Be sure to make a note on your iPhone or in your day planner that this coming Thursday, Sept. 19, is “International Talk-Like-a-Pirate Day.” Yes, that be right, me hardies. Talk-Like-A-Pirate Day.
And to help you get into the mood for this auspicious occasion, I thought I would revisit some of Catalina’s local pirate lore.
Be sure to make a note on your iPhone or in your day planner that this coming Thursday, Sept. 19, is “International Talk-Like-a-Pirate Day.” Yes, that be right, me hardies. Talk-Like-A-Pirate Day.
And to help you get into the mood for this auspicious occasion, I thought I would revisit some of Catalina’s local pirate lore.
While the Caribbean holds the dubious honor of being the main venue for piratical history—and certainly pirate lore—the entire west coast of the Americas also saw quite a bit of such action, including Catalina.
In fact, piracy and privateering on the California coast dates back to at least the 16th Century—more than a hundred years before the likes of Edward “Blackbeard” Teach and Captain William Kidd came on the scene.
While those two lovable fellows never made it to these parts, we had a host of our own such characters, such as Sir Thomas Cavendish, George Compton and even Sir Francis Drake, all of whom either practiced outright piracy or practiced the profession of pseudo-piracy known as privateering. (Privateering was nothing more than a ship’s crew committing piracy under the legal authority of whatever nation needed a share of the loot).
This week’s mystery revolves around Thomas Cavendish and his capture and plunder of the Spanish galleon Santa Anna—or more specifically the mystery surrounding what happened to much of the treasure he culled from that ship.
The capture of the Santa Anna in November of 1587, a central theme in local author Chris Blehm’s novel “Mercy of the Elements,” represented the most valuable haul taken from a Spanish galleon in the history of the Pacific. It was on Cavendish’s first voyage that he encountered the Santa Anna, after receiving intelligence of her approach to Cabo San Lucas.
Cavendish’s fleet consisted of two vessels, the Desire and the Content. After a vicious five-hour battle, the Santa Anna capitulated. What was left of the crew surrendered and with them came all of the riches within the Santa Anna’s hull: Chinese and Arabian silks, satins, wine and, of course, tens of thousands of gold coins.
Surprisingly for the era, and despite their fierce defense, the crew and passengers of the Santa Anna were actually treated well by their vanquishers. The remaining crew and passengers were put ashore in a place that “afforded water, wood, fish, fowl, and abundance of hare and rabbits.” Cavendish also left them weapons for hunting and for defense, along with enough timber to build themselves a small vessel.
Controversy started early for Cavendish, however, when the members of the Content became anything but content over Cavendish’s division of the spoils. The crew of the Content felt that Cavendish was being overly generous to his own crew on the Desire. It was this dissatisfaction that quite possibly led to what happened next: after the two ships began their trans-pacific cruise toward the Philippines, the Content inexplicably dropped behind the Desire and eventually disappeared over the horizon.
At the time of their separation, the two ships were both headed north on the great circle route to the Orient, a course that would have taken them right by Catalina Island. And according to legend (and that’s about all we have to go on at this point) it is said that the crew of the Content, with her roughly half of the treasure, made landfall at Catalina where they buried a sizeable amount of the loot.
There is, of course, no official documentation for this since no trace of the ship or crew was ever found. But some have linked this tale to the story of Samuel Prentiss, the 19th century settler who spent much of his life searching for a legendary treasure buried on Catalina. (That’s a whole ‘nother story).
It was a dying Tongva chieftain named Turie, according to the legend, who supposedly divulged to Prentiss the existence of a fabulous treasure that lay beneath the scrub oaks and Toyon of Catalina’s West End; a treasure that was purportedly buried by the crew of the Content more than 200 years before.
So the question is, if you walked like a pirate and talked like a pirate, where would YOU bury a treasure on Catalina Island?
Jim Watson is the author of “Mysterious Island: Catalina,” available at Amazon, Kindle and in stores all around Avalon.
