La Buse's Cryptogram

The account

In April 1721 a crippled Portuguese ship limped into harbor and a pack of pirates pounced. The Nossa Senhora do Cabo was carrying a viceroy and an archbishop home to Lisbon, and with them the wealth of Portuguese India: chests of diamonds, gold bars, and a processional cross from Goa, seven feet of gold studded with rubies and emeralds, so heavy it took three men to carry. It was one of the single richest prizes ever taken at sea, and one of the men who took it was a French pirate named Olivier Levasseur, called La Buse, the Buzzard, for the speed with which he fell on his victims.

Nine years later they caught him and hanged him on Reunion Island. And here the history blurs into legend. The story goes that as the noose was fitted, La Buse tore a necklace from his throat, flung a sheet of seventeen coded lines into the crowd, and shouted, find my treasure, the one who can understand it. The cryptogram is real, a page of pigpen symbols that has been pored over for ninety years. The gallows scene, the historians caution, first shows up in a novel from 1934, and no record from La Buse's own time mentions it at all.

But the doubt cuts both ways, and that is what keeps the Seychelles full of diggers. Because the part that is certainly true is the part that matters: the Cabo heist happened, the gold cross of Goa was real, and the share La Buse took was never accounted for.

So the loop stays open on two levels at once. The cipher may be a hoax, or it may be a genuine map no one has cracked, and the treasure may be a fantasy, or it may be a viceroy's diamonds and a cross of gold sitting in a Seychelles hillside. People have spent fortunes and lifetimes on those maybes, because a real treasure attached to an unsolved code is the most patient bait in the world, and it has not stopped working yet.

Known intelligence

• Olivier Levasseur, the pirate "La Buse" (the Buzzard), helped take the Portuguese ship Nossa Senhora do Cabo in 1721, one of the richest hauls of the age.
• The Cabo carried the wealth of a fleeing viceroy and archbishop, including a jeweled processional cross from Goa.
• Legend says that at his hanging in 1730 La Buse threw a 17-line pigpen cipher into the crowd, daring anyone to find his treasure.
• Historians note the cipher and gallows speech first appear in a 1934 book; no period source records them.

Theories of the hunt

• A real share of the Cabo treasure lies hidden in the Seychelles, and the cipher maps it.
• The cryptogram is a 20th-century invention, but the 1721 heist was real, so the gold may still exist regardless.

Leads, where the trail points now

• The cipher is a 17-line pigpen cryptogram, public and unsolved, but its provenance traces only to a 1934 book, so authenticity must be tested before any solution is trusted.
• The geographic focus is Bel Ombre on Mahe in the Seychelles, where Reginald Cruise-Wilkins dug for decades on a labyrinth theory tied to the cipher; his site and notes are the most-developed lead.
• The certain history is the 1721 capture of the Nossa Senhora do Cabo and its named treasures, including the gold Fiery Cross of Goa; tracing what became of that documented plunder is the solid thread.
• Most published solutions are unverifiable and should be treated with caution.

The trail, in order

• 1721: La Buse and others capture the treasure-laden Nossa Senhora do Cabo.
• 1720s: he is said to hide his share in the Seychelles.
• 7 July 1730: Levasseur is hanged on Reunion Island.
• 1934: the cryptogram legend is first published.

Sources and the record

• Olivier Levasseur (Wikipedia)
• Cryptogram of Olivier Levasseur (Wikipedia)