At a pivotal juncture in his search for a legendary sunken pirate ship, one of the subjects of Chicago writer Robert Kurson’s “Pirate Hunters” has a revelation: “This isn’t about finding a ship,” says John Chatterton, a celebrated wreck diver. “It’s about finding a man.”
More Top Picks Best Zero Clearance Inserts For Table Saws
The man is Joseph Bannister, the shrewd and daring and possibly mad captain of the Golden Fleece, who stole the late-17th century British cargo vessel during its route to Jamaica, evaded the Royal Navy and overcame unthinkable odds to stay afloat. And after his ship was sunk during a battle with Navy warships, he escaped to tell the tale — until he was captured and hanged.
One of the problems for the pirate hunters — and for Kurson in dramatizing their efforts — is that “finding” Bannister is easier said than done. Facts of his existence are largely lost to the dustbins of history. While imagining what motivated him may help Chatterton and and his partner, John Mattera, figure out where the Golden Fleece waits for them with all its promised riches, their eventual discovery of the ship loses some of its color in the absence of juicy details about this “international terror.”
If Chatterton and Mattera were themselves more compelling, that would be less of an issue. They certainly have interesting stories to tell, and Kurson does a fine job of recounting them. Chatterton, one of the stars of Kurson’s 2004 best-seller, “Shadow Divers” (about the discovery of a German U-boat off the coast of New Jersey), was a combat medic in Vietnam who while working as a commercial diver, found himself near the base of the World Trade Center on 9/11.
Mattera, who grew up among the Mafioso of Staten Island, working in his father’s butcher shop, was a loan shark and tavern owner before he graduated from high school. He became a policeman and then ran a lucrative security operation before leaving the world of crime to indulge his love of underwater adventure and his fascination with pirates.
But the book never really gets inside the obsessions of the 57-year-old Chatterton and 46-year-old Mattera, drilling us instead with lofty statements about these risk-taking souls dreaming the impossible dream and following their heart and realizing that “(t)omorrow is promised to no one.” Our rooting interest is compromised a bit knowing what the men would spend their treasure on: mostly expensive cars and planes and real estate, though we can relate to Mattera’s desire to buy one of the New York Mets’ minor league teams.
When pirate hunter Tracy Bowden, a legend in the field, offered the partners a job to find the Golden Fleece, they were already committed to uncovering a galleon called the San Bartolomé, sunk off the Dominican coast in 1556. They had moved to the Dominican Republic to undertake the project. But when Bowden convinced them that he knew exactly where Bannister’s old vessel was, near a small island in the same area, they were hooked. If they succeeded, it would be only the second time, following Barry Clifford’s discovery of the Whydah off Cape Cod in 1984, that a pirate ship had been discovered and positively identified.
The search for the Golden Fleece sent Chatterton and Mattera through thousands of pages of books and documents and across thousands of miles of ocean. It cost them a fortune of their own money, their marriages and nearly cost them their lives. (Mattera discourages an attack by a gun-wielding motorcycler by flashing his Glock.)
In the early sections of “Pirate Hunters,” much of the writing has the quality of reality-show voiceovers: “To Mattera, history was more than just a collection of old stories; it was an insight into human nature.” Considering the close relationship between books like this and programs like the History Channel’s “Deep Sea Detectives” (which Chatterton co-hosted), that’s not surprising.
As a result, it takes a while for Kurson, an award-winning magazine writer, to hit his stride. But once he does, the book flows effortlessly with information about pirates and their “golden” age, their evolution into today’s AK-47-wielding mercenaries, sidelights about Chatterton and Mattera’s crew and the modern technology used to find and excavate the wrecks. The book’s wealth of maps, photos and illustrations add to the fun, though it does take some imagination to see that crusty pipe Mattera is holding as a musket barrel.
Lloyd Sachs writes the crime fiction roundups for Printer’s Row Journal.
“Pirate Hunters”
By Robert Kurson, Random House, 279 pages, $28