The World of Lore: Dreadful Places

by Aaron Mahnke

  Not only did they start mining, but they built houses and created garden areas. They even planted more palms. These guys were serious about colonizing the island and wanted to do it right. But the island was harsher than they realized, and by 1909 they had given up. All but one of the Englishmen abandoned the island and headed home.

  And that’s when Mexico got serious. In 1910, President Porfirio Díaz put thirteen soldiers on a ship and transported them to Clipperton, where they would do their part in maintaining Mexican rule over the valuable resources there.

  When they arrived, they found the homes and buildings that the British had constructed, empty and waiting for them. There was even a recently built lighthouse, complete with its own keeper. But it wasn’t just thirteen men with guns who made the trip.

  Most of these men brought wives with them, you see. And there were children, and servants, and all the supplies they would need to settle in and build a life there. Sure, no one had been able to make a go of it so far. Sure, the island was nearly inhospitable. And sure, it was expensive and difficult to transport supplies there. But they were determined. By 1910, nearly a hundred people had begun to call the island their home, and even more would be born there in the years to come.

  What none of them could foresee, though, was just how many would die there as well.

  GOING NOWHERE

  One of those thirteen soldiers was a man named Ramón Arnaud. He was a thirty-three-year-old military officer with a checkered past. Within months of his enlistment years before, he deserted his post. It resulted in him spending over five months in a military prison, and then a series of unappealing assignments. Clipperton Island was, to him, just one more piece of the punishment, whether or not it came with the title of governor.

  Children were born in those first few years. Governor Arnaud and his wife, Alicia, welcomed their first child, Ramón junior, in 1910, and two more followed over the next three years. During that time, life was a dull rhythm of island life and the occasional resupply ship. But that was all about to change.

  Sometime in 1914, the supply ships from Acapulco stopped coming. Because the regular frequency was every two months, it was probably hard to tell at first if the ship was just late or if plans had changed. I imagine everyone on the island watched the horizon daily for a sign of help. Without that ship, they were essentially stranded. And every day that ticked by was another attack against their dwindling supply of hope.

  In late summer of 1914, a ship did show up, but this one was American. It brought supplies, but its real mission was to pick up the last remaining member of the British mining crew who had stayed behind five years earlier. While there, the ship’s captain informed Governor Arnaud of the situation back home.

  Not only had Mexico erupted into revolution, but the world was now at war following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. They’d seen nothing like this global conflict before, and the captain had no idea if or when it would stop. Perhaps, he suggested, Arnaud and his community would like to come home, just to be safe?

  Arnaud declined, and the community soon watched the Americans vanish over the horizon. By 1915, though, that decision was beginning to feel flawed. The vegetable garden that the British had installed had started to fall apart. The only naturally occurring food on the island was a small supply of coconuts and whatever fish and birds they could hunt. But what those foods lacked was vitamin C, and so by late 1915 many on the island had scurvy.

  We tend to treat scurvy lightly, making pirate jokes about it when we’re out with friends, but the reality of the disease is more horrible. The symptoms begin with bleeding gums and sore spots and eventually grow into depression, immobility, and open wounds. In the end, someone suffering from scurvy simply bleeds to death, and without vitamin C, those around them can only helplessly watch it all end.

  The people died off one or two at a time. The disease seemed to hit adult men especially hard, and as the population dropped, the survivors struggled to bury their dead deep enough to keep them out of the reach of the island’s crabs.

  By 1916, nearly all of the men were dead, and many of the women and children as well. All told, there were perhaps two dozen survivors. By this point, Arnaud was motivated. His wife, Alicia, was pregnant with their fourth child, and if his family was going to survive, they needed to find help.

  It was probably while they were all studying the dark storm clouds on the horizon that they spotted the ship. They tried jumping and waving their arms, but there was no sign that the vessel saw them. It was just too far away, and the approaching storm probably made it too dark for anyone on the ship to see them, anyway. Hope was slipping right past them.

  Out of desperation, Arnaud made the decision to gather the last of the men into the only boat on the island and row after the passing ship, hoping to catch its attention. Their lives depended on it. It was probably their last chance, after all. And so they rowed hard and fast into the rough waters.

  Historians aren’t sure what happened next. There might have been a struggle in the boat, according to some witnesses. Or the small boat might have started to take on water. What we do know is that the men stood up and seemed to grapple with each other, only to capsize the boat, tossing them all into the sea. And there, within sight of their families, all of the men drowned.

  But Alicia Arnaud didn’t have time for heartache. The storm that had been on the horizon was upon them within just two hours of the tragedy. The three remaining woman, along with perhaps half a dozen children, all gathered in the basement of the Arnauds’ home to take shelter.

  And that’s when Alicia went into labor.

  ALL HAIL THE KING

  She named her new son Angel, and he was the last good news they would experience for years.

  When the women stepped out of the basement the following morning, the rest of the house was gone. The storm had destroyed everything, it seems. All of the homes, the remnants of the garden, even some of the palm trees were gone.

  But something new was there as well. Someone, actually. The reclusive lighthouse keeper, Victoriano Álvarez. They knew he’d been there, of course, but he was seen so infrequently that most had forgotten about him. He’s described by historians as mentally unstable, and a lack of social skills drove him to hide in the lighthouse, away from the others, for years. How he got supplies, though, I have no clue.

  Álvarez was a giant. Tall, powerful, and menacing, he must have been a shocking sight to the surviving women as they pushed their way free from the wreckage of their home. But there he was, and he had a mission.

  He wandered the ruined settlement and gathered all of the weapons together. Some reports say that he tossed most of them into the deeper part of the lagoon, while others say he took them all back to the lighthouse. Whatever he did with them, the message was the same: I am the law now, he was telling them. I am your only hope.

  Álvarez set himself up as king over the island, with no other men to challenge him, and only three young women who were doing their best to keep the children alive. But it wasn’t a glorious reign; no, Álvarez quickly became a nightmare for everyone there.

  The three women were helpless to stop him. For the next three years, Álvarez would rape, abuse, threaten, and beat the women like some sort of primitive clan elder. He would often choose one of them to return to the lighthouse with him, and only send her back to the others when he grew tired of her company.

  None of the women angered Álvarez more than twenty-year-old Tirza Randon. Maybe it was her youthful rebelliousness, or her sheer will to live, but Randon constantly made life difficult for the lighthouse keeper. When she was with him, she was quick to voice her hatred of him, and when she was back in the settlement, she was a loud voice of dissent.

  They needed to find a way to escape, but without a visiting ship, that seemed hopeless. Álvarez, though, was a mon
ster, and something needed to be done. And he had made a mistake. You see, he thought of his captives as “just women.” Yes, he was stronger. Yes, he was armed. And yes, he seemed to be in control. But Alicia and the others weren’t “just women.”

  No, they were survivors. They were human beings fighting for dignity and safety. And they were powerful in their own ways. So when Álvarez walked into their collection of primitive shelters in July 1917 and demanded that Alicia Arnaud be the next to report to his lighthouse, they saw their chance.

  Arnaud and Randon walked up to the lighthouse the next morning, with Ramón junior—now seven—following close behind. When they arrived, Álvarez was outside cooking a bird he had managed to capture. It must have been a rare catch, as the women later described how he was smiling. But that smile melted away as he saw Randon approaching.

  There was an argument. Álvarez wanted to know why Alicia had brought the other woman. And while the giant of a man was busy shouting at Arnaud, the other woman slipped silently into the lighthouse. When Randon stepped back out through the doorway, Alicia gave her a tiny nod. Álvarez saw this, and turned to see what was behind him, but it was too late.

  Later, all three women were standing in their settlement on top of a small hill that was crisscrossed by the overgrown paths used by the mining companies years before. And it was at that moment that they saw the rowboat. It was a whaler, launched from an American gunship called the Yorktown, anchored farther out at sea.

  An officer named Lieutenant Kerr landed on the beach, and after speaking with the women, he brought all of the survivors back to the ship with him. There, they were presented to the commander of the gunship, a man named H. P. Perrill, who listened to their story with deep interest. They told him of their ordeal during the past three years, and of the maniacal lighthouse keeper who had held them captive through force and violence.

  “Where is he now?” Commander Perrill asked them.

  “Dead,” Alicia told him, and then added, as if it helped clarify the matter, “from scurvy.”

  SLAYER OF MONSTERS

  Some people view humanity as just one more member of the animal kingdom. And much like a dog left alone in the house for hours, it’s in our nature to create chaos and destruction when we’re left to our own devices. We need rules and boundaries, these people would say, if we want to have any hope of maintaining order and civilization.

  Others, though, disagree. They would say that our tendency toward society and structure is innate, that it’s written in our DNA right alongside things like the blueprints for our circulatory system and eye color. We’re hardwired to build community, and it’s merely the trials of life that push us off course from time to time.

  But both can be equally true, I suppose. What if humanity is really more of a creature in the balance? The events that played out on Clipperton a century ago certainly show us both sides of that coin. Some leaned toward order and peace, while others became animals.

  Lieutenant Kerr witnessed this firsthand. After delivering the survivors to the Yorktown, he and Commander Perrill returned to the island later that day. They wanted to see for themselves who this monster was that had terrorized the women for so long, dead or alive. Both of them had seen scurvy kill men before, so they weren’t afraid of what they’d find.

  After walking the path from the beach and up the hill to the lighthouse, the men found the door wide open, so they stepped inside. It was eerily quiet inside the dimly lit room, but it didn’t take them long to figure out why.

  Stretched out on the floor was the largest man either of them had ever seen. Blood had pooled around the body, filling in low spots in the stone floor, but their eyes were drawn away, toward an area of the floor beyond the man’s shoulders.

  Two objects had been tossed there, a knife and a hammer. Both were small, easy weapons for a malnourished woman to hold and swing. And both were covered in blood.

  The two Americans looked at each other across the body of the king of Clipperton Island, but neither of them said a word. They knew what had happened, what had really brought an end to the man on the floor. But neither wanted to remark on it.

  With a nod, they turned and left the building. The survivors were safe, and that was all that mattered to them. The island could keep its king.

  Alicia Arnaud would tell us that some people truly are monsters deep in their core—Álvarez certainly was one. But she also advocated a very risky balance, a wagering of her soul in the pursuit of freedom.

  Because sometimes—even if only in the rarest of rare circumstances—we have to become the monster in order to defeat it. And then hope that we change back.

  IN FEBRUARY 2010, restoration specialists were trying to preserve the hut used by Ernest Shackleton and his team during their Nimrod Expedition a century ago when they found something beneath the floorboards.

  Keep in mind, Shackleton is something of a legend. Born in Ireland in 1874, raised in London, and exploring Arctic regions by his twenty-fifth birthday, this man was about as tough as they come. He was a naval officer, a real-life explorer, and a bestselling author, and he even had the honor of being knighted by a king. I can’t think of anyone more interesting to invite to a party.

  So when restoration began on the Nimrod base camp hut in 2010, there was a sense of awe. It was the structure that had once played host to impossible dreams and a spirit that few today are willing to embrace. That little hut was a refuge against a hostile environment. And it was also, apparently, the hiding place for a treasure, buried by Shackleton himself.

  It wasn’t gold or silver, though. It wasn’t a relic or some piece of history. No, beneath those bare floorboards, restorationists found something else: three cases of Scottish whiskey. And this whiskey, trapped in the permafrost for a century, was insanely valuable.

  Not just because of its age. And not just because of the opportunity it offered to explore a rare, lost blend of Scotch. This whiskey was valuable, you see, because it offered the chance to taste the liquid that fueled a legend.

  We’re obsessed with those who venture out into the wild. We resonate with those who risk their lives. And while the successful ones often live on as legends in their own right, it’s the ones who fail who often stick with us the longest.

  For some people, nothing is more frightening than when the natural world reaches out and crushes our best-laid plans.

  FAR FROM FOUND

  When Sir John Franklin set sail from England in 1845, it was his fourth expedition into the Arctic Circle. For years, nations had been looking for the mythical Northwest Passage, a route from the Atlantic to the Pacific that didn’t require sailing south to the tip of South America before heading back north.

  Franklin and his team were never seen again. In some ways, it shouldn’t have surprised anyone. After all, the expedition set sail in two ships, one named the Terror and the other named after the Greek god of darkness and chaos, Erebus. They were practically begging for tragedy.

  It wasn’t until a decade later when another explorer, John Rae, learned of the expedition’s fate. Trapped in the ice, the crew had made their escape on foot. The cold and lack of food were their undoing, and some believe the party succumbed to cannibalism before the last of them perished. Nevertheless, Franklin and his crew have gone down in history as heroes.

  History has long had a love affair with tragedy. Maybe it’s the haunting nature of these lost expeditions and journeys gone wrong that seems to elevate them in popular culture. Maybe it’s our obsession with anything that has a passing resemblance to an Indiana Jones movie. Or maybe it’s just the simple fact that there are so many of them to talk about.

  Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen was the expedition leader for the team that beat Robert Scott to the South Pole in 1911. He and his team returned from their journey as heroes, and while he participated in more adventures, it was the South Pole that
earned him his reputation.

  Nearly two decades later, in 1928, an expedition to the North Pole crashed on the ice and vanished. Amundsen, fifty-five years old at the time, climbed into a rescue plane and headed north to find them. Apparently you can take the explorer out of the wild, but you can’t take the wild out of the explorer. Amundsen was never seen again.

  Percy Fawcett was an explorer and archaeologist from England who spent much of his professional life in the jungles of Brazil. He’d performed tasks for the Royal Geographical Society, and served as a member of the British Secret Service for a time. Fawcett even formed a close friendship with popular author H. Rider Haggard, who wrote the equivalent of Indiana Jones novels for late nineteenth-century readers. If you’ve ever seen or read The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the character of Allan Quatermain was a Haggard creation.

  Maybe it was that friendship that filled Fawcett’s head with visions of cities of gold and adventure. In 1925, he managed to raise enough funds to set off for South America with his oldest son, Jack, and one of Jack’s close friends. Together, they planned to locate a lost city that Fawcett had named “Z.” It was supposed to be the real-life location of the legendary city of El Dorado.

  There are a lot of theories about what happened. Some say the explorer and his partners were all killed by natives of the region. Others say that they set up a commune in the jungle and lived out the rest of their lives there. There are even stories that say the end was much less exciting; that Fawcett and the others just walked into the jungle and vanished. Even today, there are those that are still looking for the truth.

  In 1804, Alexander Hamilton engaged in a duel with United States vice president Aaron Burr. Hamilton’s aim was off, but Burr’s wasn’t. As a result, Hamilton died from his wounds the following day. Burr lived a long life after the duel but suffered through the mysterious disappearance of his daughter, Theodosia.