In 1955, a Bermudian diver named Teddy Tucker pulled a gold cross studded with seven emeralds from the wreck of a sixteenth-century Spanish galleon resting in the reefs off Bermuda. It would go on to be called one of the most valuable single objects ever recovered from a shipwreck. Tucker eventually sold the entire haul to the government of Bermuda so the treasure could stay on the island, and the cross went on public display, first at the Bermuda Aquarium and later at the Bermuda Maritime Museum. Then, in 1975, just before Queen Elizabeth II arrived for a scheduled visit to the museum, the real cross vanished from its case and was replaced with a near-identical plastic replica. Decades of investigation followed, yet the original has never been recovered, and no one has ever been charged. More than fifty years on, the case stands as a striking reminder that even a treasure deliberately safeguarded from the ocean's depths can still vanish through far more ordinary means, leaving behind a mystery no investigation has ever managed to solve.
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