The Portuguese ship was overtaken by pirates in a known piracy region. The ship was loaded with gold, diamonds, and emeralds when the pirates attacked. When famed pirates overtook a Portuguese ship in 1721 once laden with treasure (now valued over $138 million), the battle went well for the pirates, who eventually sank the ship off the coast of Madagascar. Pirates were ready and Olivier “The Buzzard” Levasseur led an ambush of the ship near Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean with a fleet of pirate ships aiming to take down the larger Portuguese ship. It took more than a decade of sonar and remote sensing to locate a ship on the seafloor.