Frégate Island - Hunting for Treasure Island’s Booty

Hunting for Treasure Island’s Booty

In 1730, the French pirate Olivier Levasseur, who had been preying on ships sailing between Europe and Asia for years, was captured and sentenced to death. As the noose was slung around his neck, Levasseur — nicknamed the Buzzard — tossed a scrap of paper into the assembled crowd and shouted: “My treasure for he who understands.” This was no X-marks-the-spot map, however, but a complex coded message that went missing soon afterwards.

Treasure hunters believe that the Buzzard’s booty — now thought to be worth upwards of £1bn, and to include the golden cross of Goa, so heavy it took three men to carry — is hidden on one of the Seychelles’ 115 islands. And I’ve come to Frégate, a dot on the map 34 miles east of the capital, Victoria, to find it.

Before you laugh, the quest isn’t that far-fetched. In the early 18th century, the archipelago was the equivalent of 19th-century Australia: you didn’t have to have a criminal record to go there, but it helped. Corsairs regularly hid their hauls there, and the Buzzard, apparently, favoured Frégate.

He’d barely recognise the old place now. The 300-acre haven has been transformed into a super-exclusive resort charging £4,000 per room per night. That does include all food and drink, but you’re paying for seclusion, not to stuff your face. The 16 opulent residences are all bigger than the average London flat, with polished wood finishes, vast infinity pools and can-do butlers who won’t flinch if you decide you’d like dinner on the beach or a manicure on Mont Signal, the island’s highest point.

Like most of Frégate’s guests, I arrive by helicopter, getting a spectacular overview of dense emerald-green forest fringed by white boulder-strewn beach. My pilot points out Anse Park, where the buccaneers used to come ashore.

Later, I stand on Anse’s sand, choppy waves licking my toes. “This spot was perfect,” says Frégate’s managing director, Wayne Kafcsak. “It’s surrounded by high ground, so the pirates could defend their position. They had coconuts, turtles and tortoises for meat. They could fix their boats, make bullets... and bury treasure.”

We jump over a stream where dozens of tortoises lie snoozing in the shade and head to some stone walls — all that remains of the pirates’ camp, and evidence that these ne’er-do-wells stayed on the island for long periods. The reservoir they constructed remains the resort’s main source of water.

“In all likelihood, there’s gold somewhere around,” Kafcsak says in an Attenborough whisper. The hushed tones aren’t entirely necessary, because nobody is about — most of the A-list guests barely leave their villas — but I appreciate the theatricality.

In a previous career, Kafcsak helped to excavate the Molasses Reef wreck, in the Turks and Caicos, the oldest European shipwreck in the western hemisphere. “The Buzzard probably used that peak as his marker,” he says. “They say hide something in plain sight, don’t they? It’s certainly what the people who made that believed.”

He’s pointing to a crater, left by a French military unit in the 1950s, when they conducted controlled explosions around Anse Park, looking for bounty. It’s thought they didn’t strike it rich, and nor did Ian Fleming, who holidayed on Frégate a few years later and was equally convinced that the Buzzard’s stash was here.

Now a Russian is asking to hire the island to conduct a month-long search — a £2m-plus gamble on turning up treasure. Kafcsak, like the island’s owner, a mysterious German businessman, isn’t keen: both are more interested in conserving Frégate than in letting someone bulldoze it.

In the past 25 years, that policy has seen the population of giant aldabra tortoises blossom from 150 to 2,200, the planting of more than 100,000 trees and the recruitment of a 10-strong conservation team to protect the flora and fauna.

So, did I find anything? Well, I encountered super-cute tortoises, marvelled at the bright orange plumage of the Fody bird and watched an endangered hawksbill turtle lay her eggs before she waddled back into the ocean.

Nature provides the real treasure on Frégate. At the very least, prospectors can expect a life-enriching experience.