Professional diver, Marcel Robillard has visited approximately 400 shipwrecks during his career. He was fascinated by the history of those long forgotten vessels.

   

       This fascination soon led him down an entirely unexpected path: the discovery of his own past lives, which he reveals to us with disconcerting certainty.

        This voyage has made it possible for him to now answer one of the great mysteries of Louisiana – the location of the treasure of Jean Lafitte, the gentleman pirate of New Orleans, searched for by americans since over 180 years.

(More than 100 photos)

  You can see his life regularly on TV, CANAL D: Marcel Robillard, A true story of a past life  1798-1825.

CHAPTER FOUR

    In January 1968, a man approached me. He knew of my reputation as an experienced diver and that I had dived numerous wrecks all over the Newfoundland area. This man’s name was Frank Puddester. Owner of several trade boats in Newfoundland, he wanted to organize an expedition and make a tour of all the wrecks of the region. He had bought a sixty-five feet ship with a winch that could raise twenty-five tons. I accepted to be part of his expedition. Another diver from St. John's, Bill Murray, a big guy of six-foot-two, born in Halifax, always smiling and cheerful, agreed to come with me.

     We left St. John's to go to Sidney, Nova Scotia. The boat which we embarked on was very spacious and could easily accommodate eight persons. It included a kitchen, bathroom, radar and a full array of gears. We had a very good captain from Sydney, N.S. About fifty years old, very quiet, had fished all his life on the coasts of Cape Breton and Labrador. The sea had no more secrets to him. As we left Sydney, about 20 miles off shore, the wind started to blow so hard that we had to seek shelter. We dropped anchor behind a small island until morning. At dawn, we headed for St. John's, Newfoundland, about 800 miles distant.

     The sea was very violent during this month of  January. One of the passenger, the former owner of our boat, suffered terribly from seasickness and wanted to die!  I think he drank three bottles of rum during the journey, which did not help his seasickness at all. On our way, we stopped at  St-Pierre-et-Miquelon, a small group of islands still owned by France and filled with wrecks, located about fifteen miles from Newfoundland. We were very happy to feel our feet on the ground! Having landed, we noticed that there were already French speaking divers in deep sea suits, searching wrecks. So we did not dive there. For three days we enjoyed ourselves and had a marvelous time and I made some good friends. One of them, a diver, told me that he had been on a wreck at 150 feet deep and that he had gotten decompression sickness, a disease that often plagues a professional diver. Since then, he’d been suffering from a paralysis in the left-hand side of his body.

    I immediately thought of my Halifax friend who had dived on a wreck at 140 feet deep to pull out nickel blocks. After three dives on the same day, he began to feel the symptoms of the disease. The navy immediately sent him to the Canadian navy in Halifax to do the decompression stages but it was already too late. He remained paralyzed in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

Impressive waves on the coast of Newfoundland

Waves by cold and windy weather

    I remember another story which occurred in Halifax. Four divers were dynamiting a certain area when their boat blew up. Their bodies were found in pieces around their boat. I didn’t know them. The story was relayed to me by one of their friends, Curley, a very well known wreck diver out of Halifax, Nova Scotia. But this story upset me as, I too, worked with dynamite on almost all the wrecks which I searched. I felt sorry for these guys and this tragedy touched me more than I would have really wanted it to. The least that can be said is that sometimes professional wreck divers live a dangerous life!

    During the following days, weather was clement and so, we pursued our journey, hugging the coast. The captain,  not being familiar with these coasts filled with many fishermen's nets, was unable to avoid them and our boat got tangled. Arriving at the quay in St. Johns, on the north side, I put on my air tanks and dived down to verify the propeller to see if it had been damaged.

    In reaching the bottom of the water, I came face to face with a dead man! Wearing big fishing boots, his eyes seemed to be fixed on me. I shivered when I saw his stare! It’s not that seeing dead people disturbs me but when I am not expecting it, I don’t like it. The captain called the police and the other diver, Bill, went down to look for the corpse to attach a rope around its waist. The body was raised and put on the dock. The police arrived and brought it to the morgue. I learned, a week later, that the drowned man was a young Frenchman of about twenty years old who had been listed as missing for a month. He had fallen between his boat and the wharf.  Another tragedy.

     For us, life continued. We revisited wrecks I had already searched in the past and made no major finds. Just enough to cover our expenses. One day, a man came to see me on our boat and told me about a wreck at the entrance of St. John's, 300 feet deep. Impossible to dive at that depth.

     I studied the chart of the region and I noticed that at seventy feet from the edge, there was a reef near the surface of the water. It was located ten or fifteen feet from the surface. I bet that the wreck was most likely between this rock and the shore. I told the captain that we would visit that area the following morning. At six o'clock in the morning, we met together in the area which I had determined. I jumped in the water. Going down, I discovered the wreck, completely smashed. I followed the shaft of the engines and I reached a very big bronze propeller. OH! I went back up to the boat with a winner’s smile on my face.

    I prepared a package of twelve eight inch sticks of dynamite. I also used some primer cord , which is dynamite rope. I brought along an additional box of dynamite, attached to a rope, in case it would be needed. I descended again and placed the package of dynamite under the propeller, 12 sticks under the nut in front of the propeller, and then placed the primer cord and went back to the surface. I attached the cord to a small buoy and put on the dynamite caps. We moved our small boat away, about 500 feet, put the two wires to the battery and an immediate explosion resulted:

– BOOOOOMMMMMM!!!

    We returned one hour later and the propeller had separated from the shaft. I gave a signal to lower the cables and attached them to the propeller. With this boat, we could raise between 15 and 25 tons. Our catch weighed seven tons.

     In a scrap yard in St. John's, near the wharf, we negotiated the price of the propeller. The owner, Himmy Jackerman, was quite proud of buying it from us. I returned to the wreck and blew the condenser up. This is a device for converting salt water into fresh water. This device is loaded with bronze tubes. It weighed about six tons. We sold it to Jackerman who offered us $12,500 for it. This wreck kept us working for a month. It was fun and very remunerative work too. We had lots of spare time and lots of money to spend. Everyone was happy and it was party time for an entire week. We frequented St. John's discotheques. I was with my girlfriend at the time who later would become my wife.

     We afterwards dived on various wrecks but winter moved in and cold slowed us down. After diving in the water in my 3/8 inch thick neoprene suit, I would shiver for hours on the bridge of the boat. The wind froze me as if I had been turned into a block of ice.

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