Buried Pirate Gold and Edward Low’s Treasure Map

Map used with permission of Dolly Snow.

Because Edward Low and generations of pirates before and after him spent so much time near Roatan, many modern treasure hunters have searched the island and cays for buried treasure. But the one treasure hunter who may have actually uncovered gold stashed away by the pirate Edward Low made his discovery on an unlikely island two thousand miles to the north — off the coast of Nova Scotia.

In 1947, Massachusetts historian and author Edward Rowe Snow bought what he believed was a treasure map that may have belonged to Low. The one-page map was nothing more than a simple, hand-drawn sketch on a torn piece of paper. The strip of land drawn on the map is labeled “Island Haute.” At the bottom of the paper is the name “E. Low.” Snow identified the land depicted on the map as Isle Haute, a one and a half mile long island just off the Nova Scotia shoreline at the top of the Bay of Fundy. The name written on the map, Snow believed, belonged to the pirate Edward Low.

In June 1952, Snow took a boat out to Isle Haute to explore the site marked as “The Place” on the map. He stayed with the island’s lighthouse keeper, the only residence on the rocky island, and spent his days digging in several spots near the lake, scanning the dirt, gravel, and stones with a metal detector. On his first day of digging, Snow found a large iron spike and the broken ribs and skull of what he believed was a human skeleton. After digging for several more hours the next day, Snow found what we was looking for — eight small, blackened disks buried in the soil. When Snow cleaned the disks off, they were Spanish and Portuguese coins of gold and silver.

Snow’s discovery is recounted in my new book on the dreaded captain Edward Low and his most famous pirate captives, At the Point of a Cutlass. Based on this mysterious map, a copy of which is published in my book, and the notations and ship name seemingly printed on it, Snow believed the coins were part of the pirate treasure buried by Edward Low.

At the Point of a Cutlass was released in June 2014 and is on sale now.

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