The Claim
There’s 1.5 million Spanish gold and silver coins buried on Palmyra island
During the 17th and 18th centuries the Spanish looted huge amounts of gold and silver from south America and took as much of it as they could back to their home country. This is something they did quite openly and put the native populations through numerous hardships, including the extermination of entire tribes to quench their thirst for wealth.
It is some of this looted south American wealth that our treasure story comes from. A ship called the Esperanza was said to be docked in the port of Callao in Peru, when late one night its crew were seen loading it with large box’s. The next day, on the 1st of January 1816, the ship set sail for the Spanish west indies, presumably to buy goods they could trade back in Europe safely, with most of the stories suggesting this crew weren’t from the Spanish navy, but rather privateers.
One of the members of the Esperanza’s crew, a man named James Hines claims how shortly after their departure, the ship was caught in a bad storm which destroyed the main mast. After sitting there for several days without the ability to move the ship it was spotted by pirates.
Quickly taking the opportunity to attack such an easy target, the pirates boarded the ship and took the wealth and the crew onto their own vessel, before sinking the Esperanza. After spending 45 days as a hostage within the pirates ship, the vessel struck a coral reef around Palmyra island.
The pirates thought it best to land on the island and make the necessary repairs, and in doing so decided to leave the 10 men of the crew they captured from the Esperanza behind. Their ship was quite badly damaged so they decided to bury the treasure and come back for it with a more reliable ship.
After fixing their boat the pirates set off into the waves, never to be seen again. As for the 10 men left on the island they began to make a small boat which they put together over the next 3 months. 4 of the men died in the time it took them to build it, presumably from starvation or disease, so when they finally launched their escape boat it only had a crew of 6.
Not long after leaving the island the boat was hit by a storm which flipped it over and caused 4 of the crew to drown. The other 2 managed to cling to pieces of the wreckage and were found a couple of days later by an American whaling ship heading for San Fransisco.
One of the 2 men saved died on route, but the other man, James Hines managed to survive all the way to the hospital and even managed to write a few letters of his experience, including details of the treasure. Unfortunately he died after being in hospital for 30 days and was never able to lead anyone back to the treasure, which to this day still hasn’t been found.
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