The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1902-09-02
TREASURE ON REEF
OF WAKE ISLAND


gold hunter, schooner Herman? Well, .
said one of the oldest Identities of Ho-
nolulu, who sometimes puts in morn
ing sauntering along the wharves, Il
know of a treasure story that beats
that You see this happened in the time
when we used to get whalers here,
when mail came when it felt Ike it by
clipper ships and not by clock-work-
time steamers like your giant Korea
Those good old times are gone, my
boy"
You should have been a reporter on
the waterfront at that time. Why,
things were up and doing then. The
South Seas were not well known and
my goodness but we did have wrecks,
mutinies, Chinese coolie murders at sea,
and lots of old fashioned news events
happening every day. But the news
papers only printed two line items then
and nothing short of the Battle of Bull
Run at the time of the American War
would get them to print column about
any one subject"
"Humsoever that's not the subject
1 was going to tea you about treasure.
No mind this Amt no yarn. Every
word is as true as gospel. In 1866
noted clipper, the bark Libelle, was on
a voyage to China. She had Madame
Anna Bishop-my but she was a sweet
singer and she was in Honolulu early
in that year-apoaru as passenger.
This concert singer was going on
tour of the Orient. The Libelle had a big
cargo of wheat, hundreds of TASKS of
quicksilver-very valuable-considerab
gold, and other treasure aboard. Well
some way or other this vessel went
ashore on a reef at Wake Island. Her
passengers and crew got to their des-
tination somehow but left all the treas
ure behind. Parties in San Francisco
fitted out the schooner Caroline Mills
with all sorts of diving apparatus to
get the treasure.
Early in 1867 the Mills made her
trip out TO Wake Island but failed ito
get the treasure because her apparatus
would not work in the breakers sur
roundings the wreck. She came back
to Honolulu. Tom Foster was a bit of
a Spectator in those days and a dare
devil from the ground up He heard
of the treasure by the stories told by
the sailors on the Caroline Mills and
straightaway decided to go and set it.
well the expedition went out in
little sloop but they did not get all the
treasure and l believe that at this late
day it wouIu pay to make a treasure
hunting trip over to Wake Island and
get some of the stuff that was not Sc
cured on the occasion of the last visit
there Men put their money into all
sorts of foolish things nowadays but 1
believe if they'd put it into a sound
proposition like going over to look for
this Wake Island treasure they would
find that it wouIu pay and pay hand
somely at that.
when these treasure hunters finally
got away Tom Foster, one of the orig
inal Inter-Island steamer men, was
the leading spirit. The little forty-five
ton sloop HokuleIe, under the command
of Captain Wood, carried eight Hawai-
ian native divers. The sloop made the
voyage to Wake Island in the fast time
of twenty-one days but on their arrival
there found that there were other
| treasure hunters in the field besides
themselves. The OJner party were in
a brig which came from Guam and
eight native divers from the Caroline
Islands. 1t looked as if battle would be
done between the opposition vessels but
a truce was fixed up and it was decid
ed that the two parties should work
together and divide the spoils.
well they found that the wrecked
Libelle had been forced up on the reef
some distance further than the point
where she first struck and that her
bottom being knocked out the TASKS of
mercury had become scattered all about
the reef. You just imagine those hardy
! divers, some from Hawaii, some from
| the Carolines, working in the boiling,
surging water of the reef in from four
to five fathoms of water where every
member of the party risked instant and
horrible death from the tremendo Gus
breakers that were constantly pounding
over the reef. The TASKS had worked
down into the riffs and assures of the
reef, some of them had h's,ome buried
in coral debris. Some had worked into
the gullies where they were covered
| with sand and altogether it was a hard
matter to recover them. The greatest
cropping down on the bottom for the
! TASKS they were powerless TO resist The
| big rushes of water that drove them
| against the sharp edges of coral One
of the Hawaiian divers was badly in
jured in this way. BY sending in most
all the divers at once they We're able
| to help and rescue each other when
/ trouble occurred so that no Fatalities
resulted. But many of the TASKS found
on the coral bottom were broken and
their contents had been lost.
The two parties were at work for
/ Twenty-Five days. AS the sloop and the
| briG lay at the opposite side of the
/ isisnd from that upon which the wreck
VAS situated the TASKS that had been
I recovered had to be carried across
/ burning sand for a distance of over a
mile and this was no easy mater. At
that time no fresh water corId be found
on Wake Island. The beach was COW
cred with leather, broken wonden buck
cts. and other debris from the wrecked
| Libelle The wheat which made up the
largest item in the cargo of the Lihalle
/ had of course been washed entirely
away by the breakers
The party got a lot of money for
| their quicksilver and even now after
I i1-f