BARNHOUSE WILL TRADE POOL FOR TREASURE HUNT

The silver coin Cape Girardeau Aquatics Coordinator Randy Barnhouse wears on a chain around his neck went down with the Nuestra Senora de Atocha in a hurricane off Key West in 1622.

For 3 1/2 years in the mid-1980s, the Flat River native helped famed treasure-hunter Mel Fisher search for the Mother Lode of treasure the hurricane scattered across 12 miles of Atlantic Ocean bottom.

A week from now, Barnhouse will leave his job, pack the last of his things and return to Key West. There he will lead a team helping continue the work of reclaiming the estimated $400 million worth of gold, silver, gems and artifacts the Atocha had gleaned from the New World.

In the 17th century, Spain gathered its riches from the Americas and brought them to Havana twice each year. Spanish galleons traveling in convoys picked up the booty, then followed the Gulf Stream up the North American coast before turning for Europe.

In the summer of 1622, 28 followed the route, which comes perilously close to reefs off the east coast of Florida. When the hurricane hit, the bottoms were ripped from eight of the ships.

Because Spain did not have a market-based economy, the loss of the heavily-laden Atocha and the other ships played a role in the fall of the Spanish Empire.

Since finding the Atocha in 1985, Fisher's bounty has included rafts of gold chains and emerald-studded crucifixes made by New World artisans, in addition to raw emeralds from Colombia.

Only 20 of the 70 pounds of emeralds listed on the ship's manifest have been found so far. "So much hasn't been found that was on the manifest," Barnhouse says, and much that wasn't.

"There usually was so much smuggled because the king would get his 20 percent."

Fisher, who won a legal battle to keep the Atocha treasure, contracts out parts of the salvage operation and receives 50 percent of whatever others find. However, they must make artifacts available to museums and scholars for study.

One of the artifacts found was a gold "poison cup." The cup has a small cage inside to hold a bezoar stone, said to alert the drinker that the cup contained poison.

"They were used by kings and priests, people who were afraid of being poisoned," Barnhouse said.

He is far from the first person lured to the Caribbean by the promise of treasure. But giving up his job of one year after watching attendance at the Central Pool quadruple was a decision he hesitated making.

"They made me an offer I couldn't refuse," he said, referring to the salvage contractor he will be working for.

"...I stand to do real well or I wouldn't do it."

The 39-year-old Barnhouse has been working at Cape Girardeau swimming pools since he was a university student who took a part-time life-guarding job in 1979. He became a regular life guard, head life guard and eventually pool manager before taking the aquatics coordinator position for the city.

After taking time off to work for Fisher, he returned to Cape Girardeau to study archaeology. "If you want to have credibility as a treasure-hunter you've got to follow archaeological guidelines like you would in a land dig," he says.

Always intending to return to Key West to start his own salvage company, Barnhouse still jumped when the city's aquatics coordinator job opened up a year.

Since then, he has had the Central Pool humming with activity by offering a spate of water sports during the public swims. "Kids really started having fun over here," he said.

He also got the word out that folks in Jackson and Chaffee and beyond are welcome at the pool. "It's a public pool available to the entire region for a minimal fee," he said.

But the days of selling the Central Pool quickly will be behind him, and soon Barnhouse will be spending two or three weeks at a time diving 60 feet down for treasure.

Because of the depth, divers only can stay down an hour at a time, and must spend at least two hours above water letting the built-up nitrogen escape from their blood.

The Atocha wreckage is located about 30 miles south-southwest of Key West on the edge of the Bermuda Triangle.

Barnhouse admits his pulse quickens there.

"That water is blue and beautiful, but there's also tragedy connected to it."

He refers not only to the Atocha and the seven other Spanish galleons lost in its fleet, and to the many Spanish divers who died trying to recover the treasure shortly after the hurricane, but also to the two members of Fisher's family who died when their boat capsized searching for the Atocha.

Barnhouse has had only one brief shark encounter while diving for treasure. "Sharks are the least of my worries," he says.

He is returning to the Caribbean for the money, but says "the historical part flabbergasts me."

Now that he has decided to go, the romance and excitement of diving for ancient treasure have returned.

"The water's got a charge to it," he says.