Nancy Drew: Ransom of the Seven Ships

Nancy Drew: Ransom of the Seven Ships is the twentieth game in Her Interactive’s series. Nancy, Bess and George win a holiday on Dread Isle in the Bahamas, Bess is kidnapped on arrival, and the ransom is the lost treasure of Captain El Toro’s seven galleons. This walkthrough covers the Junior Detective game in full, the three-part Easter egg and every award, with the Senior Detective puzzle solutions at the end.

How the game plays

• Read What Every Detective Should Know and the case file on the desk before you start; click the plane ticket to begin.
• Directions in this guide are from the player’s point of view unless stated otherwise. The inventory works as in the earlier games.
• Coco the parrot gives hints, but only for a treat.
• Save at almost any moment. Saves live in Documents\Nancy Drew - Ransom of the Seven Ships.
• Played on Junior Detective; Senior Detective solutions are in the last section.

Awards

• Amateur Chiropterologist: for telling your winged friends apart.
• Chatterbox: for an inexhaustible urge to talk.
• Sleuth: for unmasking a lover of disguise.
• Easter Egg: top secret.
• Eternal Optimist: for seeing the good in any situation.
• Sharp Eye: for finding El Toro’s personal treasure.
• Guava Glutton: for a special love of tropical fruit.
• Collector: for gathering every possible prize.
• Rock Climber: for a pull towards the summit.
• Coco’s Best Friend: for watching every parrot trick.
• Treasure Hunter: for digging up metal antiquities.
• Know-It-All: for the right answer in the closing quiz.

Shark Fin Resort

Playing as Nancy

After the opening film you and George are in the resort lobby. Read the note from the Gibsons and the letter from the kidnappers: find Captain El Toro’s treasure and Bess comes back unharmed. The letter is also the clue to a later mini-game. Ask George about everything. Look at the map of Dread Isle on the wall.

Go left and find the book In Search of the Seven Virtues Fleet, about seven gold-laden galleons lost under Captain El Toro. Note that hunting the treasure will need a diving suit and tank, a shovel and a metal detector; if you skip this, Nancy will not know what she needs.

The Dive Equipment door has a lock of glowing squares on the wall to its right: click squares to put out every light. When it clicks, open the cupboard. Two walkie-talkies are on the top left shelf; give one to George. A radio icon appears bottom left: talk to your friend any time, and control switches to her. Note the odd map on the cupboard wall. You do not need the tank yet; close up, turn and look right.

On the table below are the island’s bat materials, and right of them, in a glass case, the Krolmeister bat frequency detector. Take it, open it: no battery. Read everything about the island’s wild monkeys and click the coloured buttons to memorise their calls; without this, Nancy will not know the monkeys can be played with. Right of the stand, leaf through Sonny Joon’s journal to the end for the rules of the monkey games, and note the bat frequencies. Study the stand of international signal flags. In the corner, talk to Coco twice; he wants fruit, and gives hints for treats. Talk to George again.

Out on the terrace and down; follow the arrow towards the island transport. Left is a golf cart with a note; a little right, a grey plank shed, locked. Back inside, talk to George, take the shed key from the counter, and open the padlock. Read the memo on filling the cart’s batteries with water. Take the distilled water from the shelf and the shovel from the right door. The sail chest has a numeric lock with five flags on its lid. At the flag stand, read the digits: 7-9-2-0-4. Enter it with the arrows and take the sails.

The batteries

Lift the cart’s rear seat and use the water on the batteries. Each cell needs 100 ml. One press of the filler puts 60 ml into the open cells, shared equally: two open cells get 30 each, three get 20, four get 15. The filler holds 300 ml. The top two cells are already at 100. Open the four lower cells (handles horizontal) and press: 15 each, giving 60, 30, 40 and 30 in cells 3 to 6. Close 3, 4 and 6, leaving 5 open, press: 5 is full. Open 4 and 6, press: 30 each, so 3, 4 and 6 all read 60. Open 3, press: 20 each. Press again: 20 each, all full. Close the seat.

Click the wheel. To drive, click ahead of the cart and hold. Take the upper path, at the fork go down the screen and follow that path without turning to the blue gates: the Primate Research Centre.

Primate Research Centre

Walk into the forest to the monkeys. Play the mother with babies: no brainpower required, the rules are on page three of Sonny’s journal, just click the arrow in turn and the moves play themselves. Win a guava for the parrot. Play the monkey up right on the branch: colour the larger area of squares, with no two of the same colour adjacent; you have green and blue, the monkey red and yellow. Boards change each game. Win a coloured disc (1 of 6) from the basket. Play more for parrot fruit. Click the cart to get in and drive towards the pink sands.

Easter egg, part one

Do not turn onto the beach; take the lower path, round the thicket, up a little, then left into the bushes to a clearing with the first egg. Back to the hotel.

At sea: the bottles

Optional, for the Easter egg. Out of the second exit to the beach and onto the pier. Use the sail on the yacht and board. Steer as with the cart, avoiding rocks and anything that could hole the hull. Watch the sail’s fill so you do not run too fast, and the damage gauge at the top: stay in the green, or go back to the pier, turn round and set out again. The goal is eight bottles, findable in any order, each holding part of the hint; watch the compass and remember where the pier is. Sail close to a bottle and it zooms in; click it for a piece of the note. One bottle is in Shark Cove, the rest in open water. With all eight, the note assembles itself: a passage from Poe’s The Raven. Its red letters read “Deep in the sand before the sharks seek this”, with a picture of an egg. Remember it for later. Back to the hotel, tell George about the monkey games and take three guavas from the vase on the table.

Blue Hole

Drive again: at the crossroads take the upper road over the bridge, left at the second crossroads, right at the third, to Blue Hole. At the cave mouth a hoist is built into the rock, one pulley missing. The footprints show the thief: a monkey with six toes. Back to the monkeys and play the one on the right branch for the pulley. For the Guava Glutton award, win ten guavas and eat them yourself by clicking the guava icon top left.

Drive on, turn down at the first crossroads, and park at Palm Beach on the left.

Palm Beach

Walk to the edge of the beach and click the boat to call for Bess. Left, a step forward, look right: Bess’s flip-flop, which you cannot take. Meet a young Jamaican fisherman calling himself Johnny Rolle. Talk twice and ask for his 9-volt battery: he will swap it for his signal flag, lost at sea. Later. Drive to Blue Hole.

Fit the pulley to the rock and thread the rope over the blocks: B, C, D, B, A, D, then pull the rope’s end. A slab lifts in the niche and under it is disc 2 of 6. Drive out and, before the fork, park on the right: Shark Cove.

Shark Cove: the buried box

Left, two steps forward to the rocks. Here you steer Nancy herself, one click of the blue hand cursor per step. Check you have the shovel. Following the kidnappers’ letter, go to the middle of the beach and find four crossed palms like a W; stand before them, the starting point. Three steps south to three mushrooms on your right. Three steps left (three mushrooms, 3 × 1, in the opposite direction from the object); the palm you stop by has three leaves, and the third position is multiplied by three, so nine steps north to three palms. Nine steps left to two mushrooms. Two steps up to a lone stone. Three left. Fifteen down. Four left. Six down. Twelve right. Five up. Six right. Four down. Eight right. Two up. Right-click in front of Nancy to dig. Take the box and from it the captain’s journal.

Some pages are in code. Click a symbol, choose the matching letter below, and it fills in everywhere on the page. Decode the first page, then the second and third with the arrow bottom right. Drawings and hints appear, but some entries stay coded and need more clues. Read to the end.

The battery and the detector

Tell George the news, feed Coco for a hint you will use later, and sail. Round the island to the signal flag; sail straight through it so the yacht snags it. Back to the pier, drive to Palm Beach, give Johnny the flag and take the battery.

At the hotel, feed Coco (click the dish left of him) and ask for a trick; if needed, ask how to assemble the detector: “Each part has its own row of holes, four stay empty and a square goes on top.” Take the detector from the stand, turn it over, open the back and assemble it so: the square at the top, four holes left free. Insert the battery. Drive up the upper road and off it towards the cliffs where the bats live.

Bat Cliff

A climbing mini-game: climb, dodging falling rocks, to the first cave. Use the detector and turn the tuning wheel: a signal at 12 kHz. Out and up and left to the second cave: 22 kHz. Down and left to the third: 18 kHz. Left again, the fourth: 24 kHz. The fifth, at the cliff’s edge: 16 kHz. Readings are randomised; the numbers here are an example. Remember which cave gives 16 kHz. Back to the first cave and up the rocks on the right to the summit, zigzagging; ducking into a cave restores your health. At the top, quarrelsome monkeys block the way. Back down and away.

At the hotel, feed Coco and ask about the monkeys: “They are asking for something, not just making noise. Read about primate habits.” The stand says they want to play ball, and their balls are sea urchins. Open the dive cupboard and take the wetsuit and tank. An icon top left shows the air remaining; you refill at the compressor in this cupboard.

At sea: the urchin

From the pier sail down to Shark Cove, then right; the horseshoe-shaped coral reef is almost opposite the cove. Sail into its centre and the deck becomes active (if the yacht does not grow, you are in the wrong reef or have not talked to George). Leaf through the ship’s log on board; the last page gives Dread Isle’s coordinates, which you will need. Click the left side, where the ladder is, to dive. Swim right to the urchin colony and take one sea urchin. There is metal everywhere under the silt; Johnny mentioned a metal detector. Swim left to the ladder, click the sail, back to the pier.

At the hotel, click the tank icon top left, press the red button to charge, wait for the bar to fill, click the tank and close up. Drive to Bat Cliff, climb to the top and use the urchin on the monkeys; they run off. Note the strange hollow at the summit. Drive to Palm Beach and ask Johnny for the metal detector: only for his compass, stolen by a monkey with a torn ear. If the detector topic does not appear, reread the journal to the end and the ship book in the lobby.

Primate Research Centre: compass

Easter egg, part two

Take the first egg from the inventory and click the monkey on the branch with it; win the round and the second egg is in the basket.

Talk to the monkey by the coconut pile, the one with the torn ear. Rules are in Sonny’s journal: five points for the coconut target, four for the crab, three for the starfish, and you must hit before the monkey does. Three rounds of eight throws each. Win all three for the compass. For the Collector award, win at least twelve different prizes; if a prize repeats, choose guava. Give Johnny the compass and take the metal detector leaning on his tent.

At the hotel, feed Coco for tricks: a spin, plucking petals, throwing a ball, lifting a leg, singing like a Venetian gondolier, opening an umbrella. Six different tricks for the award; they repeat, so keep track.

At sea: the sunken chest

Sail to the reef and dive with the detector. Where it sounds, the red needle peaks and the cursor becomes a blue hand: right-click to dig.

Easter egg, part three

Swim right towards the circling sharks, remember the poem, find the hotspot and right-click for the third egg.

Carry on with the detector; it also reacts to junk. When air runs low, go back and refill. Swim right from the hull to the top of the sunken mast and down, or round the wreck’s right side and along its left. Find the hotspot, right-click, dig up the chest: a puzzle from the journal. “In the nine by nine coloured mosaic no colour repeats in a row, column or group”: sudoku against your air supply. Drag the coloured squares from the left into place; all must be used. Take disc 3 of 6 and the astrolabe. Swim left to the ladder.

For the Treasure Hunter award, also dig up nine more items: a cage, rusty keys, a broken spade, a wheel, a jug, two tins, a saw, rusty armour and a barrel. Sail west to the pier.

The decoder

Read the note pinned to the post outside. Talk to George, worried about footsteps, then Coco: “You found an astrolabe in a cache; it will help you read ciphers.” Just having the astrolabe in the inventory is enough. Open the journal at page two and click it; decode the remaining entries the same way, then the following pages. When all is decoded, leaf through: there is a suitable stand, but the parrot sits on it. If odd symbols remain, check for mistakes; the journal counts as decoded only when Nancy comments.

A perch for Coco

Feed Coco and he asks for a stick from the sea in place of his perch. Find one at Blue Hole and offer it. Now a stick with bark: Shark Cove. Now one with three twigs: Shark Cove again. Now one without leaves: Palm Beach. Show him the stick from the sea, with bark, three twigs, no leaves, and he accepts. Demands and locations are random; keep bringing sticks until he approves. Take the stand, and note the newspapers about your past cases.

Read the journal’s bat entry and compare with the stand: Waterhouse’s leaf-nosed bats, 16 kHz. Tell George and drive to Bat Cliff.

Bat Cliff: the cave

For the Rock Climber award, climb to the top and down at least ten times. Climb to the 16 kHz cave. Touch the Mayan jade plaque on the left wall; the wall seals the entrance. Turn: spots of light, a mirror system. Turn the mirrors so the beam lights the dark niche opposite. Take disc 4 of 6, with a camel, and a tablet of signs. Darkness falls. Press the radio icon.

Playing as George

Leave the hotel and you are there. Climb as Nancy did, dodging rocks, to the second cave, blocked by a skull-marked boulder. Touch it and talk to Nancy. Take the camel tablet from the niche; it shatters. Assemble the first stage, which becomes a sliding puzzle; one solution: 8 left, 9 left, 6 down, 3 down, 2 right, 1 right, 4 up, 5 left, 6 left, 3 down, 2 right, 5 up, 8 up, 7 right, 4 down, 5 left, 6 left, 9 up, 8 right, 7 right, 4 down, 5 left, 6 left, 9 up, 8 right, 5 down, 4 right, 7 up, 8 left, 9 left. The cave opens; George goes home.

Playing as Nancy

Find an Australian driving licence in the name of John Poole: our Jamaican fisherman. Take it. Climb to the summit, set the stand in the hollow and the astrolabe on it. Look through its telescope: someone is cutting a path through the bushes. The journal gives the turns. North is up, south down. Turn the disc right to 40: Half Moon Reef. Turn the other way to 70: Pigeon Island. Two new places to visit. Back to the hotel, talk to George about everything, to the pier.

Half Moon Reef

Sail left of the pier. Dive carefully: sharp rocks and stinging jellyfish. Near the bottom take a shell. Swim right to the octopus cave; click the arrow to see tentacles. Lay the shell on a rock as far from the cave as possible; when the octopus leaves, solve the matchstick puzzles fast, the air goes quickly. The journal’s hint: “From two, thrice they made a square, from three four, from four five.” Move matches to make three squares, then four, then five. The safe opens: disc 5 of 6. Surface in zigzags, or decompression sets in, and avoid the jellyfish.

Pigeon Island

From the pier, sail north-east. The island is shaped like a bird. Walk to the structure: a sundial. The journal: “The sun lights the date the sea took one of the finest galleons.” The coin in the shed named the Atocha, but not the date. Back at the yacht, flat calm; call George and ask her to read the coin.

Playing as George

Tear the latest threatening note off the post. At the shed, monkeys have been at it: the plaque on the Atocha‘s loss is there but the silver coin is gone. Nancy suggests the Primate Centre. Win the coin at roulette from the monkey family. Radio Nancy: 6 September 1622.

Playing as Nancy

At the sundial, the dials are linked, though the second turns alone. Cursor to a circular arrow and set: third dial 1, first 6, fourth 6, fifth 2, sixth 2; the second sets itself to 9. A click; slide the cover and open the captain’s cache. Take the Code of Honour tablet and the owl medallion, which carries a plan with a cross. Sail back.

Shark Cove: the iron sun

Talk to George, read the journal’s hint, drive to Shark Cove and walk to the rocks. Sweep with the detector; when the blue hand shows, right-click to dig. Dig up a metal disc with an owl, by the pool one with a hare, and at the medallion’s marked spot an iron structure with carved discs into which the owl medallion sets itself. Coco’s hint: “Stack the discs to see the owl; turn and slide them to win the bird.” Dig up the pigeon disc and Bess’s bracelet. Positions are random; go by the detector’s sound.

At the iron sun, the journal’s “iron twin of the sun”, turn and overlay the discs to make the owl on the medallion: turn the fifth disc right once and the third right three times; click the holder of the sixth disc to slide it to the centre, then the fifth, then the third. The owl forms and the cache opens: disc 6 of 6. Keep digging for the award: a token from The Haunting of Castle Malloy, a hairpin, a handle, a pressure gauge.

The journal says the crew lost their things at Blue Hole.

Blue Hole: the GPS

Wade in; too dark to swim on. Drive to Johnny, ask why he used a false name, and ask for a glow stick. He will trade for entering coordinates in his GPS; take the GPS and map. The GPS already has Dread Isle from the log; press Save. The map shows Half Moon Bay’s coordinates; enter them with the arrows and save. Coco: “Start from the given point; count the squares on the map for the others.” Count squares from Half Moon Bay to Dread Isle: 22. Subtract longitudes: 74°30′ minus 73°24′ is 1°6′, or 66 minutes, so one square is 3′ of longitude. Latitude differs by one square: 24°00′ minus 23°57′ is 3′, so one square is 3′ there too. Enter the computed positions and save; they appear on the map. Talk to Johnny for the glow sticks.

The underwater maze

Wade in and follow the arrow. Symbols on the rocks match the grey tablet from the cave: surface and study it. The journal: “Death awaits any who enter the cave unprepared. Only he who follows the signs will find the way.” Learn the symbols. Optional: to see the sunken car, take lower right, lower right, lower right, left, lower right. Surface and refill in time.

Dive: lower right, lower right, lower right, lower left, middle, right. At the dead end, click the spare tank. Back, left, at the junction upper right, right again, then right all the way to a plaque in the wall. It needs all six discs, in the order of the Code of Honour: its capitalised letters spell bee, ant, donkey, owl, panther, camel. Set the discs and turn them to match the colours: bee right six, ant left two, donkey right five, owl right one, panther right two, camel right four.

The underwater cave

Swim in and click the cabinet: hourglasses named for the ships in the journal’s order, Paciencia, Humildad, Caridad, Generosidad, Diligencia, Templanza, Castidad. Press the second for a key; note its shape. The journal’s penultimate page bolds the ships’ initials, which is the turning order, and says the sands run out together. Turn them so all empty at once; count the red lines from the top after turning. Order: Humildad, Generosidad, Castidad, Paciencia, Templanza, Caridad, Diligencia. Turn Humildad; when its sand is between lines 1 and 2 (2 s), turn Generosidad; at line 2 (5 s), Castidad; between 1 and 2 (5 s), Paciencia; between 1 and 2 (4 s), Templanza; between 2 and 3 (5 s), Caridad; between 2 and 3 (4 s), Diligencia. The door opens on an old map of the western United States marking the treasure. Refill from the spare tank on the left. Swim lower left, upper left, then left to the exit.

The trap

George hands you another kidnappers’ note; how did they know so fast? If you are collecting awards, finish now: prizes, guavas, tricks, climbs, radio chats with George. Drive to Palm Beach, talk to Johnny and give him the map. After the film you are in a pit with Bess, who has found a locked door. Open it with the hourglass key. Everything drawn in the journal is here. Open the metal door left of the bed and put the hourglass key in the keyhole drawn in the journal, the one with leaves; positions vary. The bull picture slides. Take the key from the skeleton’s hands and study its shape. Move the picture with a symbol: a panel of buttons and symbols to find round the room: on the bull’s head, on the captain’s portrait, on the bull picture, on the armour, on the fallen picture under rubbish. Press in the journal’s order. Take the small chest, insert both keys, turn each once, and press the Roman numerals I, II, IV, V to put out the squares. Take the golden peacock: El Toro’s personal treasure.

Back at the keyhole door, the last page of the journal explains the puzzle; with the last key’s shape you can compute the right keyhole. Keyholes are random. Insert the skeleton’s key; three tries, a wrong one brings a collapse, and the holes change. A trick: open the panel, save, try keyholes in order, and on reload skip the failures. Escape and watch the ending. Answer a random quiz question for your awards, and wait through the credits for the bloopers.

Senior Detective solutions

• Batteries: open 2, 4, 5, press. Open 3, close 4 and 5, press. Open 1, close all others, press. Open 4, 5, 6 as well, press. Open all, press.
• Dive cupboard lock: one solution, press 9, 8, 4, 14, 5, 20.
• Sundial: 4 left four times (to 6); 5 right twice (to 2); 3 right three times (to 1); 1 left five times (to 6); 6 right once (to 2); 2 left four times (to 9).
• Detector, sudoku, mirrors, keyholes: same principles as Junior; the layouts are randomised.