After two decades of dives, sonar surveys, and laboratory tests, an international team of marine archaeologists announced that the coral-encrusted wreck in shallow water off Madagascar’s Sainte-Marie Island was the long-lost Nossa Senhora do Cabo, a 700-ton Portuguese treasure ship captured by pirates three centuries ago.
“After twenty years of research, scientists were able to prove that a shipwreck off the coast of Madagascar is the Nossa Senhora do Cabo, which sank 300 years ago due to a pirate attack,” reported Gazet van Antwerpen, citing the project’s technical dossier and artifact catalogue.
According to El Universo, the vessel left Goa laden with gold bullion, silks, and sacred objects when pirates Olivier Levasseur, known as La Buse, and John Taylor intercepted it near Réunion Island on 8 April 1721. Witnesses said a violent storm had already snapped the masts and forced the crew to jettison seventy-two cannons before the boarding.
Researchers from the American Center for Historic Shipwreck Preservation said their study of timbers, ballast, and copper-alloy fastenings matched Indo-Portuguese construction techniques of early eighteenth-century men-of-war. “There’s strong evidence this wasn’t just another pirate ship but a holy treasure ship that fell into pirate hands,” stated the report.
The team catalogued more than 3,300 artifacts, including Chinese porcelain, nutmeg, wood carvings, ivory crucifixes, thirteen gold coins, and fragments of silk that echoed period manifests. “A dazzling treasure,” said Brandon A. Clifford and Mark R. Agostini of Brown University, who noted an ivory plaque engraved with golden letters reading INRI among the standout finds. Sonar sweeps located metallic anomalies deeper under the sand, raising hopes that sealed chests remained undisturbed.
Scholars estimated the fortune would fetch well over $138 million today, ranking it among the richest single prizes in maritime history. Period archives described bars of gold and silver, diamonds, pearls, and religious items, including the legendary Goa Flamboyant Cross, said to be so heavy that three men needed to lift it, though no such cross has surfaced.
Documents in Lisbon and Paris indicated that Levasseur and Taylor renamed the captured ship Victorieux and used her as a flagship until their alliance soured. The pair likely scuttled the Victorieux at Madame Islet off Sainte-Marie while untallied riches stayed in the hold. “The material evidence and historical documentation strongly support the hypothesis of the discovery of the Victorieux. The Madame Islet tells us a story of piracy, colonial power, and human suffering, anchored in the sediments of the Indian Ocean,” said Professor Claudio Lorenzo, who led the 2015 survey, according to GEO France.
Approximately two hundred enslaved people were aboard the Nossa Senhora do Cabo; their fate after the attack remained unknown. Historians noted that the surviving crew and passengers, including the Bishop of Goa and the outgoing Viceroy of Portugal, were set adrift while the pirates sailed away without firing a cannon.
Since 1999, dive teams have returned annually to Sainte-Marie and reburied vulnerable timbers under ballast stones to shield them from tides and chemical erosion. The wreck lay inside a lagoon and was especially susceptible to shifting sands and acidic runoff.
Folklore claimed that La Buse flung a cryptogram into the crowd before his 1730 execution on Réunion, daring treasure hunters to decode it. No one traced the bulk of the hoard, and some specialists speculated that part of it was burned or sunk when the Victorieux was abandoned.
“The accumulated evidence is convincing to the scientific community that the discovered remains may belong to the legendary ship,” reported GEO France. Excavations chronicled in Wreckwatch aimed to recover additional timbers, copper nails, and personal belongings that could place the identification beyond doubt. “A rare convergence of piracy, trade, colonialism, and cultural exchanges,” said Lorenzo, who believed the wreck offered the closest modern audiences would ever come to the fevered chase for La Buse’s lost fortune.
Produced with the assistance of a news-analysis system.