Pirate and privateer treasure: La Buse, Surcouf and Rodrigues

The Indian Ocean as a hunting ground

In the early 18th century, the Indian Ocean drew pirates from the Caribbean, lying in wait for rich merchant ships. The Mascarenes, including Mauritius, Rodrigues and Réunion, sat right on these routes. A century later, during the wars with Britain, it was privateers, sailing under official letters of marque, who operated out of Port Louis.

La Buse, the pirate with a cryptogram

Olivier Levasseur, nicknamed "La Buse" (the Buzzard), is the most famous of these pirates. With the Englishman John Taylor he seized the Nossa Senhora do Cabo, a wealthy Portuguese ship that had been damaged in a storm and was anchored off Réunion for repairs. The two pirates are also said to have marooned a former associate, Edward England, on Mauritius. Captured, La Buse was hanged in Saint-Denis, Réunion, on 7 July 1730.

According to legend, from the scaffold he threw a necklace bearing a cryptogram into the crowd, shouting: "My treasure to whoever can understand it!" Historians are sceptical: no source from the time mentions the cryptogram or the speech, and many see it as a 20th-century invention. That has not stopped generations of hunters digging in the Seychelles, on Réunion… and on Rodrigues.

Rodrigues and "The Prospector"

On Rodrigues, the legend has a literary face. The Mauritian grandfather of Nobel laureate J.M.G. Le Clézio spent almost thirty years, from 1902 to 1930, searching for treasure supposedly buried by pirates at Anse aux Anglais. Le Clézio turned this into the novel Le Chercheur d'or (The Prospector, 1985), whose hero Alexis digs at the same cove, and then into Voyage à Rodrigues, retracing his ancestor's steps. No treasure has ever been authenticated.

Surcouf, the privateer of the Isle de France

Robert Surcouf (1773–1827), born in Saint-Malo, was not a pirate but a privateer, acting on behalf of France. Port Louis was his Indian Ocean base. His most famous exploit was the capture on 7 October 1800 of the Kent, an East India Company ship, near Calcutta after a fierce boarding action. The prize was brought back to Port Louis in November 1800.

One legend claims Surcouf threw the gold seized on the Kent overboard. It doesn't hold up: the Kent was not carrying gold.

The bottom line

Pirates and privateers were real, and their story is closely bound up with that of Mauritius. The treasure, for now, belongs to the realm of dreams. If you come across "treasure maps" sold to tourists, enjoy them for what they are: nice souvenirs.