Roatan Gold Hunting

There has been hundreds of millions of dollars in pirate gold already found on Roatan. It is estimated that there are still billions more to be found. Most of the gold found has been in the form of gold doubloons and Spanish pieces of Eight. With today's skyrocketing gold prices, the gold on Roatan gets more valuable by the day.

Captain Henry Morgan made several voyages in the late 1600's to Roatan after he had filled his ships with pirate treasure. Captain Morgan had hid his gold on Roatan so that he could go back to sea and plunder more Spanish gold. Much of Captain Morgan's stashed gold on Roatan has never been recovered.

In the 1920's Mitchell Hedges found four pirate treasure chests filled with gold. He immediately fled to Belize and then booked passage to New York on a steamer. Mitchell Hedges sold his pirate gold from Roatan in New York for $6,000,000, That would be worth almost 1 billion of today's dollars. Mitchell Hedges took his fortune to England and built a spectacular castle. Mitchell Hedges adventures are portrayed by the movie series "Indiana Jones". Mitchell Hedges never returned to Roatan again fearing arrest from the Roatan authorities.

Pirate Gold from Roatan During the 1960's a group of Peace Corps volunteers from the United States found several caches of Captain Morgan's pirate gold. They all returned to the United States multi millionaires. The gold find was never reported to authorities, however the amount of gold found is claimed to have been found was over $500,000,000. The Peace Corps volunteers claim to have left behind hundreds of silver bars on Roatan, since the boat they hired to take them off of Roatan could not carry any more weight.

Roatan Pirate Gold A treasure hunter named Howard Jennings also came to Roatan in the 1960's looking for pirate treasure. The Peace Corps volunteers got the idea to look for gold from Howard Jennings. He was after some specific pieces of pirate treasure on Roatan. One piece was a 10 ton gold chain that was stolen from Inca King Huascar by the Spanish. The Spanish loaded it onto a ship headed for Spain, however that ship was looted by Roatan pirates and has never been found. The chain of Huascar has never been recovered. Howard Jennings was also searching for a 7 foot tall statue of the virgin Mary that was taken from a catholic church during the famous Roatan pirate raid on Panama City.

Howard never found the chain of Huascar or the statue, but he did find close to $50 million in gold doubloons and Spanish pieces of eight. It is Ironic that the Peace Corps volunteers he tipped off found 10 times more gold than he did. The Peace Corps Volunteers did not find the the chain of Huascar or the statue either. To this day neither treasure has been found on Roatan.

Captain Henry Morgan's Gold on Roatan

There are numerous other stories of individuals finding both large and small buried pirate treasure chests on Roatan. Lose doubloons and pieces of eight are also regularly found in some areas of Roatan. Many cruise ship tourists have gotten very lucky and found some pirate treasure on Roatan. You will regularly see cruise ship visitors getting off of their ship with metal detectors hoping to find some Roatan pirate treasure.

More Roatan Pirate Treasure Legends

There are other stories on Roatan of a Resort being half built near Camp Bay. Supposedly the construction crew unearthed a buried pirate chest and then sailed off of Roatan in the middle of the night. Completely abandoning the resort they had already sunk 1 million plus dollars into.

There is another Roatan story that in 2002 a homeowner was having some construction done at his home. His construction crew unearthed 3 buried chests. The story says that the homeowner tied up the construction crew and slipped off of Roatan in the middle of the night with 2 chests. Leaving the third to the construction crew he had tied up.