CNN Host TV Accompanies Man Searching for Pirate Treasure in Seychelles

Richard Quest, CNN TV host has accompanied John Cruise-Wilkins is a man on a mission. Like his late father Reginald before him, he believes there is great beauty to be found beneath an unprepossessing stretch of road in northern Mahe, the main island of Seychelles.

See, Cruise-Wilkins is a treasure hunter. And his and his father's seven decades' worth of research has led them to this spot, where it's thought an 18th century French pirate by the name of Olivier Levasseur left his greatest hoard.

Levasseur, known as La Buse ("The Buzzard") spent years pillaging his way across this corner of the Indian Ocean before settling on Seychelles. When he was eventually recognized, arrested, and taken to the island of Reunion in 1730, he refused to pulge the location believed to be a treasure worth $130 million.

"When they cast him into prison, they asked La Buse for the secret of the treasure. He refused. They tortured him, he still refused. They gave him a pen and parchment to write the secret of the treasure. He refused. And instead, when they were not around, he wrote [a] cryptogram and hid it on his person."

Cruise-Wilkins explains that having been sentenced to death, La Buse was forced to wear a long shirt, under which he hid the parchment on which he'd written the cryptogram.

"As he was about to be hanged, La Buse then just took this paper and threw it out to the crowd, and said 'my treasure for him who can understand!'... I can actually see the ex-pirates, his former mates, reaching up and fighting to get the papers."

In 1949, those papers found their way into the hands of Reginald Cruise-Wilkins, and a family obsession was born. Reginald's life came to be dominated by the search for La Buse's treasure. And while John says he's not obsessed, it seems his father clearly was.