Sleuth Of The Seas

Gene Lyon aboard the Polly L., a research vessel that has been working a 1715 shipwreck site off the north Indian River County coast, near the McLarty Treasure Museum.

Eugene Lyon doesn’t think of himself as a detective, yet he played a major role in one of the most intriguing real-life detective stories of the 20th century. For it was Lyon who discovered the location of the Spanish galleon Nuestra Senora de Atocha, which led to the recovery by his friend, Mel Fisher, of a treasure trove estimated at more than $400 million.

The relationship between Lyon and Fisher had begun 25 years earlier with a chance meeting in Fort Pierce. Fisher was a California chicken farmer newly arrived on the Treasure Coast to join local treasure hunter Kip Wagner in his search for the 1715 fleet. Thinking that he might find some books on Florida shipwrecks, Fisher wandered into the Fort Pierce public library one day in 1960. He didn’t find much on the shelves but made the acquaintance of the head librarian, Dorothy (“Dot”) Lyon. The couple chatted for a while about Fisher’s dreams, which Dot mentioned to her husband, Gene, who was then the city manager of Vero Beach.

Read the entire article in the December 2004 issue