Mary Dear treasure
buried hoard OPEN fame 2/5
A Cocos Island pirate-treasure legend distinct from (but popularly conflated with) the Lima Treasure, tied to a mutinous crew's alleged hidden loot in the early 19th century. Like the Lima story it centers on Cocos Island, and like it no verified recovery has ever been made.
Scorecard
- -0.40 · No portion of any Cocos Island pirate cache has ever been verifiably recovered…
- +0.07 · Cocos Island accumulated several overlapping pirate- and privateer-treasure…
- +2.00 · technique_term
- -0.40 · No portion of any Cocos Island pirate cache has ever been verifiably recovered…
- -0.23 · Cocos Island's status as a Costa Rican national park (1978) and UNESCO World…
- +2.00 · technique_term
- -0.40 · No portion of any Cocos Island pirate cache has ever been verifiably recovered…
- -0.23 · Cocos Island's status as a Costa Rican national park (1978) and UNESCO World…
Location hypotheses
No location hypothesis has been recorded for this treasure, so there is nothing to plot — and this tool never fabricates a map or a dig site. Per the scoring gates, an absence of location data caps Findable now at band 2 (LONG-SHOT).
What would it take?
No emerging or speculative technique changes the picture yet — the frontier findability band (LONG-SHOT) equals the current band. A breakthrough here would need a genuinely new capability, not just a maturing one.
Evidence ledger (3 verified facts)
-
Cocos Island accumulated several overlapping pirate- and privateer-treasure legends in the 19th century, of which the Mary Dear mutiny story is one; popular retellings frequently merge it with the separate Lima Treasure tale.known by 1900-01-01 · diagnosticity medium · confidence 0.60↳ Wikipedia: Cocos Island journalistic
-
No portion of any Cocos Island pirate cache has ever been verifiably recovered despite more than three centuries of visits and hundreds of documented expeditions to the island.known by 1980-01-01 · diagnosticity high · confidence 0.80↳ Wikipedia: Cocos Island journalistic
-
Cocos Island's status as a Costa Rican national park (1978) and UNESCO World Heritage Site (1997), with treasure hunting prohibited, caps present-day findability regardless of whether any cache exists.known by 1998-01-01 · diagnosticity medium · confidence 0.90↳ Wikipedia: Cocos Island journalistic
Technique matrix
| Technique | Family | Maturity | Applicability | Rationale |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Airborne LIDAR | airborne space | available | 2/3 | Canopy-penetrating survey of the jungle island for disturbed ground. |
| Magnetometry | terrestrial geophysics | available | 2/3 | Metal-anomaly coverage of the anchorage bays if permitted. |
| Predictive terrain / site modeling | computational | available | 1/3 | Terrain modeling to prioritize the same bays the Lima legend implicates. |