Bob and Jenifer Marx still finding treasure and telling tales
Photos and text by Kathy Hagood

           When Jenifer Marx vividly recounts the first time she met her husband and he listens with a saucy smile, you know they still have special chemistry, even after 35 years of marriage.

            With Robert Marx’ on-going heart problems and many brushes with death as he has combed shipwrecks, including several shark attacks and assaults by modern-day pirates, the two don’t take their time together lightly.

            The larger-than-life, now world-famous treasure finder was diving in Port Royal, Jamaica in 1965 when they first encountered each other. She had heard about his exploits and wasn’t sure what to think of him that day at the dive site where he was bringing up pirate artifacts and pieces of eight.

            “He emerged from the water his blue eyes blazing with such intensity that I knew he was a man of amazing passion,” says Jenifer Marx, glancing at him in their historic Mediterranean Revival-style Indialantic home.

            While “Bob” and “Jen,” as they are known to friends and family, both felt a romantic lightning bolt upon meeting in Jamaica, they were married to others at the time.

            Only several years later after both were divorced did they reunite in Melbourne, where Bob Marx had relocated, and were married. The couple have three adult daughters, including the daughter from Bob Marx’ first marriage, and four grandchildren.

            “We were just meant to be together,” Jen Marx says.

            In addition to periodically lecturing together on Princess Cruise Lines cruises, the two have collaborated on several books, including “Treasure Lost at Sea: Diving to the World's Great Shipwrecks.” Their latest book “Graveyard of Gold” is slated to be published this March.

Bob Marx, who started publishing both his historical findings and treasure adventures early, has about 60 books and 800 popular and scientific articles to his credit.

His wife, who studied political and art history at the University of Florence in Italy, started writing about treasure in 1973 when a major magazine editor called inquiring whether her husband could write an article on a quick deadline. As Bob Marx was away, the editor convinced her to write the article. The article started her on her first book: “The Magic of Gold.”

Fluent in multiple languages, Jen Marx grew up in a family with a love for language. Her parents were senior editors at “Reader’s Digest.” She developed an interest in Florida history as some of her ancestors had come from Menorca to the New Smyrna Colony in the 1800s.

While Jen Marx certainly had her own adventures in her youth, including a stint in Philippines with the U.S. Peace Corps and work with the United Nations in Africa, the Caribbean and Indonesia, she says her life became an even greater adventure after she married Bob Marx.

She’s accompanied him on his many trips across the world, socialized with presidents and kings, dived with him on numerous projects and speared big game fish at his side.

“We’ve had a wonderful life,” she says.

Her husband fondly calls himself “a pirate” and it’s obvious that Jen Marx agrees as she reads from her book “Pirates and Privateers of the Caribbean,” smiling and pausing every so often to look his way. She ends her reading of a passage on the classic pirate: “His gaze seems fixed on an invisible horizon over which a richly laden prize, canvas billowing, may sail at any moment.”

            In that she captures the essence of her husband’s bliss, his looking for his next find and its trove of “goodies,” as he calls artifacts, coins and gold bars. Without such a feverish drive, Marx likely wouldn’t have searched for and discovered hundreds of ship wrecks off the coast of California, Florida, Bermuda, the Bahamas, various Caribbean islands, Mexico, South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, China and Malaysia.

Although Bob Marx no longer dives because an attack of the bends and a heart attack suffered in September of 2004 after equipment failure and a free ascent from 150 feet in the waters off of Papeete, Tahiti, he still flies to supervise projects across the world.

His current projects include three dive sites off of Ecuador and three projects in waters off of Singapore. His dream is eventually to be allowed to salvage of wrecks off the Azores at depths of more than 1,000 feet. He’s been negotiating with the governments of the Azores and Portugal for decades.

While Marx can’t dive with compressed air or nitrox, he can go down in a submersible, which he would use for the project.

“Because of the geography, these are virgin wrecks with intact ships that have never been explored before,” Bob Marx says with a gleam in his eye.

            The lust for booty came early to Box Marx. As a child in Pittsburg, he would put a piece of gum on a stick to get a coin under the drainage ditch grate.

            “I was always looking for the things people lost or left behind,” he says.

            He was greatly inspired by the wild tales of the book “I Dive For Treasure” by Lieutenant Harry E. Rieseberg, which was published in 1942, and the 1948 John Wayne movie “Wake of the Red Witch.”

            His early exposure to diving came when he ran away from home at 13 to Atlantic City, N.J., and became an apprentice to a helmet diver. Later he joined the U.S. Marines and served as a diving specialist from 1953 to 1956. During his service he studied anthropology and archaeology at the University of Maryland.

To this day Bob Marx prides himself in doing thorough research of original archival materials both to help locate his wrecks and write his books. His research has taken him from the National Archives of Singapore to Spanish archives in Seville, Spain. During the 1960s he recreated several historic voyages, including the voyage of the Niña II, a replica of Columbus's 1492 caravel.

His singular depth of knowledge makes him a popular consultant for film and video productions. Over the years he’s worked with the Learning Channel, Arts & Entertainment Network, The History Channel and Dateline NBC, just to name a few.

            Even with all his discoveries and accolades, Bob Marx is still is on the lookout for treasure, of any sort, everywhere he goes. His office window ledge is filled with plastic rings, Mardi Gras beads, small toys and other assorted leavings he’s found on his walks.

            “Part of the fun is using what I’ve found to tell my fortune,” Bob Marx says.

If that habit makes him sound superstitious, he freely admits he is. For example, he was never afraid of dying in the water because he was born with a caul, a lucky sign for mariners. But while he’s not worried about death in the water, he is concerned about flying.

“For good luck, I always have to find a coin before I fly. If I don’t find one on the way to the airport, I just check under the seat cushions at the airport,” he says.

            Bob Marx characterizes himself as impulsive and outspoken, given to swearing, or “Sea Daddy Talk,” as his children called it when they were young. By contrast he says his wife is prudent and diplomatic, a devoted grandmother and an expert gardener. She is his anchor.

            “I don’t know how she has put up with me all these years,” he says, shaking his head.

            Fortunately, Jen Marx, who enjoys peacefully tending her tropical fruit trees, also likes to cultivate a certain charming pirate.

            “I’ve certainly never been bored,” she says with a laugh.