In search of mysterious Spanish treasure
As a boy, tales of lost Spanish treasure fascinated me. The mystery of the Oak Island treasure pit off Nova Scotia was one that really got me going. But there is one far closer to home that I have been recently researching, in Suwarrow atoll in the Northern Cook Islands.
For many New Zealanders, the isolated atoll is best known as the home of self-imposed castaway Kiwi Tom Neale. His book An Island to Oneself about his long stints living there became a bestseller after it was first published by Fontana Books in 1968.
But Neale makes barely a mention in his book what the island is most famous for – buried Spanish treasure – and the story of its discovery and subsequent reburying, never to be found again, involved another adventurous Kiwi by the name of Henry Abbott Mair.
This man’s tale would be almost unbelievable if it wasn’t for the existence of gold and silver coins and jewel-studded rings which he brought back to New Zealand, plus a treasure map he drew, a copy of which is now in the National Library.
It is well established that Spanish galleons regularly crossed the Pacific from the American west coast and Mexico to the Philippines during the 17th and 18th Centuries. But the first evidence that one had come to grief on Suwarrow’s reef came after the American whaler Gem was wrecked there in 1848.
The wreck was sold to Messrs Hort Brothers in Tahiti, who consigned one of their vessels, Caroline Hort, to salvage the cargo of valuable barrelledup whale oil. It was during this operation that the ship’s supercargo, John Lavington Evans, found in the shallows of the lagoon a box with 15,000 gold coins. Little wonder he returned as the first lessee of uninhabited Anchorage Island, the largest of Suwarrow’s atolls.
But more intrigue was to come, and it involved the well-documented accounts from adventuring New Zealander Henry Abott Mair, a man of the same country and ilk as Tom Neale who came a century later and end up wrote his classic castaway tale.
Born in England in in 1836, Mair came out as a lad with his parents Gilbert Mair and Elizabeth (nee Puckey) Mair to settle in the Bay of Islands. Their son is remembered as up for anything and always in search of new adventure. Enlisting to fight in the ‘Maori Land Wars’, this veteran of the ‘Hauhau campaign’ served as Captain in the Opotiki Volunteer Rangers in the attack on Rauporoa Pa.
After his regiment was disbanded, Mair found his next campaign in the Pacific, and it all pointed to Suwarrow.
With no known record of Polynesian habitation, the isolated atoll was first commercially ‘surveyed’ in 1867 for its potential resources (namely copra, mother of pearl and beach de mer) by pioneering trader Handley B. Sterndale for his Pacific Island Trading Company.
Sterndale purchased the lease off Evans and returned seven years later as agent of Auckland traders Henderson and MacFarlane who duly advised their ‘notice of position’ to the British Consul in Samoa in 1877. It was one step short of annexation in the colonisation story of the northern Cooks.
It was during the Sterndale era of clearing Suwarrow to establish a coconut plantation for producing copra that his workers discovered strong evidence of previous human occupation, including concrete platforms and rock structures, a rudimentary lime kiln, a flintlock and musket, along with several skeletons positioned under the ground as if laid to rest.
A number of Spanish coins were also found. Sterndale surmised that whoever came before were probably survivors of a wrecked Spanish ship, but his real worry became getting supplies for him and his wife and a dozen or so recruited ‘native workers’.
As part of the deal, Evans had dropped them all off with four months of supplies, promising to come back, but instead he did a runner, sailing the ship to Melbourne where he sold it in an act of betrayal.
It took infamous blackbirder Bully Hayes to rescue them from Suwarrow and take them to Tahiti along with the 109 Niue Islanders he had on board his already overcrowded Rona. All hoodwinked to work plantations in Tahiti.
There is no doubt that some treachery had gone down in the Suwarrow deal, Mair travelling there from Auckland in 1878 on behalf of Henderson and McFarlane in Auckland, their instruction to ‘re-establish control of the island’.
But on the week-long voyage from Rarotonga aboard the chartered brig Ryno, he grew to strongly suspect key members of the crew were conspiring against him, intending to assert control of the island before sailing off with the big cache of pearl shell and beach-de-mer. Hayes had grabbed a heap of both as payment for rescuing Sterndale’s crew, but much remained.
Realising his vulnerability, Mair devised a plan to thwart the crew. The ship had arrived late evening at Suwarrow lagoon where they dropped anchor for the night. Mair waited for all the crew to fall asleep before he rubbed himself all over in coconut oil and slid silently down the Ryno’s anchor chain to swim the hundreds of metres to shore. His intention that moonlit night was to warn Mrs Sterndale and her handful of of workers left behind by her husband, to be picked up later.
Bully Hayes’ ship would have been inconceivable for any woman at that time, such was the blackbirder’s frightful reputation.
Making the beach on Anchorage Island, Mair collapsed exhausted to recover on the sand, soon realising from the noise that not far along from him a sea turtle was laboriously digging a nest to lay its eggs. But then the sound of turtle sifting sand soon changed to a more of a ‘chunk, chunk chunk’ as the turtle’s flippers came against something metallic.
Chasing the turtle off, Mair began scooping out handfuls of coins glinting in the moonlight. Using his knotted singlet, all he had come ashore in, he stashed three lots of coins further up in the trees along the beach.
Going back to the nest to dig deeper, Mair realised there was some sort of rusted chest underneath. Prizing open its corroded lid, he was astonished to find it full of precious stones, rings and more gold coins.
A frantic few hours followed for Mair as he reburied the treasure with his bare hands before running down the track to warn Mrs Sterndale and her workers to be alert for foul play, and keep their gun loaded. Back to the beach after that, he readied himself for his return swim, putting on as many rings on his fingers as he could before tying the twisted singlet of coins around his waist.
Arriving back on the brig before anyone had a chance to wake up, Mair secreted his booty and was ready to confront the crew who all backed down after realising those ashore now proved a greater threat.
Henderson and MacFarlane made a tidy profit trading the beech-de-mer and pearl shell returned from Suwarrow.
Returning to New Zealand, Mair intended to find another ship to go back to Suwarrow to recover his reburied treasure, but no ship was ever going that way.
His death in 1881 was tragic; clubbed to death by islanders on Santo Island in the New Hebrides (Vanuatu). Quite likely he was on a roundabout route to get back to Suwarrow.
His story would be near unbelievable if he hadn’t left behind with his niece for safekeeping a detailed handwritten account of how he came about his find, his hand drawn treasure map of Suwarrow lagoon (with the location of the treasure marked by a blacked-in square), along with most of the rings and coins he had swum back to the Ryno with.
End of story? Appears so. No more sign of the treasure has been found on remote Suwarrow, bar a few loose coins.
After Sterndale, the island remained almost completely deserted until New Zealand Coastwatchers took residence there during WWII, Neale first visiting them on a supply visit in 1945.
After Neale’s tenure, the atoll was declared the first National Park of the Cook Islands in 1978, in recognition of its abundant marine and bird life.
Two caretakers live there half the year (May to Oct), while a steady stream of ocean-going yachts call in to anchor in the lagoon on their way from Pago Pago to Bora Bora or Rarotonga.
Suwarrow remains one of the most isolated and least visited places on the planet, its unsolved treasure mystery uniquely Kiwi-flavoured.