the Vietnamese coast. On that voyage he managed to dodge the armadas of pirates who prey in those waters on floundering Vietnamese boat people. Later, he was less fortunate. Knight hid his boat behind a rocky outcrip near Hon Tre Lon. That night, he rowed to the island in an inflatable dinghy loaded down with shovels and a metal detector. Several months later, once he was safely back in Singapore, Knight described to “Sunday Times” correspondent David Watts his elation at uncovering Kidd’s treasure: Knight had been sweeping a gully with his metal detector for 1% hours when, suddenly, it began emitting a steady bumping sound. He rushed back to the dinghy for his digging tools. “It wouldn’t have worried me if I had just found a pair of Kidd’s trousers in the chest — the mere fact that I had found it, after 2% years search — that was the thing,” said Knight, whose weathered, rough-hewn features might have earned him a role as a Hollywood pirate. Three chests were unearthed.

Together they yielded a cache of coins, a dozen jade Buddhas, 30 gold bars, each five inches long, and a box containing precious gems, including a rare pigeon’s blood ruby. Knight claims he loaded Kidd’s plunder on to his launch and set off for Malaysia, leaving behind what he thinks are three other caches still buried on Hon Tre Lon. It is then Knight’s tale turns doubtful. He claims that on the voyage home, he was twice stopped by pirates who stole money and camera equipment — but passed over the treasure chests. -By his own account, he then sailed on to a secret destination where he re-buried the loot. Stripped of his cash by pirates, Knight returned his fishing boat to Chendaring, on Malaysia’s eastern coast, where he had originally hired it. The treasure, if it does exist, legally belongs to Vietnam’s communist government. So if his story is more than a fanciful yarn, Knight now finds himself in the same ironic predicament that Captain Kidd faced in his London dungeon over 275 years ago: can he buy his freedom with a promise of lost pirate gold?