The settlement o' Tortuga has been featured prominently in Pirate Fiction o'er time, it's time to learn a little about this humble island! While Port Royal n' Nassau were much more prominent pirate ports, we shouldn't forget that Tortuga also has its own Pirate History.

Tortuga Island (Turtle Island) was a small island off the coast of Modern Haiti, orHispanola as it was dubbed in the Colonial Era. Allegedly, when Christopher Colombus sailed into the Caribbean in 1492, he saw the Island n' named it for its Turtle shell shape.

It picked up a small colony of Spanish settlers, but it was lightly populated until French n' English colonists arrived around 1625. The new settlers meant to make a life inHispanola but hadn't thought about the Spanish Military's presence. The Spanish occupied the Island, building a fort after they drove off the colonists. Whenever the military drove off one group of colonists another would appear somewhere else onHispanola, causing Garrisons to shuffle around n' leave unoccupied fortsfer opportunists!

The French saw this n' stole the fort to gain a foothold in the area in 1630, they also shared it with English n' Dutch colonists. The island went through 10 tumultuous years of revolting slaves, Spanish invasions, n' more before "The Brethren of the Coast" made themselves an official organization. It was ashort lived group that the Spanish stamped out, but pirates began to call the island home. It was the Fourth and Final time Spain occupied the Island before England n' France reclaimed the territory in 1655. France removed the English citizens and maintained a hold until 1676 when the island was abandoned.

Throughout the 17thCentury pirates would spring up from Tortuga however. Henry Morgan drew a sizable contingent of French Pirates from Tortuga in 1670 for a campaign in Cuba. France let their pirates run amok, so Tortuga was an excellent place to stash treasure in the formerly Spanish Fortifications.

Every red blooded pirate has dreamed of finding treasure n' it seems that the risk of finding some now be as risky as it be 300 years ago.  If ye happen to come across some shinny object stuck in the corel 20 feet below the water line when spear fishing.  Ye pull that object out of the water, not really know what it might be as it be encrusted with corel.  You take it to the local University to have them remove all that crustacean, to discover a few old silver coins.  They call up the state and make you sign a permit form.  You arrrr all excited, think ye might of hit the treasure load.  

When you start doing research you discover that the worst investment in the world, be ship wreck treasure.  You start looking around yar boat to see if anyone be following you out to the wreck site, waiting fer you to leave and go diving to pick yar wreck clean.  As it normally take years to do a treasure wreck site. You can't sit on top of yar site forever, as you need to go back and forth hundreds of times.  The word always gets out, because you have to deal with may people to get this job done.  The State of Florida will take half of what you pull up, and they will cherry pick the best stuff.

Odyssey Marine discovered $600 Million in sunken treasure at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean in 2007. This treasure was called the Black Swan, which the Spanish government believed it to be the 1804 wreck of a warship called the Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes.  They spend 4 years in court, when the US District Court ruled the all the treasure belong to Spain.  Odyssey didn't recoup any of the very expensive cost of getting the treasure out of the ocean except for a bill of $3.3 Million in Spanish legal fees and $1Million abusive litigation fee.  So how is the pirate in this case, be the Government of Spain n' the USA.

The reality of treasure hunting doesn't quiet match the fantasy of it.