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Mel Fisher: The Man
By Andre Hinds
From page 8 of the November 1986 issue of Lost Treasure magazine.
"There is something about a treasure that fastens itself upon a man's mind. He will pray and bIaspheme and still persevere, and will curse the day he heard of it, and will let his last hours come upon him unawares, still believing that he missed it by only a foot...."
-- Joseph Conrad
Those are the words that have driven Mel Fisher ever since he heard of the Atocha. The cost of finding it was great: Millions of dollars for the searching, hundreds of thousands of dollars in court costs to make sure what he found was legally his and the lives of his son and daughter-in-law, who died while in charge of the search 11 years ago.
Still, those overwhelming odds didn't deter Fisher. He pushed onward, despite dwindling financial resources and increasing danger to himself and his crew.
Just a year before the Atocha was found, a reporter asked Fisher if he was happy. "Yes," Fisher said, but without a smile. "I'm doing what I want to do. How many men can say that?"
The search for the Atocha has been over for more than a year. Although it was a relief to discover the sunken galleon, the year hasn't been easy for Fisher. Simply put, he is no longer doing what he wants to do.
This was revealed in an exclusive interview with Fisher. The interview was performed on July 29, just a week after the first anniversary of the discovery of the Atocha. But as is clearly shown in the interview, the party is over.
Lost Treasure: How did you celebrate the first anniversary of the discovery of the Atocha?
Fisher: Well, we had a big party at the wreck site, with a bunch of ships rafted up together like we did when we found the pile of silver. You know, they all just kind of tie up beside each other. So it's like a boat city out there. Lots of smiles. It's been very intense the past year -- an awful lot of TV, news and magazine people the first 90 days afterwards. Then the money situation improved highly. I haven't missed a payroll since then. The credit got better, and I signed a movie deal.
I spent a month down there while they were making it. It was very exciting. After a couple of days, it was so impressive, I had my video crew come down and do a video of making a movie. We shot a lot of film.
It was interesting. The first day I got there, all these kids were in the jungle - 65 kids were playing drums in the jungle rain-forest. Quite a sound. Just when they got ready to shoot, it started raining. The director started cussing to himself, telling them to hold, and I said, "Go for it!" So he went for it - in the rain. It looked good and sounded good.
Then, when my video crew got down there, about 1 o'clock at night, I was going home and I saw this welding - people painting and building things. Here they were making an upside-down version of The Northwind. I got my crew up and told them they had to get a shot of that.
The next night, the same thing happened. They had a huge crane with 3 extensions to make it longer. When I asked them what they were doing, they said they were pulling up a moon for the film. So, I went and woke up my crew and said, "You've just gotta get a shot of this moon they're hanging up there. They've got a sky hook hanging over the ocean to hold the moon over The Northwind..." So they shot that - so on and so on.
Lost Treasure: Why was the film made in the Virgin Islands, rather than on the real Atocha site?
Fisher: I guess the waters down here (the Florida Keys) are usually rougher and murkier, and you'd have problems with the weather. Key West has kind of built up in the 17 years we were doing the hunt - they wouldn't be able to get the old look, the way it was when we started. So, this Frederiksted down there looked about the way Key West did when we started 17 years ago, so we used that.
Lost Treasure: What was the single-most exciting find from the Atocha - a piece of jewelry, a shipping artifact - what would you say brought you the most joy?
Fisher: There were a lot of exciting things found. One neat thing we found this year was a silver box, like a jewelry box, oval-shaped. When we opened it, inside was a smaller one in excellent condition - the outside one had taken all the corrosion. It had Inca Indian designs all around it. We opened that and found one a little bit smaller; this box had different Inca designs of animals and birds. Then we opened that and there was another inside there - there were seven inside each other. Seven nested, silver Inca jewelry boxes. We figured the last one would have a great big emerald in it, but we opened it up and it was empty.
Another one that was very fascinating was about the same size, made of silver. It was six inches long, four inches wide and an inch-and-a-half high, and when we opened it, it looked like a bunch of eggs inside. Different sized eggs: A hen egg, a goose egg, a robin egg, a sparrow egg. We thought they were gemstones. The one had a gold basket around it. Come to find out later, they were vezoir stones - to prevent poison, find poison, cancel out poison. I know we found a gold poison cup 12 years ago from the Atocha. It had a vezoir stone in the middle of it and it was used to detect arsenic. It was one of the maln ways to assasinate people - this was an insurance policy for the Bishop of Peru. They valued that stuff just like gold and jewels because it kept them alive.
Another one, the same size and shape, contained an emerald cross with seven big, beautiful ouzo deep green emeralds and a large thumb ring with about a 30-carat emerald in it, and a magnificent engraving on the back side of it. It was a bishop's cross and ring. Some bishops came over and verified that, and they sent me one of those bishop's hats from the church and the scarf that goes with it.
Lost Treasure: What other treasure-finding projects is Treasure Salvors undergoing right now?
Fisher: Just the Atocha and the Margarita. Probably, we're going to liquidate and dissolve the company at the end of this year. I'll probably be consulting other places around the world on other expeditions. We may sell salvage rights to the Atocha and Margarita and the equipment for $10 million in the liquidation process. It's a bargain to whoever gets it. There's probably $200 to $300 million more out there.
Lost Treasure: A lot of people believed in you and contributed toward your quest long before you found any treasure. Did you ever doubt - even slightly - that you would find it?
Fisher: I wondered once in a while. I decided, boy, it ain't here, and I just finally decided it ain't here, it's somewhere else. So, I expanded way out and finally did find it.
Lost Treasure: How did the movie project come about?
Fisher: I had 17 offers for the movie after we found the big pile. Max Keller was a producer - he and I had made an agreement three or four years earlier and his agreement had expired. Some other folks were offering more money and I finally got together with him and with the CBS people and said they'd match the other figure, so I gave it to him.
Lost Treasure: Were any of these offers for theatrical films or were they all pretty much TV offers?
Fisher: Both types.
Lost Treasure: How about the involvement of Cliff Robertson?
Fisher: I was not involved in those negotiations, but I approved his doing it as soon as I heard of the possibility, because I had known him many years ago - he's a good man.
(More than 20 years earlier, Robertson manufactured surfboards on the side as his acting career was taking off; while Fisher ran a scuba shop in Southern California. Fisher even offered to take Robertson along as he began the search for the Atocha, but Robertson told Fisher he was crazy.)
A couple of weeks ago he came back down here for another dab at being "crazy."
Lost Treasure: How much input did you have regarding the movie script?
Fisher: Well, I talked to their writers years ago when we signed the contract the first time, so they already had a rough idea and just had to put the ending on it. Then they sent it to me for suggestions, changes. Later on they sent me the last one for suggestions and changes. That's about it.
Lost Treasure: Were there any problems?
Fisher: No. It was well done. It should be a good show.
Lost Treasure: There must be thousands of shipwrecks in the region where the Atocha went down. How are the various governments responding?
Fisher: Right now the federal government, after they lost in the Supreme Court, and the states have been trying to get ownership and title of all shipwrecks through making new legislation, like a new act of Congress.
We've managed to get that put on hold the past four years. But a new one just came out now and they're pushing real hard, so I've got to fight 'em again.
Seems like once something is taken to the Supreme Court and some new legislation gets voted down, they forget it, but every year they keep comin' back with another one. I guess they just try and wear you down.
Lost Treasure: What advice would you give someone who wants to try his luck at finding a shipwreck?
Fisher: I'd say to go for it. There are thousands of treasures in the world, all over the world. Lots of big ones, too.
Lost Treasure: Do you feel you still have fun diving for treasure, or is it just a job?
Fisher: Yeah, it's still fun. You find a lot of things, some you aren't sure what they are. Always something new, historic - gives you a little touch with your ancestors. It's kind of exciting.
Lost Treasure: Is there a moral to the film Dreams of Gold: The Mel Fisher Story?
Fisher: Well, probably, "Hang in there." Is that a moral?