This is the true story of the pursuit of the 'Golden Fleece', not the logo of Brooks Brothers or the mythical beast pursued by Jason and the Argonauts, but a seventeenth century pirate ship. It was commanded by Joseph Bannister and sunk off the north coast of what today is the Dominican Republic. In the world of underwater searchers, pirate ships are the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. There are galleons, transports, freighters, passenger ships and all sorts of warships buried beneath the seas. The difference is that almost all of the others were engaged in lawful activities and someone somewhere had a record of where they were or were suppose to be. Not so for the pirates. They were the ultimate outlaws and their whereabouts were always concealed. Finding a sunken ship lost over 300 hundred years ago requires a lot of research. The divers studied records in NY London and Spain. They knew Bannister was careening* the ship when a British duo of warships attacked and sank the 'Golden Fleece' just off shore. The question was how far offshore, and that is the central mystery here. Like Kurson's previous book, 'Shadow Divers', about a lost German U-Boat, this is a fun read.
*rolling a ship on its side on a beach and essentially scraping off all the barnacles and seaweed attached to the bottom
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