The Treasure of Cocos Island
350 miles west of Costa Rica lies the tiny and uninhabited Cocos Island.
It is believed that a vast treasure was hidden here in 1821 by the mutinous crew of the Mary Dear (or Mary Deare, depending on source), a British ship chartered to move gold, silver and jewels from the churches of Lima, Peru to the safety of Spain.
Shortly after leaving the port of Callao, the gold hungry crew of the Mary Dear murdered the six soldiers charged with guarding the treasure, seized control of ship and sailed to Cocos Island where, it is said, they hid the treasure in a cave and then set sail for Panama.
Upon arriving in Panama the mutineers were arrested, most of the crew were executed, but three were spared after promising the Spanish authorities that they would assist in the recovery of the treasure.
Two of the three were taken to Cocos by a detachment of soldiers, soon after arriving, the two men escaped from their captors into the dense jungle. The soldiers, unable to locate the mutineers and believing that the two men would be unable to escape the island, returned to Panama.
A year later, the two men were picked up by a passing ship and taken to Costa Rica.
One of the two passed on the location of the treasure, in the form of a map, to a man named John Keating. Keating, with the help of the third mutineer, a man named Boag, later located the treasure on the island but the crew of the ship that had taken them to Cocos demanded a share, facing a mutiny, Keating and Boag hid in the jungle until the crew gave up searching for them and sailed away.
After an unknown period, Keating was picked up from the island by a passing ship and claimed that Boag had drowned, although he would later say that he had murdered him and left his body in the cave with the treasure.
Before his death in 1882, Keating passed the Cocos secret on to three people (why he did not go back for the bulk of the treasure himself is not clear), his wife, Fred Hackett and Nicholas Fitzgerald.
Keating's widow and Fred Hackett teamed up and headed to Cocos - they found nothing. The third man, Nicholas Fitzgerald, did not go in search of the treasure but passed the map Keating had given him to Admiral Henry Palliser - who also found nothing.
It has been claimed that frequent earthquakes on the island have destroyed vital landmarks necessary to accurately interpret the clues on the map.
Many have gone in search of the Cocos Treasure, even members of Jacques Cousteau's crew tried their luck with a metal detector during a visit to film the island and its reefs, but as far as we know, all who have searched for it have come back empty handed.