According to Amrhein, and research he conducted from his home in North Carolina and overseas, 33-year old Zebulon Wade, a Scituate resident, helped steal and hide treasure from a Spanish ship in 1750.
According to the book, Wade and his sloop (a type of ship), called the Seaflower, were hired by Captain Bonilla of the Spanish galleon, Neustra Senora de Guadalupe, to travel from Ocracoke, N.C., to Norfolk, Va., with half of Bonilla’s treasure.
The other half of the treasure would be put on a New Jersey sloop called the Mary.
Wade hired two brothers, Owen and John Lloyd, to help him with the trip, and it was then that the Owen came up with a plan.
“They would simply sail away with it while the Spanish guards were eating lunch. [Yet] for the plan to work, they needed Zebulon Wade’s cooperation. He reluctantly agreed, only because he recently suffered some financial setbacks at home.
"On October 20, 1750, the Seaflower unmoored and made a dash for the inlet. On board was a treasure that outdid anything the legendary Blackbeard ever scored,” Amrhein wrote on his website.
The men hid most of their treasure at Norman’s Island in the British Virgin Islands, and left to spend the treasures in St. Thomas, St. Kitts, and St. Eustatius.
Their extravagant spending caught the attention of the local government, which captured the men and put them into prison to hang.
Wade, the Llyod brothers, and the crew escaped, and Wade returned home.
“He never returned to the sea, [and] he died a broken man in 1759,” Amrhein said.
It’s a history that has, up until now, been relatively unknown to the coastal community.
“I wanted to share the story with Scituate because one of their local boys was a part of this. It wasn’t his idea, he was more a family man with three children, but he was under financial pressures and was convinced if he did it, it would solve his problems. He was never normal after that,” Amrhein said.
It’s taken Amrhein years to unravel the story of the men, which many believe was the inspiration for Stevenson’s book.
