Tucker's Cross Unsolved Mystery: Empty, Hidden Compartment

Summary: The Tucker's Cross unsolved mystery of an empty, hidden compartment inspires interpretations in fiction, not in fact.

Marine explorer Teddy Tucker with his discoveries, including front (center, near Tucker's left hand) and back (foreground) of Tucker's Cross: The Royal Gazette @theroyalgazette via Facebook June 16, 2014

A Tucker's Cross unsolved mystery that allows no answer until its appearance at the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute in Hamilton arises from an empty, hidden compartment inside the absconded 16th-century religious icon.

Marine archaeologist Teddy Tucker (May 8, 1925-June 9, 2014) bore his namesake cross up from Bermuda's reef-bottomed waters as maritime history's most valuable single find ever. Tucker's Cross communicated no information concerning the Christian cross's crafting place or craftsmen even though its precious stones likely came from the Muzo mine in Colombia. As the descendant of Bermuda's first governor in 1612-1616, carpenter Richard Moore, and the son of architect Edward Tucker, Tucker described the devotional's detailed, distinct decoration.

His extensive experiences as an expert Caribbean Sea diver and sunken treasure explorer somehow never encouraged Tucker to explain his namesake cross's empty, enigmatic, hidden compartment.

The autobiographical Treasure! A Diver's Life, the Public Broadcasting Service's PBS Home Video Teddy Tucker: Adventure Is My Life and the TeddyTucker.com website feature Tucker's Cross.

The autobiographical article How I Found the Cross, on the Tucker website, gives the material traits and the oceanographic contexts of the emerald and gold cross. It heads into "September 1955, and the weather was getting worse. Then on the seventh day, a Sunday, I found the greatest single object of all." It identifies as the instruments for investigating the cross a full-faced diving mask with rubber hose from the ship deck's air compressor and a water hose.

Tucker jetted hose streams against the coral reef floor 10 miles (8.69 nautical miles) from Hamilton's harbor until particles jumped from below-bottom holes into above-bottom heaps.

Bermuda kept shipwrecked secrets until "After carving a deep hole I turned the jet off. When the debris settled my eyes fell on a gold cross."

Tucker located precious metal "lying face down in the sand. I picked it up and turned it over. Awe struck, I counted the large green emeralds." He mentioned "seven of them, each [emerald] as big as a musket ball. From small rings on the arms of the cross hung tiny gold nails. He noted, for Christ's feet nailed together, unlike Christ's hands nailed separately, "at the foot was the ring for a third [nail], which had been lost."

No Tucker's Cross unsolved mystery obtrudes into Tucker's article which only observes that "The carving while beautiful was somewhat crude, indicating that Indians made the cross."

B.R. Bentley, finance industrialist in Bermuda 2007-2011 and retired resident of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, questions the Tucker's Cross unsolved mystery of an empty, hidden compartment.

Bentley reveals a rationale that related the hidden compartment to Vatican City in two adventure books, The Cross from 2014 and The Bermuda Key from 2015. He summarizes that, beyond the cross's whereabouts, "there is also an empty cavity in the back of the cross. No one knows what it once housed."

The Tucker's Cross unsolved mystery of the hidden compartment turns up no answers, like that of its post-theft whereabouts and unlike that of its shipwrecked transport.

After a break-in, Teddy Tucker removed the Emerald and Gold Cross from his house and sought safekeeping first in a bank, next in a potato sack in a cave, then in a museum that he opened and finally in a sale to the Government of Bermuda in 1959; Teddy Tucker's home in Somerset Village, Sandys Parish, northwest Bermuda; July 14, 2010: David Broad, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Marine explorer Teddy Tucker with his discoveries, including front (center, near Tucker's left hand) and back (foreground) of Tucker's Cross: The Royal Gazette @theroyalgazette via Facebook June 16, 2014, @ https://www.facebook.com/theroyalgazette/photos/a.441868117854.220634.249363077854/10152498831037855/

After a break-in, Teddy Tucker removed the Emerald and Gold Cross from his house and sought safekeeping first in a bank, then in a potato sack in a cave, then in a museum that he opened and finally in a sale to the Government of Bermuda in 1959; Teddy Tucker's home in Somerset Village, Sandys Parish, northwest Bermuda; July 14, 2010: David Broad, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bermuda,_Somerset_Village,_home_of_wreck_specialist_Teddy_Tucker_-_panoramio.jpg

For further information:

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Benchley, Peter. 12 March 1989. "A Diver's Map of Bermuda: Here There Be Treasures." The New York Times Magazine > Archives > 1989.
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Bentley, B.R. 2015. The Bermuda Key. Victoria BC Canada: Friesen Press.

Bentley, B.R. 2018. The Cross. Victoria BC Canada: Friesen Press.

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The Royal Gazette @theroyalgazette. 16 June 2014. "Bermudian diver and ocean explorer Teddy Tucker displaying some of the highlights of his fabulous collection of Spanish treasure in the 1950s.." Facebook.
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The Royal Gazette @theroyalgazette. "The Royal Gazette June 20, 2014 · #Bermuda NEWS The exploits of local diving legend Teddy Tucker -- seen here at the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute with the hologram of the fabled gold and emerald cross he discovered in the 1950s -- have been hailed by National Geographic magazine; Mr. Tucker died earlier this month the age of 88." Facebook.
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The Royal Gazette @theroyalgazette. 10 June 2014. "' ... My eyes fell on a gold cross lying face down in the sand, I picked it up and turned it over. Awe struck, I counted the large green emeralds on its face. There were seven of them, each as big as a musket ball. From small rings on the arms of the cross hung tiny gold nails, representing the nails in Christ’s hands, and at the foot was the ring for a third, which had been lost. The carving while beautiful was somewhat crude, indicating that Indians made the cross. It remains my most treasured discovery.' -- Teddy Tucker on how he discovered the cross in 1955." Facebook.
Available @ https://www.facebook.com/theroyalgazette/photos/a.441868117854.220634.249363077854/10152485062182855/

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Available @ https://www.facebook.com/theroyalgazette/photos/a.441868117854.220634.249363077854/10152485062717855/

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