Talk:Olivier Levasseur

Untitled
can someone direct me to some books or something about this guy? i can't seem to find anything about him. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.237.169.205 (talk) 00:01, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Sources needed
Especially for the Mrs SAvoy/ treasure map stuff... Millichip (talk) 17:18, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Ear rings ?
So they identified these two skeletons as pirates because they were wearing ear-rings ? Can anybody come up with just one contemporary source to prove that any of the "Golden Age" pirates ever wore one ? Boulet rouge (talk) 13:26, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Rose Savy's role
In a recent newspaper article [which I mentioned in footnote (2)], Rose Savy's role is described as follows: "'My treasure is for he who understands', Levasseur is said to have uttered, tossing a scrap of parchment into the crowd with a rope around his neck, seconds before his hanging on Reunion Island in July 1730. (...) Two centuries later, Levasseur's clue ended up in the hands of a Seychellois woman named Rose Savy, who took a steamboat to Kenya in the 1920s and flew to France to have the document authenticated at the National Library in Paris." Any other sources, perhaps? Frankly speaking (talk) 06:45, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Added lots of cite tags to the crazy treasure story.
The whole section "the treasure" is one long string of wild and improbable claims with scarcely a single ref. Bearing in mind that treasure maps are typically a load of BS created to part suckers from their money, I think we need to be just a tad more careful. In particular: -- 202.63.39.58 (talk) 18:29, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) A major point in the tale is ascribed to anonymous "legends". Sorry, unless you can find a cite to show that this is at least based on folklore that can be traced back a couple of centuries, this actually means "some garbage an author made up out of whole cloth to make his book a bit more colourful."
 * 2) Supposedly "many" treasure hunters have fallen for this story, but later only two examples are given. Who are the others -- if they exist?
 * 3) What fabulous treasure? Sure he took a share of a large treasure, but that was years previously and he shows no sign of being a good investor. Is there any actual evidence of a treasure?
 * 4) The phrase "due to the low water level that year" doesn't make any sense. Sea level doesn't change (to any significant degree) from year to year. It changes due to monthly tides, and can also be slightly increased locally by foul weather.
 * 5) A "ballot box"? Where on earth did an eighteenth century pirate come across a ballot box? And how does he carve it in stone in such a way it is clearly recognisable 200 years later?
 * 6) If we've got a public notary involved in this story as recently as recently as 87 years ago, why don't we have his name? Having an anonymous public notary as a witness makes me worry that it's something that's intended to add an air of reliability, without actually providing any facts that can be checked.
 * 7) a map of the Bel Ombre beach, published in Lissabon in 1735 is rather unlikely, since the first detailed exploration was not made until Lazare Picault's expedition in 1742, and the first settlers in the area were French.
 * 8)  [the map] stated: "owner of the land... la Buse" This is even less likely, as Mahé was (believed to be ) uninhabited at that time. It seems rather likely that the Portuguese would be publishing land title claims to an uninhabited island possessed by another country, and, furthermore, giving the title-owner's name in the form of his pirate nickname.
 * 9) the pirate Bernardin Nageon de L'Estang. The reference provided merely describes him as a naval officer.
 * 10) Bernardin Nageon de L'Estang, ... somehow got into possession of Levasseur's treasure. Nothing quoted here indicates that to be the case. If he says so in the letter, just quote it.
 * 11) He made sure I was a Freemason It seems strange indeed, when the first Masonic Lodge in France was only founded in 1733, that so soon after we have two officers on the same ship, both (unwittingly!) members of the same secret society. Another possibility is that mentioning Freemasonry is always good for a conspiracy theory.
 * 12) after some excavations at the 'staring eye' they discovered two coffins containing the remains of two people This location is supposed to be between the low and high water marks, and the coffins are supposed to have been there 200 years. Wood simply cannot last that long in the intertidal zone (and you'd be hard pressed for bones to be recognisable, either.)
 * 13) Deciphering it could be carried out only by starting from the two letters Why? If there's a clue in the letters, spell it out!
 * 14) I could go on, but almost of the rest of the section is so bad I just keep thinking "pull the other one."

Standard treasure story?
In Buses case there are some physical stuff like the letters but the story is a good pirate story but the same for other pirates like Klaus Störtebeker for whome treasure hunters for his sake have dug up Rugen. Question is if this is an old general folklore and then bound to individual existing and fiction pirates?? Did it ever happened? However it is sucha good story that Buse could have heard of Klaus Störtebeker and made a tail real? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.247.9.228 (talk) 20:34, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Updating
A slight rephrasing/some updating (and or researching) 'Cruise-Wilkins ... died on 3 May 1977 before he broke the last piece of code. His son, Seychellois history teacher John is currently still seeking the treasure...' nearly 40 years later? Would '... John continued searching for the treasure...' be more appropriate? Jackiespeel (talk) 09:30, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

He does seem to be continuing - is a sufficiently reliable source for WP? Jackiespeel (talk) 10:51, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

Complete mess
This article is a mess. I removed a whole bunch of completely unsourced, clearly "fan" written stuff that had been sitting there for ages. Someone with more of an interest in the subject needs to do a big cleanup and rewrite. Anyone interested in doing so is welcome to contact me for guidance. You need to find *reliable* sources, and write from a neutral point of view. Wikipedia is not a place to theorise or speculate about the treasure, unless you can find citations from an expert in the field and you are repeating what they said.  M r A urelius R Talk!  08:49, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Well I am an expert and who are you to decide who is an expert. Clearly not yourself seeing you stated that the information was last updated 10 years ago...if you had done any research on the treasure you would of known about proven historical facts and who the current treasure hunters are...before simply deleting what you believe is right and wrong. Get your facts straight before simply deleting other people's pragmatic evidence and relative information on the treasure hunt. I suggest you undelete the part about the Current Treasure Hunt. TyroneLeech (talk) 03:58, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

I highly doubt you're an expert at all. MrAureliusR is correct in saying that there's a whole bunch of unsourced stuff that doesn't even make that much sense. If you can't back it up with a source, then it shouldn't be in the article. The whole buried pirate treasure as a whole is one big media trope. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:8003:9102:AF00:9CBB:B48:D891:E92A (talk) 15:57, 6 November 2022 (UTC)


 * Shame, you obviously just a google armchair researcher that hasn't put any boots on the ground for research, why comment, if you are uneducated on the subject matter. 104.180.136.171 (talk) 22:22, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Complete mess? Olivier Levasseur
And who are you to decide who is an expert. Clearly not yourself seeing you stated that the information was last updated 10 years ago...if you had done any research on the treasure you would of known about proven historical facts and who the current treasure hunters are...before simply deleting what you believe is right and wrong. Get your facts straight before simply deleting other people's pragmatic evidence and relative information on the treasure hunt. I suggest you undelete the part about the Current Treasure Hunt. TyroneLeech (talk) 19:37, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Translation issue
In one section of this article there is a quote in French, "Mon trésor à qui saura le prendre". The English translation given is, "Find my treasure, the one who may understand it!" However, the French verb "prendre" means "take" not "understand". Do we have a source that translates it as "understand"? If not, I'd recommend we switch it back to "take". --Elonka 22:30, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

The crypto gram message
did you guys notcie that if you take all the undercased letter in the crypto gram its actually spells out something maybe because most of the translations are in all caps but not this one

It says "no one wil find it because they are looking in the wrong direction" and yes "Wil" did come out as that maybe a translation in error where one L was supposed to be lowercased but now you know -taken knight av Taken knight- av (talk) 07:30, 20 March 2023 (UTC)