Captain Lock's Treasure
A massive thank you to Alstone Riding centre for the permission to use this area for a geocache!! Please note that this may be disabled at times due to nesting swallows. Please do not remove the trackable coin inside the cache, this is only to be discovered as the final 'treasure' in the series.
*Please note the story below is completely fictitious and not linked to any real person.
1856
It was the 6th of February 1856, a bitter, cold sea swelled under a full moon, becoming more turbulent as the weather became increasingly windy. Heavy rain crashed down on the deck of the Gallant, formerly HMS Gallantry. She was a large merchant vessel that had been loaded to the teeth with firepower to serve a privateer crew. The crew's luck was already running out up to that night, and the weight of the ship on rough seas only condemned their fate further.
The Captain was a William Lock, a man with 25 years experience as a privateer. However, both him and his crew overtime had become increasingly fed up of risking their lives for little reward, as they handed over their stolen fortunes to queen and country. They soon began to hide some of their loot, and word was soon out that they were more pirates than privateers, purely out for themselves. Once a bounty was on the crews heads and they were and wanted as traitors, they made it clear they ran as pirates. They took on any ship they considered vulnerable, from any nation, and in any water.
On the 6th of Feb the Gallant was attempting to land at Steep Holm in the Bristol Channel to unload and hide some treasure, before returning to open waters. However the tide and waves had started to smash at the ship, driving her towards the coast. Before she knew it she had hit the sands at Berrow and perished, along with the majority of the crew in the freezing waters. However some of the crew had made it ashore, Captain Lock being one of them, his pockets full of what treasure he could quickly grab before abandoning the ship. Of which was a series of rare gold pirate coins. Some of the crew were soon rounded up by the locals and later hung as traitors to the crown. It was presumed that Captain Lock had been lost at sea with some of the other crew never to be seen again.
Years passed and several theories of Lock rolled around by the locals. He was a legendary figure, almost invincible in battle and some failed to believe he was dead. In reality it was true; Lock had made it ashore and was able to hide away for a matter of weeks. Luckily his fame was skewed with exaggerated tales and his real form was almost nothing like his fabled description, making him blend in unnoticed. But realizing his sailing days were over he bought his way to a new life with some of his treasure he carried, and went under the guise of a new blacksmith Edward Gunn. He went on to meet a girl named Catherine Burns whom he married, and had a son named Charles Francis Gunn. These were the only people he trusted enough to share his secret identity with. He passed down his pirates coins to his son before he passed away in 1873.
1940
The coins had been passed down through generation to generation of Locks family. Suspicion of Lock's survival became a local story, fueled partly from the ghostly bones of the Gallant sticking out from the Berrow sands. Stories of pirate coins and treasure still local in the area sparked the imagination of many.
Lock's great great grandson Joseph Gunn was the last to be handed the coins. But with the start of WW2 he buried the coins locally and only he knew the locations, one coin was particularly special and larger, and the whereabouts of this coin was broken up and detailed with the burial of the other coins. L\Cpl Gunn had previously fought in France but had received a bad shrapnel injury to his leg during the evacuation of Dunkirk. He wished to still serve and remained on home guard duty at his home town.
On the 4th of October 1940 waves of German bombers began a route up the Bristol channel and across Burnham on sea. They began to drop their payloads into the small town and surrounding areas. The sky was arced with fire, scarred and dirtied with flak bursts. Anti aircraft guns strained away in desperation to keep the bombers away. Gunn had gone out to man a small post near the river Brue in Alstone that night, on one of the anti aircraft guns, but was sadly never seen again. He carried with him the pirate secrets. Or did he?
2015
A small bottle washes up on the banks of the river Brue, hidden in the thick mud until now. Inside it is a small piece of paper riddled with coordinates and dotted with dried blood. Across the top is scrawled 'CAPTAIN LOCK'S TREASURE'. With no immediate family, and alone that night Gunn had wrote down the secret locations before tossing the bottle into the river. His body still never found. Only now has the bottle surfaced and the myth of Captain Lock been revealed. The finder of this bottle is YOU.
Below is a list of the coordiantes in GC codes to find the 8 caches.
GC5ZBK2
GC5ZBJQ
GC5ZBK8
GC5ZFNF
GC5ZFN6
GC5ZNYM
GC5ZNX0
GC5ZNXR