Every year, since 2002, September the 19th has been International Talk Like a Pirate Day. If you go to the link above you will find how it started with "pirate guys" John Baur and Mark Summers with some help from columnist Dave Barry. Their story may or may not interest you, but let's shout "AHOY, MATEYS!" and dive into a story worth retelling.
There are many tales of Blackbeard the pirate ( Captain Edward Teach) and Sir Henry Morgan, but I want to give a lesser known incident about treasure hunting that may have originated with buried pirate treasure. It (along with stories of Blackbeard and Morgan) is one of many stories in Eric Wood's The Boy's Book of the Sea. It's in the section called
ROMANCE OF TREASURE-TROVE
Which goes on to say "These are True Stories of
Treasure, and they are as Strange as Fiction." Dropping down within
that chapter, the storyteller in me was taken by this very true story of shipwreck and a fight to the death.
Sometimes the romance of treasure-trove is over-clouded
by tragedy; and very often for nothing. The
story is told of the foundering of the American ship
Reliance, Captain Harding and his crew of twelve men
barely escaping with their lives in the boats. Then
a storm broke upon them and separated the boats, and
Hiram Manly, mate, and nine men found themselves
alone on the watery waste, being buffeted about, in
danger every minute of being swamped. They worked
desperately to keep her afloat, happy to be so far safe.
Then one man was washed overboard by a huge
wave, another fell dead from his exertions, and the
survivors, day after day under pitiless sun, and night
after night, held on their way, economising the
few provisions and little water they had, becoming
delirious as the anxiety told on them. Two more
men were lost one night—perhaps the madness seized
them, and they flung themselves overboard to end it
all; perhaps a wave took them. But, whatever it was,
they disappeared without a sound. The survivors, after
what seemed an eternity of suffering, were at last flung
upon a coral island, where they found water, which,
because of the uncontrolled thirst upon them, killed two
of them. Then fish was found; Hiram built a fire from
drift wood, lighted it by the crystal glass of a watch
and the sun’s rays, and then went to rouse his sleeping
comrades. One man was dead.
Then the three castaways fell to eating their first
good meal for many a day, and afterwards set out to
explore the island, Manly going in one direction and
the other two—Dillon and Harper—in another. They
found no sign of human beings, and presently Dillon
and Manly met.
“Where’s Harper?” asked Manly.
“We’ll never see him again,” was the reply. “He’s
dead.”
“Dead!” cried Manly. “Where did it happen,
and how?”
“Sharks!” said Dillon. “He went to bathe, and—and
they got him!”
“Did the body come ashore?” Manly asked, filled
with horror, and wondering when his own turn would
come. “Let’s go and see!”
“No!” exclaimed Dillon. “It’s no use. We
should never find him!”
But Manly persisted, and ran off in the direction
from which Dillon had come; and in half an hour came
upon the body of Harper, with a knife wound in his
chest!
Instantly Manly’s thought flew to the agitation of
Dillon when he suggested seeking the body, and he
knew that there had been treachery. But why? Why
should Dillon kill Harper, a man with nothing of value
on him? Not even his clothes were worth having, torn
and ragged as they were.
Manly raised himself from beside the dead man,
turned, and, turning, saw Dillon creeping towards him
with an open knife in his hand. Weaponless, Manly
for a moment was filled with terror; then, catching up
a handful of sand, he flung it into the murderer’s eyes,
blinding him for the minute. Then, with a bound,
Manly was upon him, clutching him by the throat and
wrestling for the knife. For a long time the two men
fought, biting, scratching, Dillon seeking to use his
knife, Manly trying to seize it; but at last, with a sharp
twist, Manly sent the murderer headlong to the ground,
and the next instant was upon him, and, joy! he had
the knife.
Again they fought.... And Dillon met the fate
of the man he had killed.
Panting from his exertions, Manly sat on the sand
beside the dead man, and his bleared eyes looked out
to sea. He leapt to his feet, weariness all gone, all
thought of the tragedy forgotten; he waved his hands
frenziedly, yelled hysterically:
“A sail! A sail!”
Away out there was a ship.
Tearing his shirt from his back, Manly rushed to
the water’s edge and waved it long and feverishly,
waved it till there came from the ship the boom of
a gun, that told him he had been seen. And then
reaction set in; he dropped senseless to the earth.
They found him thus; found Dillon, too, lying
dead, and knew that some tragedy had been enacted
on the silent, lonely strand. When Manly came round
he blurted out his story, telling all.
“But why should he have killed Harper?” said
the officer who had come ashore with the boat party.
“It fails me,” said Manly.
The next moment the pair were startled as a seaman
rushed towards them with a cry upon his lips. He
placed something in the officer’s hand. They were two
small golden coins.
They were coins such as Manly knew none of his
comrades had possessed, and there was a gleam in
his eyes as he looked at the officer, neither speaking
a word.
Quietly they walked over to Dillon, searched him,
and found three more coins of the same kind.
“Reckon that was the motive, sir,” said Manly.
“They found these while they were exploring the
island, and Dillon, thinking he had come across
treasure-trove, decided to kill us both off. Harper went
first, and my turn would have come very soon. Thank
God I went in search of Harper!”
The officer agreed with Manly in his suggestion,
and soon had his men searching the beach; but not
another coin was discovered. Instead, they found the
skeleton of a man—of some poor mariner, no doubt,
who had been cast ashore, his worldly possessions
consisting of the five gold coins that had roused the
cupidity of Dillon, and had brought tragedy upon
them.
Presently Manly was taken on board the Bristol,
and sailed away from the coral island, the scene of a
tragedy of treasure that never existed.
Everyone has heard of the treasure of Cocos Islands,
off Panama, to which many expeditions have been sent,
though without success. The treasure was hidden by
a pirate named Beneto Bonito, and hidden so securely
that, although many expeditions—some of them recent
ones—have been sent out to find it, none has yet succeeded.
But, despite failure, year after year men go
forth, secretly and well equipped, seeking the hoards of
riches that they fondly believe they will some day find.
Perhaps they will.
***
Love that part about the coins being found on a skeleton, an earlier castaway on the island.
I'm uncertain if the mention at the end of Cocos Island or Beneto Bonito is meant to be part of this story. I doubt it, but would certainly agree with the final two sentences: But, despite failure, year after year men go
forth, secretly and well equipped, seeking the hoards of
riches that they fondly believe they will some day find.
Perhaps they will.
AARGH!
May you enjoy tales of pirates and treasure and. . . September the 19th when you, too, can join in International Talk Like a Pirate Day.
If you find yourself at a loss for sufficient pirate commentary, batten down the hatches and go to "40 useful pirate phrases for international talk like a pirate day"
***********
This
is part of a series of postings of stories under the category,
"Keeping the Public in Public Domain." The idea
behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the
authors and their immediate heirs were compensated. I feel
strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the
20th century. My
own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public
Domain I decided to share stories from them. I hope you enjoy
discovering new stories.
At
the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates
projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an
audience. Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing
of Public Domain stories will not occur that week. This is a return to
my regular posting of a research project here. (Don't worry, this
isn't dry research, my research is always geared towards future
storytelling to an audience.) Response has convinced me that "Keeping
the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my other
postings as often as I can manage it.
Other
Public Domain story resources I recommend-
There
are many online resources for Public Domain stories, maybe none for
folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's
database, Yashpeh,
the International Folktales Collection. I have long
recommended it and continue to do so. He has loaded
Stith Thompson's Motif Index into his server as a database so
you can search the whole 6 volumes for whatever word or expression
you like by pressing one key. http://folkmasa.org/motiv/motif.htm
You may have noticed I'm no
longer certain Dr. Perez has the largest database, although his
offering the Motif Index certainly qualifies for those of us seeking
specific types of stories. There's another site, FairyTalez
claiming to be the largest, with "over 2000 fairy tales,
folktales, and fables" and they are "fully optimized for
phones, tablets, and PCs", free and presented without ads.
Between those two sites, there
is much for story-lovers, but as they say in infomercials, "Wait,
there's more!"
The
email list for storytellers, Storytell,
discussed Online Story Sources and came up with these additional
suggestions:
-
Story-Lovers - http://www.story-lovers.com/ is now only accessible
through the Wayback Machine, described below, but the late Jackie Baldwin's
wonderful site lives on there, fully searchable manually (the Google
search doesn't work), at https://archive.org/ . It's not easy, but go to Story-lovers.com snapshot for December 22 2016 and you can click on SOS: Searching Out Stories to scroll down through the many story topics and click on the story topic that interests you.
- Zalka Csenge Virag - http://multicoloreddiary.blogspot.com
doesn't give the actual stories, but her recommendations, working her
way through each country on a continent, give excellent ideas for
finding new books and stories to love and tell.
You're
going to find many of the links on these sites have gone down, BUT
go to the Internet Archive
Wayback Machine to find some of these old links. Tim's
site, for example, is so huge probably updating it would be a
full-time job. In the case of Story-Lovers, it's great that
Jackie Baldwin set it up to stay online as long as it did after she
could no longer maintain it. Possibly searches maintained it.
Unfortunately Storytell list member, Papa Joe is on both Tim
Sheppard's site and Story-Lovers, but he no longer maintains his old
Papa Joe's Traveling Storytelling Show website and his Library
(something you want to see!) is now only on the Wayback Machine. It
took some patience working back through claims of snapshots but finally
in December of 2006 it appears!
Somebody
as of this writing whose stories can still be found by his website
is the late Chuck Larkin - http://chucklarkin.com/stories.html.
I prefer to list these sites by their complete address so they can
be found by the Wayback Machine, a.k.a. Archive.org, when that
becomes the only way to find them.
You
can see why I recommend these to you.
Have fun
discovering even more stories
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