Hunting sunken treasure in the Bahamas

the Bermuda Triangle is the infamous  grave for any number of ships some   filled with a fortune and treasure  now buried under the ocean floor   Lee Cowan steadied his sea legs  to take us on a treasure hunt Carl Allen he's a fisherman's fisherman  he's been coming to the Bahamas since   he was 12. never missed a year to this small  island of Walker's Cay where he likes to say   the Bonefish meet the billfish there we go  all right Little Blue Runner actually there   but as an adult it wasn't really fish that brought  him to this southwest corner of the Bermuda   Triangle it was the legend of a long-lost Spanish  galleon I am a treasure hunter I I fully admit   it the Nuestra Señora de las Maravillas Our Lady  of Wonders it was the kind of treasure ship that   would have even made the pirate Blackbeard blush  on board Untold riches plundered from the Spanish   new world but on one dark January night in 1656  disaster stroke there was some miscommunication   The Maravillas turned and the other ship turned  and it rammed The Maravillas midship these are   probably from Salvage efforts of the Maravillas  by the Spanish Michael pateman is curator of the   Bahamas Maritime Museum in Freeport and it went  down how fast less than an hour ever since her   cursed cargo has brought wealthy treasure  Hunters flocking to these Waters thank you   one of the large cannons was found in 1972  Adventurer Robert marks stunned the maritime World   by pulling up artifacts that confirmed basically  all the rumors about the Maravillas were true   some people claim it's one of the richest Spanish  galleons to go down in the New World what treasure   they found ended up mostly in auctions and  private collections the world over in 1999   the Bahamian government had had enough treasure  leaving its Waters and put a stop to all of it   but Marine archaeologists like Jim Sinclair insist  the main pile of treasure has yet to be found   do you know how much is left out there if you're  going to just use dollars to quantify yeah we're   probably looking at well over another 100 million  dollars still sitting in the sand out here really   which for Carl Allen was like the siren song of  the mermaid if we don't do this mother nature   gets it or Pirates and that doesn't do anybody  any good he made his money in Plastics garbage   bags mostly and in 2016 he sold that multi-million  dollar company in Dallas and then announced to his   wife that he was going fishing this time for the  Maravillas so I immediately bought her a yacht for   her birthday and let me tell you want to get your  wife into yachting name it after her that's Gigi   their super-yacht their son Thomas says mom is  indeed pretty happy thinks she likes it down   here better than he does you can't get her  out of the water it's amazing but the Gigi   was just a start Allen also bought this 183 foot  research vessel and all the support boats to go he hired Crews he hired divers most of them  local and then he started searching for a   home port instead of just fishing Walker's Cay  he decided to buy that too the Island's deep   Channel became the home to his own private [ ]  everybody thought it was wrong so many people   call me a fool a laughing stock and they're not  laughing anymore holy cow with his wife Gigi at   his side Allen exploration has recovered more  than 10 000 artifacts from The Maravillas when   I found it it was so encrusted I could see just  little bright specks pendants gold chains silver   bars crucifixes all seemingly no worse for  the wear oh my God it's a 20 carat cabochon   cut emerald in the middle there's 12 emeralds  we believe one for each Apostle they don't like   to talk about what all of this is worth because  they have no immediate plans to sell any of it   the Allens funded the construction of that  Maritime Museum they also run it themselves   because they believe the Maravillas treasure  belongs in the Bahamas and well so do they come on   they're full-time Bahamian  residents now Walkers Cay   well that was abandoned until 2018 when the  Allens bought it and started fixing it up   when hurricane Dorian ravaged the Bahamas they  offered their treasure hunting Fleet to deliver   relief supplies instead from what I'm seeing off  the stern of Reaper it was that same year that the   Bahamian government lifted the moratorium and  granted the Allens exclusive rights to survey   some 250 square miles of underwater desert we  are just behind the hole so we will be a swim   upstream a little bit they were generous enough  to host us at sea but they also put me to work to dive with the Allens is to defeat in an  underwater scavenger hunt on a long dead Reef   these work the conditions have to be  perfect and it's not without its dangers   wouldn't say firsthand their passion for the  hunt is infectious oh my gosh you found those   just on this dive the last dive These are nice big  chunky what you call pieces of eight and they'll   clean up really nice right now they're you can  see the oxide on there but despite this massive   effort the ever-shifting Sands of the Bahamas  are still the boss you could have the right   equipment which I built you could have the right  people which I have and then Mother Nature says   no not not today it's going to be her that'll  run me out of this business Mother Nature yeah   but she's not beating him yet the pull of the  sea is as strong now as it was when he was a boy   and it's anchored the Allens to  the Bahamas in all the best of ways   we love doing it and we're helping these people  at the same time where do you sign up for that

Channel: CBS Sunday Morning

Views: 200,130

Keywords: CBS Sunday Morning, CBS News, news, Bahamas, Walker's Cay, treasure, Spanish galleon

Id: ROL4wMffx28

Length: 6min 37sec (397 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 30 2023