What is this Mark?

(Author’s note: This was transcribed from a document given to me by Rudy Scheer. I might have trimmed things down a bit, and edited a few things to protect some Junior Rangers Investigative Club secrets.)

Notes from Rudy:

Justin and I were stuck on the mainland the other day. His parents were away at some meeting, and my mom was giving a tour. The T&T Rangers were supposed to be watching us, but that only meant that we had to check in with them every few hours. And, they took my phone!

Mom said I couldn’t play World of Greecia until I finish writing Thank You notes to everyone who sent me birthday presents. I wanted to send emails, but she said I had to write them, by hand! Anyway, when I finished the letter to Nana, I looked up to see that Justin was gone! We had both been sitting in his mom’s office. I got to sit behind the desk. Which made me the park superintendent.

Ranger Green came by, and when he saw me sitting in the big chair, he asked my permission to hang a new poster in the Visitor Center! He had a hammer strapped into his toolbelt. Justin’s mom hadn’t left any instructions about a poster, but I figured Ranger Green knew what he was doing, so I said, “yes.” But when I asked to see the poster, he just smiled and told me to check it out later. Strange.

I finished a few more letters, but Justin didn’t come back. He’d probably wandered off to look at birds. Or maybe someone had tricked him into being kidnapped, again. I didn’t care, but I was courious about the poster. So, I left the office building and crossed the boardwalk to the Visitor Center.

The Dante Fascell Visitor Center is pretty cool, I guess. There are fish tanks with living coral inside them. Sometimes the rangers let me feed the pistol shrimp. Usually, I just watch while visitors do that. There was a room full of 3D displays, and they are interesting, but I’ve almost memorized them by now, and there wasn’t anywhere to hang a poster.

Instead, the poster was hung up near the entrance to the Theatre, in one of the few sections of blank wall. It was Awesome! I could see why Ranger Green told me about it. The poster was all about the pirates of Biscayne.

Ranger Green is cool. He likes the pirate stories. The T&T Rangers don’t believe them. The park archeologist told me that they were fiction. But when I told Ranger Green about the treasure I had found in the Dry Tortugas, (with the rest of the Junior Rangers Investigative Club,) he didn’t laugh, or tell me that it was all made up.

Biscayne has 1 famous pirate, or maybe two. Their names were Black Caesar, and Henri Caesar. I don’t know much about them, but the poster had paintings of both, and stories of their legends.

But more importantly, I noticed something about the both paintings. Henri Caesar’s painting was a big battle scene between two sailing ships. A tall black man stood on the deck of the ship flying a black flag. Black Caesar’s painting was an illustration of a man with a long beard and a tricorn hat. They were very different looking people, and the dates said that they lived almost 100 years apart. But the same symbol was used in both paintings!

It looked like one of those things that pirates put on their flags. The skull and cross bones thing? I forgot what they are called. I wanted to take a picture of it, but I didn’t have my phone. I ran to the front desk, and begged Ranger Terri (one of the TnT rangers) for my phone. When I told her why I wanted it she frowned. “You know those pirates probably weren’t real?” She asked.

I rolled my eyes. Everyone said that. It didn’t make sense. I’d just found pirate treasure in another park a couple weeks earlier. Why can’t other pirate stories be real? But I didn’t want to argue, and she let me have my phone.

I took a picture of the symbol.

It looked like a skull and cross-bones, but with branches. That reminded me of something else, but I couldn’t remember what. I thought about sending the picture to Lucy, because her mom is an archeologist, but Lucy was having family time, before her mom goes back to the University. Bethany might know what the symbol is, but she doesn’t like pirates, either. But Bethany’s friend Mattie Jackson knows a lot about old history stuff.

Mattie is way older than the rest of us. She’s already been in college for a couple years. But she used follow everything Dr. Benitez did. The only problem: I didn’t have her email address. I did have her brother, Trevor’s email. He’s a pain. He’s always talking about Aliens, Yeti’s, Bigfoot, swamp monsters, Nessies and conspiracy stuff. And, he doesn’t like pirates or treasure hunts.

I sent him the picture anyway, and told him to ask his sister about it.

Trevor replied a few minutes later. “Is this some pirate thing?” He asked. “Didn’t you just do pirates?” But he said he would send the picture to his sister, “But you have to be on the lookout for me. There are news stories about new UFO sightings in southern Florida, mostly in the Everglades. You have to take pictures if you see any strange lights in the sky!”

Like that was going to happen. But, I agreed to keep my eye out for any space aliens and he sent the picture to his sister.

At about that point, I found Justin. He walked into the Visitor Center talking about the pink bird with a funny beak that he’d been watching every day, and I got to show him the new poster! He agreed that it looked like a skull and bones, and also agreed that Mattie might know more about the symbol. But we didn’t hear from her that day.

Instead, she replied the next day. And she sent the picture back to me, she’d drawn on it, and typed some comments

Same picture with Mattie’s notes.

“Hi Rudy,” Mattie wrote in the email. “You are correct. That does look like a skull and bones, or a Jolly Roger, which is the generic name for the symbols pirate flags.“ So, I was right! “It also reminds me of something else, the laurel wreath that Roman leaders are sometimes depicted as wearing.”

That’s what I had been thinking about!

Mattie’s email continued. “Which makes an interesting amount of sense. You said that this symbol was related to a Pirate named Caesar? Well, Roman Caesars are often depicted wearing laurels made of Olive Leaves.”

The symbol belonged to one of the Pirates named Caesar! It was their pirate flag! Of Course!

“However,” Mattie explained in her notes. “There are a few things about the symbol which don’t fit. The two branches are not Olive Branches. They don’t even seem to be from the same tree. One has opposite leaves with rounded ends. The other has alternate leaves, which seem more pointed. I don’t know what the trees are, but if the pirate who made the mark designed it to be that specific, then those branches might have some meaning of their own.”

I’m glad Mattie had drawn on the picture to show me what she meant, because I hadn’t noticed the difference. The Jolly Roger of the Pirates Caesar! It was so cool.

“Trevor says you’re hunting pirates again. Cassidy (Justin’s sister) told me all about your last adventure. You all be careful!” She concluded her email. “And let me know if you find anything.”

“Pirate Caesar’s Jolly Roger,” Justin said when I showed him the email. We were sitting in his mom’s office, again, and he was sitting in his mom’s chair. He scratched his chin, staring at Mattie’s note on my phone. “A pirate’s mark.” He repeated himself. “A pirate’s mark.” Then his eyes grew wide. “Rudy, I think you might have found a valuable clue to another mystery!” His voice grew loud enough that Ranger Tamara came in to check on us.

When she left, Justin smiled. “Rudy, I was talking to the concessionaire yesterday.” She was a blond lady who usually sat out beside the ocean renting Kayaks. Justin called her the concessionaire, because he hadn’t heard her name the first time she’d introduced herself, and now he was too nervous to ask. (I don’t know it either.) “She was telling me this story about her grandfather, and how he once found an old pirate’s mark somewhere in Biscayne! We should take this picture and show it to her!”

And that’s what we did.

And that’s how the mystery began!

Rudy

We have come to believe that this symbol is something known as Caesar’s Mark - Justin and Rudy of the Junior Rangers Investigative Club.

(Author’s Note) And that’s all Rudy wrote.

If you want to know more, then stay tuned for the Treasure of Biscayne Bay.

Coming Mid-May 2025