JFK Jr.’s Hunt for Pirate Treasure

While the President’s house sat empty, frozen in the 1950s under plastic wrap, John Kennedy Jr. lived in a cramped room just down the Cape in a place called the Captain’s House. It was a big white house from the 1800s that everyone said was haunted and looked an awful lot like the Big House. It was the summer of ’83 and John had just graduated from Brown University. He asked family friend Barry Clifford, who owned a local scuba diving shop, if he could work for him. John had always liked diving more than sailing. And Clifford was as close as it got to a real-life pirate. The technical term for Clifford’s work was “salvage diving,” but what he was doing was searching for buried treasure underwater. John was enamored with the tall, handsome, cool explorer twelve years his senior. Clifford’s mission that summer was his most ambitious yet. There’d long been rumors of a wrecked ship called the Whydah off the coast of the Cape that had gone missing after being captured by pirates centuries ago. It was just a story, though. There’d been no evidence of the boat since it went missing in April 1717. John jumped at the opportunity to leave behind the routine and safety of Hyannis Port for the chance to find the Whydah with Clifford. [View in Browser]( [Esquire]( [SHOP]( EXCLUSIVE [SUBSCRIBE]( [About That Time John F. Kennedy Jr. Hunted for Pirate Treasure]( [About That Time John F. Kennedy Jr. Hunted for Pirate Treasure]( While the President’s house sat empty, frozen in the 1950s under plastic wrap, John Kennedy Jr. lived in a cramped room just down the Cape in a place called the Captain’s House. It was a big white house from the 1800s that everyone said was haunted and looked an awful lot like the Big House. It was the summer of ’83 and John had just graduated from Brown University. He asked family friend Barry Clifford, who owned a local scuba diving shop, if he could work for him. John had always liked diving more than sailing. And Clifford was as close as it got to a real-life pirate. The technical term for Clifford’s work was “salvage diving,” but what he was doing was searching for buried treasure underwater. John was enamored with the tall, handsome, cool explorer twelve years his senior. Clifford’s mission that summer was his most ambitious yet. There’d long been rumors of a wrecked ship called the Whydah off the coast of the Cape that had gone missing after being captured by pirates centuries ago. It was just a story, though. There’d been no evidence of the boat since it went missing in April 1717. John jumped at the opportunity to leave behind the routine and safety of Hyannis Port for the chance to find the Whydah with Clifford. 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