Original subtitles

Tonight, one of the most infamous pirates to prowl America's Gulf Coast,

Jean Lafitte.

He was literally called the Terror of the Gulf.

There was not anything that Lafitte wouldn't buy, sell, or steal. Gold,

tobacco, and even people.

But after amassing a vast fortune, Lafitte, along with his stash, goes

No one is ever found.

All of his treasure.

Millions and millions could still be out there today.

Now, we'll explore the top theories surrounding the whereabouts of this

hoard. Did Lafitte take his treasure with him, or did he stash it on the

for later?

Legend has it they panicked, and having no better place to hide the treasure,

they took the wagons on their ship and just kind of threw them overboard.

When he left Galveston Island aboard his ship, the Pride, His treasure was right

there next to him.

Now the question remains, where did the pride end up? What became of Lafitte's

lost treasure, and where could it be?

Early 1800s, the Gulf of Mexico.

For merchants and sailors on the open waters, one name inspires more fear than

any other.

Jean Lafitte.

Lafitte commands a fleet of ships that prowl the Gulf of Mexico and prey on

unarmed vessels.

They then sell what they steal through a smuggling network that's based in New

Orleans.

Jean Lafitte was the final version of pirates.

So you have the Golden Age pirates who are working for themselves, but he's

effectively working as a cartel or mob boss.

He has an operation that's moving millions of dollars worth of

He really caught the imagination of the American people because he was a bit of

a showman, and he was considered to be something of a folk hero, like a latter

-day Robin Hood to the people of southern Louisiana.

The reality of Jean Lafitte is darker, much darker.

Tobacco and cotton are prized commodities, but so is something else.

Slaves.

Lafitte would steal slaves off of slave ships, and then he would keep them in

storehouses up and down the Gulf of Mexico until he could sell them.

At one point, he was pulling in about a million dollars a year, so we're talking

about billions of dollars in today's currency.

He was one of the wealthiest men in the Caribbean.

And it's a real mystery, not only what happened to him, but what happened to

that treasure.

The uncertainty also surrounds John Lafitte's early days.

Some believe he was born in France in the late 1700s. Others report him as

born around Port -au -Prince.

From a very young age, him and his brother Pierre become very good seamen.

They're taught.

how to fight with swords, how to shoot a pistol, how to command a giant sailing

ship. And there's even legends that at one point they joined the French Navy to

go and fight in the Napoleonic Wars.

Then, in 1803, one of the most consequential events in American history

place.

Napoleon's France sells the Louisiana Territory to the United States for

of $15 million.

The United States gains all of the territory up and down the Mississippi

and west to the Rockies.

It doubles the size of the United States overall and gives them territory that

stretches from the East Coast almost all the way to the West Coast.

Strategically, New Orleans is now in a position where it's one of the major

trading hubs of the United States.

This really transformed the people living there as well, transformed their

tastes, their desires in certain kinds of ways.

They're rich or wanted to seem rich. And this is Lafitte's wheelhouse.

Sensing a big opportunity, the Lafitte brothers relocate and set up shop in New

Orleans.

Lafitte first emerges, at least in official records, around 1805. He and

brother Pierre own a warehouse in the bustling port city of New Orleans, where

they are able to distribute their goods that they've acquired for various means.

So we're talking tobacco, coffee, some indigo, cotton to some extent, textile.

He often had those luxury goods to offer to the population when they couldn't

get them.

Then, in 1807, an act of Congress starts Lafitte down a darker path.

Amidst the turmoil of Napoleon's wars in Europe...

American trade vessels are under attack by both the British and the French. So

the United States passes the Embargo Act in 1807 that prohibits not only the

importation of foreign goods into the U .S., but also the importation of slaves.

Because it does not outright outlaw slavery, what it does is actually

incentivize people who are dealing in the illegal importation and trade of

slaves. For someone such as Jean Lafitte,

These acts actually only open new business opportunities for him.

Someone had to fill the void. Just because a supply goes away doesn't mean

the demand goes away. And Lafitte was right at the heart of that.

By 1809, the Lafittes run a blacksmith shop in the French Quarter.

But in reality, this is a front for their smuggling business.

They're bringing in stolen goods and selling them to merchants and other

business people.

He was smuggling and trading enslaved Africans using his network, the very

network that he was using for cotton, indigo, and all sorts of other goods.

To escape the scrutiny of American customs agents, Lafitte moves his

from the blacksmith shop in New Orleans to nearby Barataria Bay.

So Barataria Bay is south and west of New Orleans.

And for Jean Lafitte, it's the perfect place to hide his criminal enterprise.

Barataria is one of the most confusing places to go in America.

The canals, the swamps, the sloughs, they all twist and turn.

And if you got put down there, you were going to be lost before you even

started. But Lafitte and his men had a mastery of these values.

And the Baratarians, as they called themselves, run their illegal goods all

way from the mouth.

of the Mississippi up into New Orleans.

They now have a base that they operate as their own kingdom, effectively

the power of the law. In addition to that, they can see any ships that might

sailing past Barataria and strike targets at will.

Lafitte decides if he can stop the ships from even reaching the port of New

Orleans, then he can cut off all of his competition and become even richer and

more powerful.

The Lafites launch full -blown attacks on other vessels, essentially becoming

pirates.

But to evade the law, Lafite figures out a loophole by insisting he's a

privateer. The line between pirate and privateer is thin and very, very blurry.

But essentially, a pirate is illegal and is engaged in attacking and thieving.

Privateers do similar things, but they do so under the guise of some sort of

legality.

The difference is this.

Privateers sail under what's known as a letter of marque, which is something

granting sanction to the stealing of goods for nations at war.

Lafitte claims to be first a French privateer and then a privateer operating

under the letter of marque of a small independent nation called Cartagena. In

reality... He's never taking resources back to Cartagena.

He was ultimately working for himself, but becoming a privateer gave him some

guise of legitimacy in case he ever got stopped by officials that he could not

wit.

Whatever Lafitte doesn't keep, he smuggles into New Orleans and sells.

By some estimates, as much as a billion dollars worth of goods in today's

currency flowed in and out of his base in Barataria.

For years, Lafitte manages to elude capture.

Then, in 1821, with the U .S. Navy in pursuit, he torches his secret compound

and escapes into the Gulf of Mexico.

As far as we know, that was the last official sighting of him anywhere in

American waters.

But naturally, rumors begin to grow, not only of his whereabouts, but of course

the whereabouts of his enormous fortune.

Lafitte made so much money during his lifetime that many would say it was

impossible for him to have taken it all with him. But if he took his treasure,

where is it?

There's one location near and dear to Lafitte that tops the list of potential

hiding spots.

Lafitte operates mainly out of two islands, Grand Isle and Grand Terre.

These islands are fully equipped.

They've got bases, warehouses, places where you could stash anything,

enormous quantities of treasure.

Lafitte lived on various barrier islands in Barataria Bay.

He warehoused his goods there. He held auctions there to sell off black market

contraband. generating more loot.

These auctions only add to Lafitte's wealth, but he has to stash that loot

somewhere. It's not like a pirate is going to take his loot to the bank.

There are rumors of a large cache of gold and silver near the home that Jean

Lafitte built on Grand Terre and lavishly furnished and decorated.

There's a story that at one point a fisherman was down in Barataria and he

a small chest full of gold earring, Spanish coins.

and a silver imprint of the Virgin Mary.

It is also believed that a good number of Lafitte's men made their homes in

Barataria and even raised families there.

Many Grand Isle families are descendants of those men, and whispers of potential

burial sites are passed down through the generations.

This area is well known for its several hundred -year -old oak trees,

massive trunks.

major landmarks that would be easily identifiable from the water.

There are persistent stories that Jean Lafitte hid his treasure in the waters

and that he used certain large trees as landmarks to tell him where that

treasure was.

Traces of Lafitte's smuggling operation have been found on Grand Terre.

Descendants claim to have discovered things like coins, broken pottery, and

shell heaps, but nothing amounting to a massive treasure has been found.

People have really focused on Barataria, hoping that Jean Lafitte left treasure

there. But the Barataria Bay area is made part of sort of the national park

system in 1966, and so you can't just go in there and start looking for treasure

wherever you want anymore.

Some treasure hunters... suggests there is no silver, there is no gold hidden in

these islands, and it's because he never hid his treasure there in the first

place.

By 1814, despite being a wanted pirate, Jean Lafitte is revered by many

New Orleans residents.

The people who settled this area of Louisiana were not necessarily loyal to

American government.

Local law enforcement in Louisiana simply let Jean Lafitte be, and most

didn't care that he was engaged in illegal activity.

When Lafitte is charged with piracy in 1814, he knows that he could at any

moment have to flee his base in Grand Terre.

He needs to get as far away from Barataria Bay as possible, somewhere

law can't find him, and somewhere, presumably, he could stash his treasure.

This opens up an endless list of possibilities.

For the first few years following the Embargo Act, customs officials pretty

turn a blind eye to most illegal smuggling activity.

However, over time, the smuggling activity becomes so rampant and so

that it begins cutting into their tax revenue.

So while the locals may have been turning a blind eye to Lafitte's illegal

operation, the American government certainly wasn't.

And Lafitte drew the ire of one very prominent governor of Louisiana named

William Claiborne.

Claiborne, that's off on a mission to end Lafitte's pirating operations once

for all.

Lafitte has become public enemy number one.

Claiborne took it upon himself to post wanted posters for the outlaw Lafitte,

offering a bounty of $500.

Lafitte was thoroughly undaunted. And not only did he evade arrest, but he

himself had posters printed. And those posters said, wanted Governor William

Claiborne and offered a reward of $5 ,000.

Governor Claiborne's not amused. He's coming in and trying to impose some

He's trying to have the people of New Orleans respect the U .S. government.

And so it's a direct affront to Governor Claiborne's power.

Their conflict reaches a boiling point on September 16, 1814, when the Navy

sends the USS Carolina to lead an all -out assault on Lafitte's base in

Barataria.

Now, this is a massive show of force by the U .S. Navy.

Lafitte is surrounded by the USS Carolina and six gunboats.

The USS Carolina enters Barataria Bay and absolutely batters Lafitte's pirate

camp with heavy artillery fire.

It seems that Lafitte's caught off guard by this. He ends up losing 80 men in

the process, and he loses a number of sailing vessels as well.

Lafitte's men abandon their ship. The U .S. Navy burns several of them, and

they're able to capture $500 ,000 of Lafitte's stolen goods, which would be

somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 million worth of goods today.

However, what they don't capture is Lafitte himself.

He's able to elude arrest by fleeing into the swamp.

It is said that Jean Lafitte sneaked away and found a special hiding place, a

tiny little place called Orange Island, which is 130 miles northwest of his

primary base in Barataria Bay.

Orange Island is right on the shores of Lake Pinier. It would have been a safe

and easy place to go because it is reportedly owned by Jean Lafitte's

-in -law.

The U .S. Navy did recapture a tremendous amount of wealth, but there's

absolutely no way Lafitte allowed them to capture all of it.

anywhere that Lafitte is rumored to have been, there's rumors that that's where

he stored his treasure, including that he brought his treasure with him to

Orange Island, and that's where it still is today.

The theory goes that he was able to make his way to this new location in the

Louisiana Delta.

It was a good place for him to recover from the defeat.

It does make sense as a possible location where Lafitte might have taken

However, as far as actual excavations go, nothing really that can be tied to

Lafitte has ever been found.

Until there was a particular instance back in 1921 when some construction

workers found some mysterious pots that had been bricked up and filled with

lead. And when they broke them open, they did find that there were gold and

silver coins that were associated with Spain and Mexico.

The news of this discovery hits the papers and people go into a frenzy.

All the treasure hunters in the area descend upon Orange Island. They start

digging up anything and everything, and the newspapers report that they found

other coins in the area, both English and French.

So that could have possibly come from Lafitte's treasure trove. However,

nothing definitive.

A more likely candidate seems to lie further west.

By the end of 1814, Jean Lafitte and his brother Pierre are no longer working

together. And Jean is a wanted man, accused of piracy and run out of

Barataria Bay by the U .S. Navy.

But his fate is about to turn.

A war breaks out between the United States and Britain.

The Americans and the British were doing battle over a course of about two years

between 1812 and 1814.

The British wanted to take New Orleans so they could control the North American

interior. And in order to take control of New Orleans, they knew they were

to need some help.

The British approached Lafitte and offered him the equivalent.

today of what would be about $2 million in funding in order for him to side with

them and attack New Orleans from that back entryway that he was using to

goods. Lafitte is no patriot.

He's looking out for number one. And he sees a unique opportunity.

And so he tells the British he needs two weeks to think over their offer. But

secretly, Lafitte has other plans with the other side.

He now can use this leverage from the British as a get -out -of -jail -free

with the United States in order to allow them to live free after the war is

concluded.

Future U .S. President General Andrew Jackson is wary of Lafitte, but he's

desperate to gain the upper hand.

The British Navy rules the seas.

General Jackson is facing absolutely impossible odds against the sheer size

the British force.

Jean Lafitte goes to General Jackson.

He says, I can give you my men, I can give you my boats, I can give you my

cannon, I can give you the knowledge of these waterways.

And General Jackson sort of has to make a deal with the pirate Jean Lafitte.

In exchange for the Baratarians joining Andrew Jackson's army, Andrew Jackson

agrees to pardon all of the Baratarians, including Lafitte, if they survive the

battle.

Lafitte and the Pirates of Eritrea bring a lot to the table.

They are incredibly skilled with artillery, and they have maps, they have

charts, they have local intelligence.

They're more like a seasoned military force.

On January 8, 1815, Great Britain launches its invasion of New Orleans

with 8 ,000 soldiers and dozens of ships.

Lafitte's men help Jackson form a defensive line that extends all the way

the river to the nearby swampland.

The British army becomes an easy target for Lafitte's cannons.

Thanks to his very skilled cannoneers, he and his men are able to help defeat

one of the greatest armies to ever walk the earth.

The British continued to fight for another 10 days just at the mouth of the

Mississippi River, but then they couldn't hold their ground and had a

retreat from the region altogether, and it marked a definitive American victory.

The win not only puts Andrew Jackson on the path to the presidency, but casts

Lafitte in an entirely new light.

It's a transformative event for him.

Prior to the Battle of New Orleans, he's a bandit. In fact, he's the worst of

the bandits. He's a pirate.

When the smoke clears, Jean Lafitte, pirate, is now an American hero.

Andrew Jackson publicly credits him with saving the city of New Orleans. And

none other than President James Madison himself pardons Lafitte for his crimes.

For a short time, Lafitte returned to the city of New Orleans, and it really

looks like he has changed his ways and is a reformed man.

But it takes less than a year.

For the rumors to begin to circulate that he has returned to his life of

and in order to avoid arrest, he ultimately flees the city.

This time, Lafitte operates out of the bayous around Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Many people speculate that it's here where he stashed a good chunk of his

treasure, in an aptly named location.

Contraband Bayou.

This was Lafitte's backyard.

Almost one quarter of the state is underwater.

So this part of Louisiana is really an endless water landscape.

He knew this area of Louisiana better than anyone.

There are people living in that area who have, for generations, passed down

legends of Lafitte and his treasure.

Filks and jewels, silver bars, and Spanish gold coins.

There is lore that suggests that Jean Lafitte actually seized a Spanish

ship. He took the gold and the treasure from this vessel, but not before being

followed by a United States warship.

Lafitte knew that that U .S. warship could not access the smaller waterways,

he slipped into Contraband Bayou to elude capture.

According to legend...

Once the danger has passed, Lafitte makes his way to an island in Contraband

Bayou, now known as Money Hill, where he stashes the loot from the Spanish ship.

The allure of this story is so strong that treasure hunters dug all around

Hill, really up until the 1940s, but nothing was ever found.

In addition to that one little island, treasure hunters dig all over Lake

Charles, the Calcasieu River, Contraband Bayou.

never turning up any of Lafitte's lost millions.

Now, some would say that it is still there.

It's just much harder to get to.

In the modern era, Lake Charles has been turned into a sort of resort town and a

golf course, so it's possible that people are playing golf on top of

hidden treasure.

Given how many efforts have been made to find the treasure in this region and

come up empty -handed,

We have to admit the possibility that maybe Lafitte may have taken it with him

when he had to leave the United States.

200 years after John Lafitte is last seen, rumors of his buried treasure

swirl. And while most searches focus on areas in and around New Orleans, some

believe his riches lie one state over in Texas.

Soon after the Battle of New Orleans, Lafitte heads west to Galveston Island,

which is itself a 30 -mile thin strip of sand and is infamous for the thousands

of venomous cottonmouth snakes that inhabit the island.

Galveston Island is this extraordinarily dark and gloomy place, and Lafitte took

every advantage of its isolation, of its supposed uninhabitability, to set up

what would become a flourishing pirate colony.

Most importantly, it's beyond the authority of the United States of

At this point, Spain controls all of Texas and Mexico.

Spanish Texas at the time is conflicted territory. You have the Mexican

revolutionaries fighting their war of independence, which puts them at odds

Spain. Lafitte can now play both sides in this situation to allow him to

his privateering operations.

Lafitte really had a knack for creating something out of nothing, and he created

a colony, which he called Campeche, right there on the island. Over 200

structures were built by Lafitte and his men.

Thousands of crewmen lived there, and they commandeered at least 20 vessels.

This was probably one of the largest private fleets in history, and that

happen without money. You need enormous wealth.

Campeche is a huge colony, and it is funded entirely by Lafitte's pirate

operation, which makes him essentially a king. And everyone who lives there has

to pledge their loyalty to him and must help him raid ships in order to increase

his wealth.

For whatever reason, Lafitte wanted to give the appearance of legitimacy to his

operations, and in exchange for people's loyalty, he would offer them letters of

marque.

In the minds of everyone working for him, this was a real privateering

But these were fraudulent letters of Mark, and everyone was actually

in reality as pirates.

Legend has it that the newly minted pirate King Lafitte scores his most

lucrative robbery in 1816.

It's alleged that Lafitte captures a Spanish treasure ship called the Santa

that has $2 million worth of silver on board.

And the only way to escape is to navigate a pretty treacherous route up

Sabine River.

The Sabine River is a river that runs right along the border between Texas and

Louisiana. It stayed on the Spanish side, but still out of the authority of

U .S.

and with the help of traders in the interior, was able to move the treasure

the river.

But apparently his men got spooked by a band of indigenous people or potentially

by a U .S. vessel that was in the area. Legend has it they panicked, and having

no better place to hide the treasure, they took the wagons on their ship and

just kind of threw them overboard and let the treasure settle at the bottom of

the river.

Locals hear this legend and pass it on for generations.

And while the legend lives on, no one ever dredges up any treasure from the

river. That is until 1895, when a local fisherman pulls up silver in his fishing

net. This is in the middle of nowhere.

And so everyone immediately recalls the story of Lafitte's treasure.

Once the story hits the newspapers,

Treasure hunters descend on not only the Sabine River, but also nearby Hendricks

Lake, where some think the treasure may have washed up.

There at Hendricks Lake, treasure hunters have tried a variety of

methods of trying to see what might be buried there.

One of the earliest attempts was by a man who had the grand vision of trying

drain the lake.

This man not only has an entire operation of pumps, drills, and conveyor

to help him reach the bottom, he also has a nasty temper.

And so when one of the locals begins criticizing his efforts, he loses it and

murders it right there on the bank of the river and is

arrested.

But fortunately, subsequent treasure hunters have been much more level

Still, everyone comes up empty.

But that doesn't stop hopeful fortune hunters from continuing to look.

Although the legends surrounding the Sabine River and Lake Hendricks have

a lot of treasure hunting activity over the years, perhaps the most sustained

and legitimate excavation attempts have come from the documentary filmmaker

Christian B. Roper.

Roper came in and used even more sophisticated equipment.

including some deep -sea sonar to investigate this area of Hendricks Lake.

Using aerial flight to determine the most likely smuggling route through the

lakes, Roper is able to narrow his search, and he begins diving.

This is the most exhaustive search of the lake yet, and it is still ongoing.

And with every dive, Roper gets... closer and closer to where he believes

treasure lies.

Incredibly, he has found a portion of a wagon that could have been used to haul

some of Lafitte's treasure, but the treasure itself has yet to be found.

A lot of historians think that if there's anything to be found, then it's

to be something closer to home and closer to Lafitte's heart, quite

location where he spent his happiest days.

By 1819, John Lafitte's pirate commune on Galveston Island, Texas, is a

operation.

Lafitte founds his pirate colony of Campeche. This was more than just a

pirate shantytown. This was an actual colony, and this becomes a hotbed for

pirating, smuggling, and privateering. At the height of its operations,

is bringing in millions of dollars a year in resources and money for Lafitte,

and he has at least 1 ,000 privateers at any given time operating from his base.

It has between 100 and 200 permanent structures, but the most stately of all

them is Lafitte's own residence, Maison Rouge.

Lafitte brings everything that he holds dear, including his common -law wife,

Katish Biard, and their children, to Maison Rouge.

It's believed he also brings something else important here.

He has a cannon on the roof.

36 -pound cannons poking out of the windows and 40 -pound cannons encircling

home. It's basically Pirate Fort Knox.

It was here at Maison Rouge that Lafitte spent his happiest and seemingly safest

days as a pirate.

For Lafitte, a man who has made his entire career smuggling prized luxury

to the citizens all along the Gulf Coast, Maison Rouge was the place where

finally settled down and enjoyed some of those finer things.

Rumors have it that he stocked his mansion with the finest brandies, finest

wines, most expensive Chinas, and everything that you could imagine

from the European marketplace.

But this cushy period of Lafitte's life comes to an abrupt end in 1821.

Lafitte's domestic bliss was once again to be short -lived because he really

couldn't stop pirating. So he made the decision to attack an American merchant

ship.

This was something that, of course, could not be tolerated by the United

The U .S. government has finally had enough.

It doesn't matter that Lafitte is living outside of U .S. jurisdictions there in

Galveston Island.

What matters is that he has now become this irredeemable thorn in their side.

The USS Enterprise arrives there in Galveston Bay and tells Lafitte that he

go quietly or he can go out in a bang.

Lafitte realizes that if he makes a stand, he's going to die.

So he strikes a deal with the U .S. Navy to leave Campeche without a fight.

Lafitte orders an evacuation of the island, sets his colony on fire, and

away.

So the question arises, did Lafitte take his treasure with him, or did he stash

it on the island for later?

Some believe that it's stashed in the ground underneath the foundation of

Rouge.

His home of Maison Rouge was burned to its foundation.

So today, what one sees is only a remnant, an echo really, of Lafitte's

Galveston Island.

Although a pirate mansion seems like an intriguing place to look for treasure,

it hasn't really spurred the same kind of gold -hunting frenzies that other

locations have.

In fact, as far as we know, only a handful of attempts have been made to

anything of value at Maison Rouge.

Supposedly in the 1940s, two men were hired to clean up the property of Maison

Rouge. They did the job for a few days and then disappeared. One of them

resurfaces years later in East Texas. He's now the owner of a big farm.

The other is killed in World War II and leaves behind for his family an estate

worth more than $60 ,000.

Now, that's an enormous sum of money in the 1940s. One can only speculate that

they maybe found a bit of pirate treasure.

In 1984, there was an archaeological investigation conducted by the

of Houston around the site of Maison Rouge, but all they found there were

bottles from the 1880s and no signs of any of Lafitte's treasure.

This opens up another possibility.

Maybe he took it with him.

We have to consider that Lafitte was not going to leave his treasure along with

his colony and that he actually did manage to load it all up onto his ship

to sail off into the distance.

When John Lafitte is forced to leave his Galveston base in 1821, it's believed

that he fled aboard his flagship, the Pride, with his family and a cargo hold

full of treasure.

There's very little historic record of what happens to Lafitte after he leaves

Galveston Island.

There are some prevailing theories, however, that suggest different outcomes

him. One is that he ended up in the Yucatan and continued his pirate

there in the Gulf of Mexico for many more years. Another theory is that he

down with the pride.

Probably in a hurricane, as one legend says.

There is some historical evidence that he made his way to Gran Colombia and

there obtained for the first time a truly legitimate letter of marque to

pursue Spanish ships.

Until he picked a fight with a warship.

and died at sea.

Some people say that he rescued Napoleon from Elba and they both make their way

back to Louisiana together.

However, there are other people that believe he may have faked his own death.

The most interesting theory is that he simply changed his name, gave himself a

new identity, and moved to North Carolina under the name of Lorenzo

no one ever heard from Jean Lafitte again.

No one knows for sure what happened to Lafitte or his treasure.

It may have been that he didn't get very far and that his life of piracy caught

up to him.

But there's one more possible theory that interests modern treasure hunters.

One legend says that after his encounter with the U .S. Navy at Galveston

Island, Lafitte sailed his ship, the Pride, into Trinity Bay.

He sailed into Trinity River there because the Gulf access was blocked.

by the United States government.

Then Lafitte sank the pride to the bottom of Lake Miller with all of his

treasure aboard, most likely with the intention of returning to claim his

treasure.

The theory that Lafitte sailed the Pride up the Trinity River has attracted a

lot of attention.

So according to local legends down there in Galveston Island, in the 1850s, a

cotton gin operator claimed that his logs had gotten stuck on some kind of

wreckage there in the lake. This supposed underwater shipwreck is where

is said to have sank the Pride. And the cotton gin operator claims that he even

walked on the ship's deck.

But this remains just a family story.

because there's no way to bring this ship to the surface.

Then, in 1949, two businessmen mount an expedition to explore Lake Miller.

They discover what they believe is the hull of an old ship, somewhere beneath

feet of mud and moss at the bottom of this lake.

And they go to the Corpus Christi newspaper with that information.

There is a frenzy of treasure hunting excitement around this. In response, the

state land commission ends up shutting off permits to search Trinity Bay for

remains of Lafitte's ship.

So the operation gets called off about two weeks later because too many people

are coming out looking for lost pirate treasure and no other search has been

mounted since.

This is a theory that... It has not been debunked necessarily, but the pride was

his flagship vessel. It was a pretty substantive ship. So there's some doubt

to whether he really would have been able to navigate the tiny lake path in

order to get to Lake Miller.

One thing we can say is that Lafitte really began and remained a man of great

mystery. And this element of mystery, of his origins and of his final destiny,

is part of what makes his legend so long -lasting.

To this day, if you go to Galveston Island or you drive through southern

Louisiana, you're going to see Lafitte's name on anything and everything.

Trinkets at the gas station, souvenir shops, golf courses.

From Texas to Louisiana, the legend of Lafitte's lost treasure is certainly

alive and well.

Jean Lafitte, in a lot of ways, represents what people perceive as

it also masks who Lafitte actually was as a person. In reality, his actions as

pirate and as a human trafficker would have limited the freedoms of thousands

people in the areas that they were operating in.

So we have these two very diverse aspects of Lafitte.

You have someone who is an antihero. He's a criminal.

But so much lore surrounds him because he was rich, and we don't know what

became of his treasure.

His story is unfinished.

Joan Lafitte leaves behind a legacy of tales and a wealth of treasure that may

still be out there somewhere, to be found by those willing to brave the

and bayous he knew so well.

I'm Lawrence Fishburne. Thank you for watching.

History's greatest mysteries.