Tucker's Cross Unsolved Mystery: Whereabouts Since Feb. 16, 1975

Summary: The Tucker's Cross unsolved mystery of post-theft whereabouts since Feb. 16, 1975, keeps hidden the New World's most valuable single shipwrecked icon.

front and back of Tucker's Cross: The Royal Gazette @theroyalgazette, via Facebook Nov. 19, 2015

The Tucker's Cross unsolved mystery of whoever absconded with the world-famous Christian icon barely antedated the arrival of a queen and her prince Feb. 16, 1975, in the Caribbean archipelago of Bermuda.

The namesake cross belonged among San Pedro booty that marine archaeologist Edward Bolton Tucker (May 8, 1925-June 9, 2014) brought up from Bermuda's sand-bottomed coral reefs. The 16th-century emerald and gold cross still claims status as the most valuable single item ever carried up from a shipwreck site in the New World. Protocol delegated to Tucker the duty of displaying his world-famous discovery to Queen Elizabeth I and her consort, Prince Philip, during their three-day visit to Bermuda.

It embarrassed the entire archipelago when Tucker encountered a plastic replica instead of Tucker's Cross in the exhibition case in the Bermuda Maritime Museum in Hamilton.

Online news sources and sunken treasure-featured sites find the Tucker's Cross unsolved mystery of post-theft whereabouts a felony that furnished no on-site evidence, eyewitnesses or footage.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States, the island police throughout the archipelago and Interpol and Scotland Yard in Europe never generated rogues' galleries. Online articles hint of insider involvement for private collectors even though no investigative reporter, law enforcement spokesperson or private detective ever has handed out suspect names. Nobody includes any indication of previous initiatives during the emerald-studded, 22-karat gold cross's intervals in the Bermuda Aquarium Museum and Zoo and the Bermuda Maritime Museum.

Perhaps the Tucker's Cross unsolved mystery of post-theft whereabouts joins participants in an attempted burglary sometime after fall 1955 with those in the 1975 museum break-in.

Tucker kept the $250,000-valued cross at Kings Point, Sandys Parish, until a residential break-in; and in a bank, until government-threatened confiscation of discoveries in territorial waters.

Tucker listed as a third location a potato sack left in an underwater cave and a fourth location in his and wife Edna Canton Tucker's museum. He always mentioned that he wanted the cross to remain on the island so he and Edna made the museum the government's for $100,000 in 1959. He noted in the PBS program from 2004 and the PBS video from 2006 that he never stopped trying to get his namesake cross back home.

Online information sources and informational sites observe as Tucker's Cross unsolved mystery suspects international art and jewel thieves whose operating procedures offer replicas at crime scenes.

Online writers present local thieves as never putting anything as a replacement or replica at a crime scene even though the museum preserves a replicated cross.

And yet visitors queue up around the display case for the replicated Tucker's Cross in the Treasure Room of the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute's Ocean Discovery Centre at Crow Lane. Tucker's Cross realized one record in its reputation as the most valuable single retrieval from a New World shipwreck site and another in its 43-year removal. Tucker said that sand so steadily sank the 16th-century cannons that showed him the San Pedro shipwreck site that nothing would be seen there by 1980.

Cannons, coins, gold ingots and pearl-studded gold buttons tell the tales of 16th-century treasure that the Tucker's Cross unsolved mystery of post-theft whereabouts thwarts since 1975.

Bermuda Maritime Museum (now formally known as Bermuda National Museum since December 2013) complex includes the Commissioner's House and ramparts at Keep Fort, old Royal Naval Dockyard, Ireland Island, northernmost Bermuda: The Royal Gazette @theroyalgazette, via Facebook Feb. 16, 2015

Acknowledgment

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

Image credits:

front and back of Tucker's Cross: The Royal Gazette @theroyalgazette, via Facebook Nov. 19, 2015, @ https://www.facebook.com/theroyalgazette/photos/a.441868117854.220634.249363077854/10153754290802855/

Bermuda Maritime Museum (now formally known as Bermuda National Museum since December 2013) includes the Commissioner's House and ramparts at Keep Fort, old Royal Naval Dockyard, Ireland Island, northernmost Bermuda: The Royal Gazette @theroyalgazette, via Facebook Feb. 16, 2015, @ https://www.facebook.com/theroyalgazette/photos/a.441868117854.220634.249363077854/10153105322907855/

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