In 1831 Chatham Beach fisherman Arthur Doane received permission to go ashore for a short visit with his fiance with the understanding that he would be rejoining his ship at four o'clock in the morning at North Chatham Beach. Sometime after midnight, Doane was making his way along the shoreline when he came upon a group of men who were obviously pirates burying a large iron chest. Doane hid himself among the dunes until dawn when he emerged and used a piece of driftwood to unearth the chest. It turned out to be filled with numerous sacks of gold Spanish coins.

The fisherman was now a millionaire, and he immediately began to think like one. Lucky Arthur Doane removed the sacks of gold, then dragged the chest to a new location, and reburied it and replaced most of the loot. Later Doane worked out an arrangement with John Eldridge to sell a few coins out of state each month, thereby avoiding undue attention. The arrangement lasted 49 years until Doane became too ill to retrieve the coins himself and had to confide the secret of the cache to Eldridge. When Eldridge was finally given directions to the treasure location, greed got the better of him, and he removed and sold an entire sack of coins, leaving only six sacks of gold in the dwindling cache.

A very angry and upset Arthur Doane died a short time later. However, when Eldridge returned to Chatham Beach to reclaim the remaining six sacks for himself, he found that a severe storm had completely re-arranged the beach, and he was unable to relocate the chest. He searched for several years but never found the treasure. From time to time golden coins of Spanish origin have been found along the beach near old Chatham Lighthouse after storms. No one knows if the source of these finds is some off shore shipwreck or Arthur Doane's storm-tossed cache.