In Episode 402 Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger explore the woods of East Granby, Connecticut, searching for the lost pirate treasure of Captain David Marteen. In the 1660s, Marteen sailed his ship up the Connecticut River, set up a small community, hid what would be over $300 million in treasure in today’s money, then vanished. Is the gold still out there? We have an idea of where to dig.
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Produced and hosted by: Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger
Edited by: Ray Auger
Theme Music by: John Judd
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
*A note on the text: Please forgive punctuation, spelling, and grammar mistakes. Like us, the transcripts ain’t perfect.
[STREAM RUNNING]
[WALKING IN THE WOOD]
JEFF/RAY: (SINGING) Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me.
JEFF: Yarrr, matey.
RAY: Yarrr…. So Jeff, why are we dressed like pirates?
JEFF: Because, matey, we’re looking for pirate treasure! Yo ho!
RAY: Okay, but we’re deep in the woods of East Granby, Connecticut. We’re almost 50 miles from the ocean as the crow flies.
JEFF: I get it. When you think of pirates and pirate treasure, you don’t think of East Granby, Connecticut, located in northern Connecticut.
RAY: No, I don’t think of northern Connecticut when it comes to pirates. And the only water nearby is this stream.
JEFF: That would be Salmon Stream. And it’s why we’re here. We’re only about 12 miles from Hartford. Hartford is the capital, and located where it is, because it sits on the Connecticut River. And Hartford is about how far a large sailing ship can make it up the Connecticut River from Long Island Sound before the waters get too shallow.
RAY: That makes sense.
JEFF: So a smaller ship like a sloop, could head even further north. The Connecticut River is only about 9 miles to our east. Anyway, in the year 1665, Dutch Pirate, David Marteen plundered a ship called Neptune with a mega fortune in its hold, and there’s some evidence to suspect he brought the treasure and hid it somewhere nearby where we’re standing today. They say the treasure has never been found.
[INTRO]
JEFF: I’m Jeff Belanger. Welcome to Episode 402 of the New England Legends podcast.
RAY: And I’m Ray Auger. Thanks for joining us on our mission to chronicle every legend in New England one story at a time. Did you know most of our story leads come from you? This one did. Thank you to Tim Casey from the Suffield Historical Society for the lead. If you’ve got a wicked strange tale you think we should check out, please reach out to us anytime through our website.
JEFF: Ray and I are working on something new, and we’d like your help! If you’ve had a strange encounter in New England. Maybe you’ve seen a ghost, UFO, strange creature, or something truly unexplainable, we’d love to hear about it. Please send us an email about it through our website. We’d love to interview you.
RAY: We’ll go searching for the lost treasure of the pirate David Marteen right after this word from our sponsor.
SPONSOR
[STREAM RUNNING NEARBY]
RAY: Pirate treasure in East Granby, Connecticut. Wouldn’t that be something?
JEFF: It would live up to every childhood dream I’ve ever had involving digging for treasure in my backyard… except my backyard wasn’t East Granby.
RAY: But it COULD have been!
JEFF: Exactly.
RAY: How much treasure are we talking?
JEFF: They say it would be worth over $300 million today.
RAY: $300 million!?
JEFF: $300 million.
RAY: Do you know what this means?
JEFF: What?
RAY: We’re gonna be rich!!
JEFF: Obviously.
RAY: Do you have a map or something so we know where to dig?
JEFF: Not exactly.
RAY: How do we know we’re in the right spot.
JEFF: Because back in 1956, following clues, a local treasure hunter named Anthony Ruches found some strange markings on rocks nearby the fork in Salmon Stream that that led him to believe it was some kind of code from the Pirate David Marteen’s crew that the treasure is hidden nearby.
RAY: And where is that rock now? Can we see it?
JEFF: Well… no.
RAY: Okay….
JEFF: The rock seems to be missing. Possibly stolen years ago by treasure hunters who didn’t want to leave any clues for others to find.
RAY: Still, this is a pretty spot in the woods by Salmon Stream. There are small waterfalls as the stream trickles downhill. (BEAT) Here’s a little more background on East Granby. It was first settled by Europeans in 1664. We’ve actually been near here before when we covered the story of Old Newgate Prison which was originally the first incorporated copper mine in America.
JEFF: That’s right!
RAY: So people have been used to digging in the ground for valuable metals for a long time in these parts.
JEFF: Good point. To find out where the treasure may be located, let’s head back to the year 1665.
[TRANSITION]
[OCEAN SAILING SHIP]
RAY: It’s October of 1665 and we’re sailing aboard a ship captained by the Dutch pirate, David Marteen.
JEFF: Yo-ho!
RAY: Yo ho. Marteen is a privateer. He’s been raiding Spanish strongholds in New Spain, not far from the Caribbean. Marteen has been a privateer for the last four years. He was commissioned by the Jamaican governor to pillage and plunder any Spanish ships and treasure he may find… and business has been good.
JEFF: Years ago, Marteen had taken in with French pirates on the Caribbean island of Tortuga, where he began making a name for himself. There he earned enough money to buy his own ship, and that’s when he met up with another pirate named Robert Caldwell who used to sail with the famous pirate Henry Morgan. The problem is, Morgan cheated Caldwell out of some plunder, which is why Caldwell was in the market for a new ship and captain. As you can imagine, the event made Caldwell pretty our on Captain Morgan.
RAY: Right now, Captain Marteen has his sights set on another prize… sailing ahead of us is a Spanish ship called Neptune. Word has it the famous Santa Barbara treasure sits in her hold, and Marteen intends to find out for sure.
[CANNON THUNDER]
RAY: Marteen just ordered a cannon shot across the bow of the Neptune! We’re closing in fast.
[CANNON THUNDER]
RAY: That cannon was even closer to Neptune!
JEFF: The Neptune knows she can’t outrun Marteen. She’s lowering her sails.
[OCEANS SOUNDS]
RAY: Captain Marteen and his crew board the Neptune and immediately take to executing all of the officers.
[PISTOL SHOTS]
[MEN DYING]
RAY: The rest of the crew surrenders and offers to pledge their loyalty to Captain Marteen.
[CREAKING WOODEN DOOR]
JEFF: Caldwell is checking below decks. Let’s take a look.
[WALKING ON WOOD]
RAY/JEFF REACT: Wow! Thar be gold!
JEFF: It’s the Santa Barbara treasure! There’s $20 million dollars in gold, silver, doubloons, and jewelry in the ships hold.
RAY: You could literally swim in that!
JEFF: And now it all belongs to Captain Marteen and his crew. Marteen decides he’ll stay aboard the Neptune and keep this ship for himself.
RAY: The battle is barely over when another ship sails up from the horizon. Is that…
JEFF: I think it’s Captain Morgan!
RAY: It is! That’s his ship.
JEFF: Once the ship is within calling distance, Captain Morgan calls over to Marteen that he’s been in pursuit of the Neptune, and Marteen should turn over the ship and plunder to him. Marteen refuses. Angry and dejected, Morgan sails away.
RAY: Captain Marteen sets his course for the island of Tortuga to stash his incredible treasure.
[SAILING]
RAY: As Marteen arrives in Tortuga, he soon learns that Captain Morgan has double-crossed him. He’s bent the ear of the governor of Jamaica, that Captain Marteen is a threat to these waters. Morgan is given the blessing to hunt him down. Captain Marteen knows he and his crew… and most importantly his treasure, are no longer safe. So, Marteen and Caldwell gather a small crew of loyalists, and slip out of Tortuga heading north aboard Neptune.
[SAILING]
JEFF: For days they sail north up the coast of the Americas. (PAUSE) After finding a big sound, they circle inside until they find the mouth of a river. (PAUSE) They follow the river north until they can go no further.
RAY: Captain Marteen spots a cove in the river where there’s a small English settlement called Windsor.
JEFF: For months, Marteen and his crew work to clear the grounds and build houses on land they call Big Hill so they can send for their wives and children to settle in this new world.
RAY: By the time the wives and children arrive in Windsor, the locals are getting too uncomfortable with the idea of pirates living nearby. So the people of Windsor tell Marteen and his crew they need to leave.
JEFF: Marteen doesn’t need any extra trouble, plus, he’s out-numbered. If the locals cry pirates to the regional governors, it won’t end well. Marteen believes his best move is to quietly move on and find someplace else to live. So Marteen, his men, and their families pack up everything they can, and head about eight miles northwest to a place near a fork in a pretty brook that will offer plenty of fresh water.
[CONSTRUCTION SOUNDS]
RAY: The group build shelters, they stash their $20 million in treasure, and get to planning their next move. And that brings us back to today.
[TRANSITION]
JEFF: From there, we lose the treasure trail. Just a reminder that $20 million in the 1660s would be worth over $300 million today. We assume with unimaginable wealth like that, Marteen wouldn’t leave it behind.
RAY: And there’s no record of a settlement near Salmon Brook that lasted long enough to get noticed.
JEFF: There’s that.
RAY: Again… we’re not talking a little treasure. If you had $300 million, you wouldn’t leave that behind either.
JEFF: No I would not.
RAY: So why do we suspect it might be buried here?
JEFF: So I found this Hartford Courant newspaper article from 1966. The article describes how Anthony Ruches…
RAY: Who we mentioned at the beginning.
JEFF: Right. That guy. The article says he grew up in the area and was obsessed with the idea of buried treasure. At first he was looking for Revolutionary War money that was going to pay French soldiers. He’d heard that the pay may have been stolen or captured and buried nearby. But then a friend of his helped with research and told him about the Santa Barbara treasure. How there could be a connection with this region. So, beginning in 1951, Ruches spent a bunch of money on metal detecting equipment and spent all of his weekends searching for any clues. He found crossed bones, and then he found a skull near some stones with markings etched in them. The markings pointed west, so he kept searching west. He eventually found what he called treasure stones near the fork in Salmon Brook here in East Granby. He couldn’t make out the symbols on the rocksm, so he sent them to the Treasure Trove Club of New York. They told Ruches that the English pirate Robert Caldwell likely etched the map instructions on these stones. Ruches pieced the rest of the story together and believes the treasure could be buried as much as 20 feet deep somewhere around here. Ruches spent the rest of his days searching.
RAY: So there’s a bunch of Ifs here.
JEFF: There are.
RAY: This isn’t the first pirate treasure we’ve chased.
JEFF: No it’s not.
RAY: We’ve discussed how pirates did indeed bury treasure when they were on the run. But the point isn’t to bury it down 20 feet. The point is to stash it and return as soon as possible to retrieve it once the heat dies down.
JEFF: Right.
RAY: Ruches went broke trying to find this treasure. He searched for 15 years. He camped out here, he used a metal detector, he dug in various places hoping to find any artifact that might tie to the time of pirates, but he struck out.
JEFF: Another theory is that Marteen had a settlement here, but it was wiped out during the King Philip’s War around 1676. Only a few would have known where the treasure was buried. If they were killed suddenly, the treasure location would have gone to the grave with them.
JEFF: Yet here we are standing in the same spot wondering if maybe everyone missed something. Maybe there is an absolute fortune buried out here because maybe Captain Marteen had to high tail it out of this region, or his people died who knew where to dig. There’s always treasure in the story. But I’d still like to dig… just in case.
[DIG DIG DIG]
[OUTRO]
RAY: Okay, but if you find anything, you’re buying the first round.
JEFF: That’s a deal. And considering our likelihood of finding the lost treasure is pretty low, we’d love it if you’d become one of our patreon patrons! It’s just $3 bucks per month, and for that you’ll get ad free access to a treasure trove of all of our past episodes, early access to new episode, plus bonus episodes and content that no one else gets to hear. To sign up, just head to patreon.com/newenglandlegends. We’d appreciate it.
To see some pictures related to this week’s story, click on the link in our episode description, or go to our website and click on Episode 402.
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Until next time remember… the bizarre is closer than you think.
