Sometime during the summer of 1810, a Captain Blackbeard, (not Edward Teach, the Pirate) was granted a commission from the British Admiralty to salvage a Spanish galleon that had been caught in a fierce sea storm and wrecked upon a sandbar in the Bahama Islands. Blackbeard had a crew of tough able-bodied seamen who were willing to serve any ruler who would employ them, and they were ready to go anywhere in the world for financial gain.

Leaving Plymouth Sound, England, just before dawn, Blackbeard and his crew slipped out of the harbor as quietly as possible. The breeze was slight and the ship took to the wind nicely, gliding smoothly through the water without creating hardly a ripple, they were soon out of port and into the open sea.

Inside of his cabin, Captain Blackbeard was hovered over a large wooden desk. A brass lantern with its light turned low swung easily from a wooden beam overhead. He was carefully studying an old navigation chart. The chart he was studying showed the route from Plymouth, England, southwest across the Atlantic Ocean to the Bahama Islands. The wind caught the sails and the bow of the ship dipped deeper, then came up and rode out of the water. As they headed south by southwest, the wind picked up and they were making good time.

The trip from England to the Bahama Islands was just over 4,000 miles, three to five months at sea if all went well. If the winds were favorable, it could be considerable less, but there was always the unexpected calm or the unexpected storm. Many ships were lost at sea in violent storms, seldom leaving any survivors to tell what had happened.

A few weeks later, as the North Atlantic current carried them past the Azores, the lookout man shouted to the captain, ?rivateers, two to three miles off.·Glancing at the sails, Blackbeard put the wheel over a few spokes. Heading for the open sea, they decided to make a run for it. Several times Blackbeard sent a man aloft, reporting that the Bucaneers were still in hot pursuit. As dawn broke on the eastern horizon, they were relieved to see that the sea was empty.

They had outrun the pirates and were now entering the Saragosa Sea, just north of the Bahamas. The swirling waters were rough, pitching the ship around quite a bit, but they made it through safely. They set a new course now, and headed for the Bahama Islands. A few weeks later, with their food and water almost depleted, they entered the West Indies, then casually sailed down into the Bahamas.

They had no trouble in locating the wrecked Spanish Galleon. In a short time they completed the salvage operation, and, with $1,500,000 in heavy silver bars stacked into the hold of his ship, Blackbeard headed northwest through the Florida Straights, then changed course due north along the Atlantic coastline to Chesapeake Bay. Blackbeard continued to sail north until they reached Baltimore, where they rested a few days and took on food and other supplies. From there, Blackbeard planned to set sail for England. While their ship was in port, rumors began spreading around the docks about the valuable load of Spanish silver bars that were carefully stored in their hold.

Blackbeard also had some other problems to worry about. The United States declared war on England on June 18, 1812, and Blackbeard feared that the US government would seize his ship crossing the Atlantic Ocean on the return trip to England, and confiscate his valuable load of Spanish silver bars. The British frigate Guerriere was destroyed on August 19, 1812 by the U.S. Frigate Constitution, also know as Old Ironsides, the most famous American ship of the war.

After a hasty meeting with his crew, Blackbeard decided their best chance of keeping the Spanish silver bars was to leave by land. He decided to travel across Maryland and then up into Pennsylvania, where he would then cut across the Niagara Frontier and enter into Canada. Just after midnight he sailed out of the harbor as quietly as possible. From the shoreline no movement could be seen unless someone watched the masthead against a star. Without creating hardly a ripple, Blackbeard was soon out of port and into the Chesapeake Bay.

He then proceeded up the west branch of the Susquehanna River to Clinton County, Pennsylvania. Here he bought some horses and wagons to use for overland travel. Upon reaching the narrow Niagara Frontier, Blackbeard found that his path was blocked by clashing U.S. troops and British forces. With his only means of escape cut off, he decided to bury the heavy silver bars in trenches dug near the great salt lick, just outside the village of Bradford, in McKean County. Blackbeard and his crew then made it safely to Canada via Fort Erie, which was bounded on the west and north by the Canadian Province of Ontario.

After the War of 1812 had finally come to an end. Blackbeard returned to America to try and recover his large cache of silver bars. He had with him a map he had drawn at the time he buried them. He had no trouble at all locating the salt lick, but the site had been changed so much by the new settlers in the area, that both his map and his memory of the terrain were worthless.

If the cache of silver bars had not been recovered by now, it may rest in the small hamlet of Gardeau, in the southeastern part of the county, about 12 miles south of Port Allegheny and just west of Keating Summit. The site of Noah Parker? old hotel, no longer in existence, was near the exact location where the silver cache was hidden by Captain Blackbeard in 1812.

That $500,000 in Spanish silver bars would now be worth about $3,000,000 at the prices they are paying for precious metals. Good luck and good hunting.

SOURCES:

Treasure magazine. February 1991.

Webster? Geographical Dictionary. P. 376, 970.