Author's Note:
When I was young, my father told me of a tunnel "somewhere
along the James River" where his great grandfather had buried the treasure he had "acquired" while pirating the
Atlantic Coast off Virginia and the Carolinas. Then in the '60's when gold reached over $400.00 an ounce, he revived
the stories, saying that the price of gold would make the search worthwhile. He went fishing along the James in search
of the tunnel, using the only two coordinates he had: Brackish water and a "Point" of land on the southern shoreline.
He found no tunnel.
My father died in 1987, and any further
information he had concerning the tunnel was lost to me. However...I have found what appears to be the remains of a
tunnel in the general area he had described. Will I search for the "treasure?" I don't think so.
I would like to point out two things:
Pirate's treasures always grow with time. This is due to our productive imaginations, and the fact that we all secretly
wish for sudden wealth. Secondly, if there were treasures buried in a tunnel, after three hundred years, the loot would
have to be part of the earth, for Mother Earth will reclaim that which is hers.
What I have done with
"Treasure at Eagle Point" is write a probable scenario to an unlikely situation. I don't believe there is or ever was
a treasure inside a tunnel. After doing some research, I have found that most pirates looted other ships for food, water,
and tangable goods they could sell once ashore inside friendly harbors. "King's Ransoms" are probably lying at the
bottom of the Atlantic Ocean as the result of foul weather. The many searches by professional divers will attest
to this. Those ships that did not succumb to the elements were so heavily guarded that very few were actually
boarded and secured by pirates, with a few notable exceptions.
So "Treasure at Eagle Point" is a
work of fiction in the truest sense of the word. There are places and peoples named as reference points, and I have
tried to keep my story within the limits of being "historically correct." But there is no treasure on the banks
of the James River. Unless you count the fertile imagination of the author.