"The Lost Treasure of Olivier Levasseur" - BDGT3 Mystery Cache

One of a series of caches placed near Arrowhead Park, this is #3 in BigD’s Geo-gadget Tour(BDGT)! There is no cache at the listed coordinates but they will lead you to Arrowhead Park, a small neighborhood park with ample parking for the cache-mobile, and the starting point of all caches in the series. Each of these caches will involve some sort of Field Puzzle or Geo-gadget, good luck, and happy hunting !

Olivier Levasseur (1688 or 1690 – 7 July 1730), was a pirate, nicknamed La Buse (The Buzzard) because of the speed and ruthlessness with which he always attacked his enemies. He was born in Northern France to a wealthy family, got a good education, and went on to have a very successful career as a naval officer. He earned high praise from King Louis XIV, but after the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1714) when ordered to return with his ship, Levasseur turned PIRATE instead!

“La Buse” as he became known, had a very lucrative career as a pirate after his stint with the French Navy. He pillaged and plundered the coastline of West Africa. Launched legendary raids from his base on the island of Sainte-Marie, one of which was so successful, that it was later used in a book you may have heard of “Treasure Island” by Robert Louis Stevenson! Levasseur and his fellow looters took the great portugese galleon “The Virgin of the Cape” which contained such a ridiculous amount of treasure, that the pirates didn’t even bother to rob the men aboard the ship, which was pretty standard practice.

After a good run of piratin’ in 1724, Levasseur sent a negotiator to the governor on the island of Bourbon to discuss amnesty that had been offered to pirates who promised to change their ways. However, the French government wanted a large part of the stolen loot back, so Levasseur decided to settle down in secret on the Seychelles archipelago instead. Eventually he was captured near Fort Dauphin, taken to Saint-Denis, Réunion and hanged for piracy at 5 p.m. on 7 July 1730.

Now Legend tells that when he stood on the scaffold he had a necklace around his neck, containing a cryptogram with several lines written in his own secret code. He threw it into the crowd while exclaiming: "Find my treasure, the one who may understand it!"

 What became of this necklace is unknown to this day, but many treasure hunters have since tried to decode the cryptogram hoping its solution will lead to this treasure. Though a few breakthroughs have been made as to the treasure’s location, to this day it is still hunted, and has not been found!

Solve the encrypted letter from the pirate Le Buse, to hunt down the long lost treasure! Good Luck and Happy Caching! ;0)~

***FTF Honors Go To... SugarDaddy09!!!***