Treasure, a Sailor's Siren

By Bob Gebhardt

A fellow approaches you and says, “I know where there is a sunken pirate treasure ship right here off the coast. Would you be interested in helping me for a fifty percent partnership?”
He claims he heard a voice of a spirit asking for help and promises of great treasures. You dive on the site and find a large lump of corroded Spanish pieces of eight, worth many thousands. Dragging it up on deck you encounter a manifestation of a pirate spirit who spelled it out, no help, no treasure then he disappears along with the lump of ancient silver coins.
Three individuals pool their funds to search a suspected underwater ancient treasure site and find more than they bargained for with a pirate’s spirit demanding assistance in crossing over into a repentance afterlife. In assisting the spirits they find favor with other successful salvors and their allies, the US Navy who help keep them out of danger from modern day pirates and drug runners

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: May 9, 2013
• ISBN: 9781304013132

Book preview

Treasure, a Sailor's Siren

Treasure,

a Sailor's Siren

a novel by

Bob Gebhardt

Copyright © 2012 Bob Gebhardt

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-304-01313-2

No part of this book, eBook, EPUB, text, or the likes, may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, data process or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, typing, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

Contact Bob Gebhardt

Email

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Website

www.gebhardtnovels.com

Purchase Gebhardt novels online

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www.lulu.com/spotlight/BobGebhardt

This book is dedicated

to my loving wife

Patricia A. Gebhardt

For her tireless assistance, her encouragement,

and support in the preparation of my novels.

Very special thanks to my friend, neighbor

and professional illustrator,

Mike Bartus

for his help, advice and illustrations

in this and my other novels.

Other Books by Bob Gebhardt

Trove

The discovery of a hide map that leads to a pirate trove

of riches and lifelong friendships.

Island of Death

Those who venture in search of its pirate treasure never come back.

Pirate’s Ghostly Spirits

The friendly paranormal interaction with the spirits of the pirates. .

El Dorado Relics Recovered

The story of the world famous legend of El Dorado’s elusive treasures.

Sailors Tacking from Murder

The lure of romance, riches and high-seas adventure.

Extra-Dimensional Visitation

A parallel dimension of advanced humans

making rare visits sharing enlightenment.

Sailing Simplified

A short, to the point, lesson on how to sail

small-to-medium sized sailboats.

Visit the author’s website at:

www.gebhardtnovels.com

Disclaimer

This novel is a totally fictional rendering of the author’s imagination including all of the characters and some of the locations. Any similarities between persons or activities must be considered purely coincidental.

The spiritual topics should not be construed as true, real or aligned with any religious teachings. Parapsychology and psychic abilities are unproven, controversial and unexplained mental phenomena at this time.

The presence of angels and Guardian Angels, as well as different types of afterlife activities are beliefs that have been present for eons and many are comforting to believe and interesting to contemplate.

List of Characters:

Al (Alfred Koenig) - archeologist student

Albert - the psychic

Amanda - pilot and Sol’s girl friend

Bob Banner - group member mechanically skilled

Chris Adair - pilot and owner of tour ship and helicopter

Doctor Frank - political contact

Don Tanner - Sailor’s Siren, Lottie’s husband partner

Einstein (Ernest Stein) - professor of archeology

Father John Matthew - friendly priest, psychic and exorcist

Herbert P. Aster - Lottie’s wealthy father

Jake Corning - treasure broker

Joanne Burgess - Ron’s wife and electronics geek

Kevin Banner - Pat and Bob’s son group’s finance manager

Kurt Hone - possessed archeologist

Lottie (Charlotte Aster) - call girl, investor, Don’s wife

Mack - Sol’s ex-Boss

Marge Corning - Jakes wife and disabled marine

Martha Aster - Lottie’s mother

Miguel - pirate spirit possessing the broach

Nick Flat - archeologist student

Pam Adair - Chris’s wife, avid treasure hunter and psychic

Pat - Bob’s wife, incredible cook

Paul Carter - owner and pilot of Albatross Marine Aviation

Ron Burgess - leader August Delusion Group ex-Navy

Roy Clayton - injured student diver

Sol (Roy Thomas Solomon) - discovered treasure feature

Susan Barto - real estate company owner and Kevin Banner’s wife

Voz - Guardian Angel overseer

Prologue

To say a long time ago is pretty vague even using the Bible’s forty days and forty nights as a time reference which is also no more than a very long time, it may be better or a bit more exact to say it was the latter part of the sixteen and early part of the seventeen hundreds during the era of Spain’s treasure fleets visiting the new world we can use for reference.

During that time and with the presence of ships laden with silver from Peru, gold from Ecuador and emeralds from Columbia traversing the Caribbean and meeting at Cuba the temptation and susceptibility of illegal riches became enormous. Also the wars between European kings that authorized privateers to plunder other countries ships got out of control. Many of the privateers and other opportunists became pirates and buccaneers. These scallywags lived by the rule that there was no rule. Many of the pirate ships had honor among themselves; although governed by the captain they were somewhat democratic. Anyone not in their specific crew, be it another pirate, buccaneer, seaman, merchant or landlubber citizen, was little more than a captive to be held for ransom or killed for sport.

One such pirate broke from the ranks and decided to steal from his ship’s booty but was caught by a fellow pirate as he was carrying treasures to his awaiting longboat tied alongside of the ship. He had been carrying things to the longboat inconspicuously among other crew members for some time and had been setting up black gun powder to blow the ship up as he left. To keep the mate from sounding the alarm he quickly killed him with his dirk and slid him down into the boat. He had to get rid of the body quickly before someone discovered him, so he weighted the body with a couple heavy bars of silver and slipped it over the side. (As chronicled in the fictional novel Trove also by Bob Gebhardt)

This small but very valuable treasure and body have never been found even though the longboat and the destroyed galleon treasures have been recovered.

A series of bad blood among a few pirate ship crews had them warring among themselves and Captain Miguel rescued a crew from certain drowning after Captain Jose Gaspar plundered another pirate ship and set the crew adrift in their somewhat disabled galleon and used it for cannon target practice. Many of the pirates were killed and yet others ended up in the water as their ship was blasted apart and sunk. When the sun went down Captain Jose sailed off.

Captain Miguel, also a pirate captain who had been patrolling around the Gulf of Mexico for merchant ships to plunder, heard the volleys of cannon shots off in the distance and sailed in that general direction out of curiosity finding nothing as darkness set in. He was standing on the quarterdeck enjoying the fresh breeze and smelling the odor of burnt black cannon powder when he saw an apparition of a fellow captain named Bart who said Come alee a quarter, Captain, and save my crew!  

Miguel was confused as to how Captain Bart was suddenly on his ship until the apparition disappeared before his eyes, when he realized it was a ghost asking him to help his crew. He called out, Quartermaster, come alee one-quarter compass.

One-quarter alee, aye, as he turned the ship’s wheel a few degrees to port. He then said in a low voice, Captain, we will lose our wind and way. That is much too high on the wind for our jibs.

Aye, make it so, we must recover some mates.

The quartermaster looked confused but followed orders, and the deck mates trimmed the sails as high as they could but they did eventually lose the power of the wind as the sails spilled the wind and started luffing.

The ship continued to complete its quarter turn but was slowing its forward way and eventually came to a stop. At this time they had what was called, a pirate’s moon, where the passing clouds would allow a bit of moonlight to show through occasionally, and they could see flotsam on the surface with men clinging to it and waving for help.

As they recovered some twenty plus two men they were all swearing allegiance to Captain Miguel for saving their lives and damning Captain Jose for his barbaric actions. As they got settled and many of the wounded men were being treated by candlelight, the moon came shining through revealing Captain Jose Gaspar’s ship, the Armor, broadside and off the starboard beam.

Chaos abound as men left the wounded and hurried to their stations, orders were being yelled and sails were being trimmed in an effort to gain the power of the wind, but the ship was in irons and at the Armor’s mercy. They were so close they could hear laughter and suddenly two cannon shots and then the splintering of the ship’s wooden hull being ripped apart. Then two more cannons almost simultaneously exploded and seconds later more splintering. The crew managed to get three cannons fired at the Armor before the cannon deck almost disappeared into the sea when hit by several more cannon balls. Some men were praying and making the sign of the cross as they were being wounded and dismembered by the flying wood and debris.

Captain Miguel was still standing but was covered with his and the quartermaster’s blood. He had his hand next to his chest and inside his shirtwaist where he held a broach, which his wife had insisted he carry to remember her by as he sailed the seas. He looked to the moon that had shown through again and said, My Lord I was trying to do what was right, when he suffered a fatal death blow.

2012, a Geographical Survey for Oil

Hours of viewing the video monitors representing the sea bottom geographical substructure, as their survey ship passed over, looking for specific features indicating the possibilities of the presence of oil deposits was bored. When certain structures or features are located they would map out the area with high frequency sound surveillance. The company geologist would examine the readouts and either pass on additional surveillance or set up a closer examination to rate the field for further exploration.

Sol has been at the station for several hours and had run out of coffee and his three donuts were giving him indigestion. He thought if I get up for a few seconds to get a Tums no one will be the wiser. He left his station took a leak and got a Tums out of the cabinet, quickly returning to his station only to find his boss seated in front of the monitors.

I should fire you or throw you over the side and let the fishes eat your ass.

I was only gone for a second, we could have only covered a hundred feet or so, what is the big deal?

You’re done, when we get back to the dock, you're out of here. And if you want your final pay you better not leave this station for a second.

Come on Mac give me a break. I've been doing this for over a year and I have helped this company locate several productive sites.

Forget it; guys like you are a dime a gross. While we are heading in, pack your shit so I can get you out of my sight.

After Mac left, Sol mumbled under his breath, Dime a gross! What a dumb shit. I should put my foot through one of these damn monitors.

About an hour and a half later Sol got a strange signal but saw nothing of consequence on the monitor. He thought probably an item on the sea bed caused the signal. The sea bottom surface was not routinely monitored but was electronically video recorded on a hard drive for later viewing if there was a need. Out of curiosity and shear boredom he hit some switches to bring up the images of the sea floor in a small box, or PIP, (picture in a picture) on his main monitor. He backed up the scanned images by several minutes and ran it forward. He observed a raised feature of sand slowly pass by and leave the screen. It was not unusual to see features such as this but something told him to privately log the location on the hard drive and the latitude and longitude. After doing so he had the premonition that something important had just happened and he went about obscuring the image data on the hard drive. He then looked at the scheduled search pattern of the ship and found that they would make a return pass near the area within the next two hours.

The rules of the research ship called for him to tell his supervisor of any anomaly and forbade him from altering data. It also specifically outlawed him from using other gear such as the side-scan sonar to define items on the sea bottom.

He was thinking, "Hell, I already lost my job, what else can they do to me. He also knew that his supervisor had a repeater monitor in his office cabin but he could not see his PIP that he had called up to look at the feature. Besides, that ass was out partying last night as his alcohol breath indicated when he was chewing him out. So he was probably taking a nap in his big office chair.

By the time that they were getting ready to pass close to the area of the feature, he was all set with the side-scan sonar set to long distance off of the starboard side and made sure that the recording was being sent only to his monitor PIP and recorded to his personal thumb drive.

As they approached he had the feeling something great was going to come into view, maybe a pleasure boat that he could salvage for a few thousand bucks. As he waited he thought he was overdoing it, a raised feature was all it was, probably nothing but a coral formation.

As the area approached he could see an abnormal track of features starting from a very thin line to the main body of the feature. It was only a few inches raised from the flat bottom but it was spread out over thirty yards or more. As the image passed he felt disappointment that he could see no detail indicating that this feature was anything of consequence, but he adjusted the aim of the side-scan beam to keep the image in sight as long as possible.

Overwhelmed with disappointment, his mind seemed to go blank, and he got the feeling or heard something that sounded like Spanish but he understood it, as if it were English pleading for help. 

He turned so quickly, thinking someone had come in and said something to him, that he lost his balance and fell out of his chair.

What the hell!

He was sure that he had felt or heard someone pleading for help. He set his chair back up and then went to the hatch to see if anyone was in the passageway. Seeing no one he went back to the con and shut down the sonar and got everything back in order. He placed the thumb drive in his pocket and assumed his position monitoring underground geographical substructures for oil pockets. As his mind and attention went back to the routine he started to analyze his perception that someone called for help.

He immediately was flooded with thoughts of a male pirate from the seventeen hundreds offering treasures for help and release from his watery grave.

He kept trying to put it out of his mind but it was dominating his thoughts.

As they were off station and heading back to the harbor, Sol thought the farther away I get from that location I’ll forget about it. He packed his things and stood by to disembark.

Sol normally lived in the panhandle of Florida but had been working in the area from Tampa to the Florida Keys so he had been staying in a shabby and inexpensive rooming house near the port that the survey ship was using. With his month’s pay in his pocket he found himself checking out and catching a bus to the Fort Myers area. He could not reconcile the fact that he was blindly traveling closer to the location