“Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks,

Ten thousand men that fishes gnawed upon,

Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,

Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,

All scattered in the bottom of the sea.”

—William Shakespeare

“He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. And that was all his patrimony ...” -- Rafael Sabitini

Bermuda’s Teddy Tucker might have inspired author Sabatini’s vivid word picture of his swashbuckling 18th century rogue Scaramouche. There was certainly more than a touch of the rascal about the legendary treasure hunter, marine archaeologist and explorer.

Something of a throwback to a more freebooting period in the Island’s history, Mr Tucker cut a flamboyantly picaresque figure and, like the ocean he spent a lifetime on and under, was possessed of an enormous, elemental vitality.

But his exuberantly carefree manner often distracted from the man’s formidable intellect, limitless curiosity and seemingly inexhaustible reserves of energy.

The novelist Peter Benchley, his close friend and protégé, memorably described Mr. Tucker as “a walking encyclopedia and one of the great autodidacts in the history of science — a self taught expert on ships, coins, nautical history, underwater archaeology, painting and glassware.”

He was indeed all of these things and much more besides.

When Teddy Tucker died earlier this week at the age of 89, former Premier Dr. David Saul, another longtime friend, did not overstate the case at all when he called his mentor “a true national treasure”, a Bermudian original who was “revered by scientists, academics and divers on every continent.”

Until the Second World War the depths and ranges divers could explore were necessarily restricted by the umbilicals which attached them to surface-supplied air systems. But the development of the Aqualung and later self-contained breathing equipment literally untethered them. The heavy copper helmets, canvas suits and weighted boots which had been standard diving equipment for decades became instantly obsolete. Divers were now almost as well adapted to their aquatic environment as fish and Bermuda’s Mr. Tucker was among the first pioneers of this newly-opened frontier.

He began his post-war career salvaging scrap metal from wrecks around Bermuda, gained international celebrity for his treasure diving exploits in the 1950s and developed into an internationally respected Renaissance Man of the seas whose areas of expertise ranged from a detailed knowledge of the design of 16th century Spanish galleons to the life cycle of the elusive giant squid.

His name, of course, will always be associated with the fabulous gold cross which he discovered in 1955 in just 25 feet of water while exploring the skeleton of the Spanish vessel San Pedro which had come to grief on Bermuda’s reefs in 1596.

It was the signature piece in a priceless treasure haul the playwright and former US Congresswoman and diplomat Clare Boothe Luce breathlessly (but entirely accurately) described as “the greatest underwater bonanza found in western waters” up until that time.

She recounted how during a visit to Mr. Tucker’s home he spread the golden pieces he had retrieved from Bermuda’s vast underwater graveyard of ships before her as “a champion displays his trophies, a soldier shows his medals to good friends (including) a 16th century bishop’s pectoral cross of purest gold, studded with seven sea green, sea-smooth emeralds ...” .

The emerald-swollen Tucker Cross was valued at $250,000 by the Smithsonian Institution shortly after it was discovered, making it the single most valuable piece of treasure ever salvaged from the sea at that point.

Adding to the cross’ mystique is the ongoing mystery surrounding its current whereabouts. The cross was discovered to have been stolen in 1975 and replaced with a plaster substitute when it was moved from the Bermuda Aquarium, Museum & Zoo to be displayed at the newly-opened Bermuda Maritime Museum.

Inspired by and dedicated to Mr. Tucker, The Deep — Mr. Benchley’s 1976 follow-up to his colossal best-seller Jaws — brought the local adventurer and polymath to the attention of a wider audience than ever before and turned him into something of a global pop culture icon.

The character modelled on Mr. Tucker was portrayed by Robert Shaw, in an unforgettable bulkhead-chewing performance, in the blockbuster 1977 film adaptation of The Deep, forever cementing the Bermudian’s international renown as a colourful but brilliant latter-day privateer (“Teddy Tucker looks less like the hulking St. David’s Islander described in the novel then like a roly-poly Bermudian Teddy Bear, but his exploits as a diver and shipwreck expert easily rival Romer Treece’s,” said the film’s producer Peter Guber. “They’re the stuff of real-life legend”).

While deeply appreciative of the fame The Deep brought him (his cameo in the movie is the most authentically Bermudian ingredient in the preposterous proceedings), Mr. Tucker’s concerns, interests and spirit are actually better reflected in another Peter Benchley project. The 1991 best-seller Beast is a fable about the ongoing degradation of Bermuda’s marine ecosystem masquerading as a pop thriller. In the book an epically-scaled squid begins to feast on the Island’s residents and visitors, quickly working its way up the food chain after overfishing depletes its normal staples.

For the rich variety and interconnectedness of life in the marine world were the real unvalued jewels of the ocean for Mr. Tucker throughout the latter part of his life, not the relative handful of glittering man-made relics haphazardly scattered across the seabed.