Good luck! Trooper Truth

The recent arrest of Dr. Sherman Faux (a mendacious dentist who should be avoided by all) has resulted in a shocking revelation that is exciting maritime historians, archaeologists, and treasure hunters around the globe.

If you, my faithful readers, are wondering why you have never heard of the famed Tory Treasure, I now offer you a fairly obvious explanation. The notorious and untrustworthy Major Trader is known for manipulating all official news that circulates throughout the Commonwealth and goes out over the wire to other states and nations. So clearly, the imminent recovery of shipwrecks in the Chesapeake Bay, which will no doubt lead to the discovery of the remarkable Tory Treasure, is information that Trader and others would not want the general public-and especially the Islanders-to have.

During the American Revolution, the most notorious and dangerous Tory raider was Joseph Wheland, Jr., who began his violent, greedy career in 1776 by seizing and plundering on behalf of the British crown. Soon enough, Wheland commanded a small fleet and struck wherever he pleased, burning plantations in Chesapeake Bay country and making off with livestock, slaves, furniture, family silver, jewelry, and any other valuables that he and his men could find-their true motivation having little to do with military victory or loyalty to the crown. In short, Wheland became an out-and-out pirate and chose Tangier Island as his winter quarters.

From his pirate's lair on Tangier, Wheland would set sail with his growing flotilla of gunboats and board other ships to steal and slash and shoot. There is insufficient documentation as to how much loot he amassed or how many vessels he sank or how many of his own sloops went down off the shores of Tangier and neighboring islands, but it is safe to say that for more than two centuries, a fortune of undiscovered Tory Treasure has lurked in the silty bottom of the bay. The reason for this deduction is one of pure logic.

Pirates as desperate and ruthless as Wheland not only preyed upon the innocent, but they gave no thought to raiding and slaughtering each other, provided they could get away with it. So if another pirate vessel laden with plantation loot was in the area, Wheland most certainly would have gone after it, unless he feared he might be overpowered. In this regard, Wheland and his pirate crew were no different from the drug dealers of today. When drug dealers stop off in Virginia during their travels from New York to Miami, it is not uncommon for one drug dealer to buy handguns or heroin from another, and then pull out a pistol and open fire. The point is, whoever wins not only gets the booty, but also the money or contraband that was the intended payment. Extra bonuses include cash and drugs from the victim's pockets, his gold chains, diamond-encrusted watch, rings, and means of transportation.

Drug dealers, like modern highway pirates, are simply land pirates. If you can imagine, for a moment, a band of drug dealers spinning back in time to the eighteenth century and waking up on a gunboat off the coast of Tangier Island, then you can pretty much envision what an encounter with another ship would have been like back then. You can be assured that an ensuing battle between seafaring drug dealers would be no different from Wheland's attacking another pirate vessel in days of old. Let's even go so far as to cast Wheland himself in the role of a time-traveling drug pirate. The story would go something like this:

On a crisp October night, Joseph Wheland set off in his black Mercedes with its spoiler, purple-tinted glass, gold mag hubcaps, fleece seat covers, souped-up sound system, and dangling air fresheners. Smoking a cigarette and nicely buzzed from pot, he left New York and headed down to Richmond with several other vehicles and armed crew serving as his convoy. Wheland was known on the street as Wheelin' Bone, because he was always in his car, didn't play hoops or lift weights, and was bone-thin and physically unimpressive. But his appearance did not diminish the terror he struck in the hearts of his victims and other land pirates when they learned that Wheelin' Bone was in the neighborhood.

Arriving in Richmond in the early morning hours, Wheelin' Bone and his mates parked along a trash-cluttered street in the federal housing project Gilpin Court, and proceeded to an apartment that was the lair of a local drug dealer other land pirates called Smack.

When Smack looked out the window and spied Wheelin' Bone dressed in a long black coat, black Nikes, and a black warm-up suit that had skulls and bones all over it, Smack got a little uneasy.

"Shit, I don't know, " he said to several of his lieutenants. "Man, he look bad. Look like he might be packing an Uzi under that black coat a his, 'cause I can see the barrel poking out. "

"You sure that ain't a buttonhole?"

"I say we don't take no chances. "

"Shit no, we ain't taking no chances, " Smack agreed. "I say we shoot 'em through the door. "

Pistol slides snapped throughout the lair, and then the inexplicable happened. Wheelin' Bone and his crew were about to knock on the door when suddenly they vanished with a strange crackle of static and a flash of intense white light. This frightened Smack and his pirates, and they responded with a salvo of gunfire that ripped up the door and shattered lamps and beer bottles. They fired until magazines were empty. When the smoke cleared, they peered out in astonishment at the dark, empty street.

Wheelin' Bone and his crew spun through the Third Dimension, passing through the Wrinkle in Time, and landed softly on a gunboat called Rover, which was loaded with eighteenth-century antiques, jewelry, and sacks of gold dust and silver coins.

"Where the fuck are we?" Wheelin' Bone asked as he stared out at the peaceful waters of the Chesapeake Bay and the distant shadowy shape of Tangier Island. "Man, I ain't never seen a boat this old. It don't even have a motor or a flashlight. "

"Shit, look at these guns!" one of his mates exclaimed, as he inspected a huge cannon. "I sure would like to shoot one of these at a police car!"

Wheelin' Bone and his crew laughed at the image, and set about to figure out how to safely handle cannons, make homemade grenades, and sail. As days and weeks passed, they were indiscriminate in seizing other ships and celebrated with drunken nights of Madeira wine and rum, because they had quickly run out of pot and crack cocaine and could find no one who had ever heard of either. Wheelin' Bone and his men became expert at attacking other pirate ships and setting them on fire after they had been pillaged and their crews shot, hacked to pieces, and dumped overboard to be eaten by crabs.

Years passed and the American Revolution ended, but Wheelin' Bone became only more powerful and lustful. He terrorized the bay and the shores of Maryland and Virginia, and became even more feared than Blackbeard was in his day, although there is no record that Wheelin' Bone ever had a beard or set it on fire. His modus operandi, which he no doubt learned from stories about Blackbeard that were passed down from pirate to pirate, was to blast his cannons at the broadside of an unsuspecting vessel, which was followed by the hurling of Blackbeard-style grenades that were case-bottles filled with powder, small shot, slugs, pieces of lead, and iron- rather much like modern pipe bombs, except the grenades were ignited by a small, quick match that the pirates lit before quickly tossing the massively destructive devices into enemy ships. Wheelin' Bone and his mates would then board the disabled ship, step over the dead and finish off the wounded, and raid to their hearts' content.