5 Adventurers Who Remind Us Of Nathan Drake

Danger. Treasure. Adventure. Throw these words together and you definitely have the ingredients for Naughty Dog’s blockbuster game Uncharted 3.

Many gamers hear of lost wonders in exotic locations and they think of Nate Drake and company spanning the globe.

However, Drake is not the only explorer searching for ancient clues. There are those in real life who have had their own adventures off the map and uncharted. They may not have had Sully or a love triangle with two high def beautifies but their pursuit of legends is very much renowned as are they.

One could easily get their relic hunters mixed up but Nate and Sully never came close to religious power sources. That was another guy – he wore a hat. Treasure hunter Ron Wyatt has searched far and wide ultimately believing that in the mountains of Ethiopia he has found the “radio to God” - the Ark of the Covenant.

Wyatt was a former nurse and in the 1960s discovered what he believed to be the container holding the pieces of the Ten Commandments. Over the course of his life, until his death in the late 1990’s, Wyatt made hundreds of trips to the Middle East. Wyatt never sported the half-tuck shirt but he claimed to have found the location of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Tower of Babel and elements of Noah’s Ark.

In Uncharted 3, the sea takes a ship and nearly takes Drake! But in history, there are multitudes of vessel claimed by the water. “Our Lady of Atocha” was her name and she was a pearl in the fleet of the Spanish. The sea claimed her in 1622 and took her cargo of gold, silver and jewels as well.

Other fleet ships attempted to bring the galleon back but worsening weather and increasing depth made salvage impossible. It would remain lost for over two hundred years until American treasure hunter Mel Fisher found it in the mid-1980’s. Fisher recovered an estimated $450 million dollars worth of gold, silver and jewels. However, treasure hunting is not without its dangers as Fisher’s son, daughter-in-law and colleague drowned in a search for treasure.

What would Drake be without Zoran Lazarevic or Katherine Marlowe? Not every explorer was a “good guy.” In as much as he was a treasure hunter, the notorious pirate Jean LaFitte created a fortune himself. He was a smuggler and a thief.

Lafitte and his brother Pierre organized a group of fellow ne-er-do-wells into a ring of theft and also held other ships captive in order to loot and rob them. LaFitte eventually died but no one knows exactly how or when. Yet it is widely believed that this pirate has stashed a massive amount of riches near the town of Galveston, Texas or New Orleans. Folks are still looking to this day!

Just as Drake navigated his way through the ship wreckage in Uncharted 3, Martin Bayerle searched high and low for the remains of the RMS Republic. Three years before the Titanic, it was 1909 and apparently a bad time for ships as the Republic Mail Ship crashed into another vessel and doomed herself to a watery grave. The ocean liner took more than lives to the ocean’s floor; it was rumored to have anywhere from a quarter of a million to three million in gold.

Captain Bayerle, a world-known treasure-diver discovered the Republic’s remains off the coast of Nantucket twenty years ago. Armed with submarine-hunting sonar, Bayerle is seeking ownership and rights to bring to shore a treasure that is now valued at possible billions. Sure, you found the Cintimani Stone from Nepal but nothing like Bayerle’s payout! Nate may have Chloe but a billion dollars will buy you a lot of Claudia Black look-a-likes.

Like Nathan Drake, De Leon was a man of multiple skills, many of which were gained as an explorer. De Leon cut his teeth sailing and fighting wars against the Moors and invaders of Spain. When there were no battles left to fight, the soldier turned to scouring the world for adventure and need of his skills.

Juan fell into company with legendary Christopher Columbus and combed the world. During his future adventures it is said that De Leon searched far and wide for the Fountain of Youth – the mythical water source that turns back the clock for human youth! Apparently De Leon never found it but instead found Florida. De Leon had Drake beat – Nate’s Shangri-La exploits never took him anyplace warm.