TALES OF ADVENTURE

Auckland Star, Volume 55, Issue 22, 26 January 1924, Page 24

TALES OF ADVENTURE

SPANISH TREASURE.

Romance of Suwarrow Island—"Pieces of Eight"—Buried Dollars and Rings—Discoverer Meets Sudden Death. (Specially Written for the "Auckland Star.")

Everyone else on the brig was at last asleep. Divesting himself of his clothes and rubbing cocoanut oil over his body the only man awake speculated on the chances of a shark grabbing him before he could get ashore. Stealing quietly out on deck he looked into the night. The fringe of cocoanut palms on the shore of the lagoon looked very far away, and again he thought of those sharks. As he made for the bows he looked like a ghost, being stark naked except, for his singlet, which he had tied round his head. Climbing over the rail he went down by the anchor chain, let himself noiselessly into the water and struck out for the shore He was not sorry when his feet touched bottom, and he dropped on the sandy beach to regain his breath. Looking seaward he saw the brig still in darkness, and listening intently he could not hear a sound from her. Evidently he had not yet been missed. The tropic moon was just showing above the horizon, and against her bright disc the feathery tops of some palms showed up like ebony inlaid on ivory. As he lay on the sand the man was suddenly aware of something moving near at hand. Oil the beach, right in a line with the rising moon, he could Bee something largish turning round and round like a dog when he curls himself down on a mat. Creeping cautiously towards this object, the white man found a big turtle in the act of making a nest in which to lay its eggs. Turning round and round it threw the sand out with its flappers and seemed in a hurry to get the job over. The man was just about to move off in the direction of some huts when his car caught an unmistakable metallic "chink, chink," coming from apparently under the burrowing turtle. Driving the animal off into the water the man scraped round in the half-made nest, and by the light of the rising moon he saw a number of small bright discs. Picking up some he held them so that the moonlight fell direct on them, and he was astonished to find that they were Spanish coins of some antique minting. A Dilemma. Here was a predicament! Except for the singlet he had tied round his head before slipping down the brig's cable into the water, and a belt round his waist, he was mother-naked. Aboard •the brig he certainly had no friends, and his only friends ashore wer.e practically in a state of siege. Fate must surely have been in an ironical mood when she led him at such a moment to the buried

treasure of the old Spanish pirates? Then the old tradition about the wrecked galleon was true after all! Knotting his singlet at the waist, the white man filled it three times with the big silver "pieces of eight," made a little heap and covered it temporarily with some brushwood. Then he set to work to scrape more sand away from the turtle's nest, and he soon came to an iron chest, evidently a.jewel or a money box, almost rusted away. Clearing off the remain's of the lid he discovered a heap of rings and jewels, something about a hundred,.he estimated, and the moonbeams were flashed back by the precious stones . with • which many of them were set. Slipping two or three of the rings on- his fingers, and a fewcoins in his belt, he set about planting his find. There was an old shanty called "Happy Jack's," named after a beachcomber, who had lived in it at one time. Stepping off 95 paces in a north-west direction from . the corner of the "hut, the white man made a hole, planted his treasure, dragged, some brushwood backwards and forwards to obliterate traces of recent digging, arid-then he filled in the turtle's nest. Scarcely had he finished the work when sounds came from the brig, and it was evident that he had at last been missed. He set off at a run and made for the house of the only friend he had on the island, and his voice being recognised he was quickly admitted by the "garrison," for the place had been in a state of siege. South Sea Thrills. Such is the thrilling Story, of the late Mr. Henry Abbott Mair, as told by his brother, the late Captain Gilbert Mair. Life in the South Seas was not so conventional in 187(1, when this incident happened. Some of the things that actually occurred in the "Summer Isles of Eden" were much more exciting-than lots of the thrills in.the South Sea tale that has become so popular with'a whole regiment of modern story writers. And what happened to the treasure that the turtle found? As a matter of fact Mr. Mair never saw it again, and for all one knows "it may still be buried somewhere in the vicinity of "Happy Jack's" old whare—wherever i that stood. Mr. Mair was a supercargo, and agent for Henderson and Macfarlane- Jn 1881 he -.was killed on Santo Island, New Hebrides, while on a recruiting trip in a schooner called I the Isabella.

Captain Gilbert Mair had the story of the treasure from his brother during a short visit the latter made to Rotorua not long the incident at Suwarrow Island. Writing to a relative in 1917 Captain Gilbert Mair said "Your uncle and I were sitting on the shore of Lake Rotorua, and he drew on the sand a rough sketch of his Treasure Island,' which as far as I remember is as shown on the attached sheet." were an adventurous family the Mairs, and one can readily imagine the two brothers as the tale of the Spanish dollars was told by the shores of Lake RotOrua. And the drawing of the chart on the sand is just the sort of incident that Charles Kingslcy or R- L. Stevenson would have loved. It might have stepped bodily out of 'Westward Ho!" or "Treasure Island." A Disputed Island The reader will naturally want to know why Mr. Mair had to swim ashore from the brig, and why his friends house was in a state of siege. Old Aucklanders will, remember what a stir the "Suwarrow affair" caused in November, 1370. In those days a man did not carry firearms for amusement, and Mr. Mair's tragic end at Santo Island shows what a wild place the Pacific was even as late a 8 1881. The ownership of Suwarrow Island was very much in dispute in 1876, and that was one of the reasons of the exciting happenings there. Suwarrow Island, which was originally spelt Suwarroff. being discovered by the Russian, Bellinghausen, and named after a famous Russian general, lies about 530 mile 9 from Rarotonga and some 500 miles east of Apia. It is a coral atoll of triangular form, fifty miles in circumference, and the reef which averages half a mile across, encloses a land-locked lagoon some twelve mileg long by eight. Mr. Mair was in the employ of the well-known firm of Henderson and Macfarlane, who ' also employed Captain Sterndale, to whose house Mr. Mair made his way after the dramatic finding of the treasure. This Captain Sterndale was one of the firm's agents, and according to the newspapers of the time the trouble in 1876 was due to some dispute as to Stemdale's authority at the island. Sterndale claimed that he was supreme, in fact he assumed something like regal sw-ay, but the firm .considered it was his employer and expressed dissatisfaction with his manageI ment.

I Besieged. In the end a. Captain, Fernandez,* of the schooner Kriembilda, of Auckland, and some other employees of the firm, took possession of the. island. Sterndale and his wife retired to their house,. and stood a siege of sixteen days. Then one day when Sterndale . was. going for water he met Fernandez. Sterndale, who was .carrying a rifle, fired, but Fern_>dez dropped • on hii s hands and knees and got away. Stemdale's account of the affair . was that h _ saw Fernandez, who was wearing the native loin cloth, feeling in the region of his belt as though he were going to draw a revolver. "Seeing this," said Sterndale, "I took the initiative and fired." Soon. after this, the" brig Ryno, a well-known Pacific trader, arrived at the island, and it wag on this craft that Mr. Mair was apparently detained in some sort of way, though from the contemporary accounts" the' reason is not clear. Eventually the opposition parties held a parley at Stemdale's house and it was . agreed that Captain and Mrs Sterndale and Mr." Mair should come up to Auckland by the Ryno so that, the matter could be "threshed "out. Sterndale courted arrest as h e wished to ventilate his side of. the" whole business but the police authorities declined to take any action as they had no authority over the'<island'of Suwarrow Some \'ery piquant statements came from both sides, and were duly published at the time. And there, as far as the public was . concerned, tbe "Suwarrow affair" ended.' Recovered Treasure. There - is, of course, nothing in the newspapers of 1876- concerning the finding of Mr. Mair's treasure, but in one of Stemdale's,many.'statements to. the press there is mention of an expedition -from Australia • that had found (somewhere in. the lB40's), '25,000 dollars, and'one"of Stemdale's employees! is said to-have found about ■2000 dollars. But the find of Mr. Mair seems to have leaked out, according to what the I finder told Captain 'Gilbert Mair' and ■ it is said, that Henderson and'Macfarlane' employed '_. large ■ number of natives ta-dig. for it, but without success. Mr. Mair thought the fact that had discovered something got about through people seeing the rings he wore. The treasure is supposed, to have come from a\ ■ .Spanish- galleon' .. homeward I

bound from Peru to Spain, which was seized by the crew and eventually cast away on Suwarrow. Mr. Mair kept some of the silver coins he found. Accounts vary as to how he managed to carry them away, as he had no . clothes on and had to swim part of the lagoon to get from where lie buried his iiud to Captain Stemdale's house. According to Captain Gilbert Mair's account, Mr. Mair slipped two or three rings on his fingers and put four or five of the- coins in his belt. Mrs. A. H. Hoopqr, of Tiri Road, Takapuna (daughter of Mrs. BedlingOne of the Dollars from the j Treasure. j

ton, who was the eldest of the Mair family) has one of the dollars, and she says she understood that Mr. Mair put some coins in his belt, and that he lost several while swimming, but managed to retain four or five. Mrs. Hooper says she was told that on several occasions afterwards Mr. Mair tried to arrange for a cutter to go to Suwarrow Island to recover the treasure. He had almost completed arrangements, hut the master of the cutter demanded half the treasure, and Mr. Mair refused, as he had not sufficient confidence in the

man he was dealing with. Mr. Mair decided to postpone the idea of, recovering his treasure until some future time, and before he could make another attempt he met his death'at the hands of the New Hebrides natives at a place called Cape Lisburn, Santo Island. Mr. Mair wrote a full account of the finding of the treasure, and il was kept in the Mair family for a long while, but was unfortunately destroyed in a fire when Mr. Robert Mair's residence at Whangarei was burned down. Treasure and Tragedy. | And there the matter rests, and for all one can tell the pile of "pieces of eight," and the rings and the jewels may still be buried under the sands on the reef jat Suwarrow. On the dollar that is in I the possession of Mrs. Hooper the date 'is 1778, just 140 years ago, and judging 'from the good condition the coin is in jit could not have been many years in circulation before it was shipped aboard the galleon that flew the red and gold standard of Spain. At that time two Spanish dollars were in circulation. One was minted in Spain and did not bear the words "et Ind. Rex," which was peculiar to the dollar minted in the Spanish possession of Mexico. There were also minor differences in the arms of Spain on the reverse. These dollars were called "pieces of eight" (as readers of "Treasure Island" will Temember), a name derived from the fact that they were equal to eight reals, a real being worth about sd. With pirates and treasure one always associated deeds of violence, and sure enough the Suwarrow treasure apparently has its tragedy. "One day while Mr. Mair was exploring about the island," runs Captain Gilbert Mair's account, "he came upon traces of cemented work. This had been an old -fort with cement paving, and walls, the latter crumbling to decay. Captain Stemdale's labourers were breaking up the floor for blocks with which to make l wharf they were building, and they came on a skeleton of a man menacled with arm and leg irons fastened to iron ring bolts in the floor. He had evidently been fastened, down, lying on his back, while still alive, and liquid cement poured upon him in the hope that all trace of the 'terrible tragedy would be hidden away for ever."