Post by Dave Homewood on Apr 5, 2022 22:52:22 GMT 12
Hunted In Vain For Treasure On Cocos Island
The last time Mr Edgar Sanders was in Christchurch it was in the role of the only New Zealander to have fought in the almost legendary unit “Popski's Private Army." Now he is back with an even more romantic story to tell—of shipwreck on Cocos Island, treasure cache of pirates and buccaneers.
“It’s a beautiful place.” he said, sitting in his parents' living-room in Waltham with his Ecuadorian wife, Mariana, and their children, Ada. aged three, and Peter, aged 18 months.
“The island is surrounded by steep cliffs with with waterfalls pouring down, and its covered with thick bush. It was with Norman Edwards and his wife —she's the widow of the famous Captain Macfarlane Arthur who blackmailed the Indian maharajah back in 1936..
We were in a 45ft converted North Sea fishing boat. I knew a lot of people who'd been to Cocos Island, and we anchored there for 10 days before a typhoon drove the boat up on the beach. It was a write-off.
“We male a tent out of the sails because it rains so much there." Mr Sanders said. "The others stayed for about four months until they were taken off by a shark-fishing boat to Costa Rica. While they were on the island I spent most of my time hunting for food—hitting booby birds on the head while they were asleep, catching fish, and shooting pigs.
Hut For Treasure
“We were able to salvage some stuff off the boat. I didn’t leave with the others. I didn’t want to go north, and I wanted to wait for a drier spell to hunt for treasure.
“The dry spell never really came. There are rivers all the time and they can come up 6ft in an hour or two. I built a shack with some of the gear left behind by treasure expeditions, and an outrigger canoe to get around the island.
“But Cocos Island is changing all the time. There are always landslides because of the continual rain, and I'd say you could only find some treasure there by stumbling over it. There have been a lot of wrecks there, and the remains of some of them look very old. I didn’t find anything, and I was there about II months altogether. “
Yes. it was lonely at times —at night mostly.’’ Mr Sanders said. “The island is meant to be haunted, and I sometimes wished I would see a ghost, but I never did.
“Cocos Island is very hard to find. The chief pilot for the Canal Zone came out trying to rescue the three of us, and he searched for the island for 10 days without any success. He had to give up and go back to Panama. The trouble is you can’t get a sight to fix your position because Cocos is in the Doldrums, and it’s often overcast.
To Galapagos Islands
“I'd been there by myself for about seven months before a boat finally showed up. It was owned by a Canadian-American who was taking some people to start a colony in the Galapagos Islands, about 500 miles west of Ecuador.
“They were broke and they had come out to salvage whatever they could from our boat, but there was nothing left. I wanted to go to Galapagos: it’s meant to have buried treasure, too. People have found some silver church things there—in fact, all the talk there is treasure.”
In the Galapagos Islands Mr Sanders did some commercial fishing until his employer was edged out by someone else. “Then I stayed on the beach for a year,” he said, “but I got bored and I bought a farm. It was sort of a hobby. I had some horses, coffee, oranges, bananas, the usual things. At that time money was not too important.
“That was up to about five years ago, when a couple of American businessmen came and changed the whole place. We called one of them the Chicago shark—he’d sell you his fingernails. They put a value on everything."
Other things went wrong. The company in which Mr Sanders had invested some money failed; he had some trouble over the use of the port for his farm products: then when he married he was told he would have to take out Ecuadorian citizenship or leave.
Mr Sanders’s wife and her sister, who came with them to New Zealand, are from the Rio Bamba region cf Ecuador, and speak Ecuadorian Spanish.
War Service
Mr Sanders would not be drawn on the subject of his war exploits—except to say that his Military Medal was won while with the Long Range Desert Group in North Africa, and not with “Popski's Private Army.”
Mr Sanders joined Lieutenant-Colonel Vladimir Peniakov’s unique group when it was formed in 1942, taking part in its secret tasks in the desert behind Rommel’s lines and in Italy.
“I saw ’Popski' after the war," he said yesterday. “It was in 1947 or 1948, when we had a reunion at the Dorchester. There was quite a crowd there—more reporters than us. Popski died of a brain tumour not long after that. I corresponded with his widow for a while. The last I heard of her she was working for the Foreign Office in London."
Mr Sanders has no special plans now that he is back in New Zealand, but he said his return gave his father a chance to escape the rest of the winter, by travelling up to a holiday bungalow in North Auckland.
PRESS, 13 JUNE 1964
The last time Mr Edgar Sanders was in Christchurch it was in the role of the only New Zealander to have fought in the almost legendary unit “Popski's Private Army." Now he is back with an even more romantic story to tell—of shipwreck on Cocos Island, treasure cache of pirates and buccaneers.
“It’s a beautiful place.” he said, sitting in his parents' living-room in Waltham with his Ecuadorian wife, Mariana, and their children, Ada. aged three, and Peter, aged 18 months.
“The island is surrounded by steep cliffs with with waterfalls pouring down, and its covered with thick bush. It was with Norman Edwards and his wife —she's the widow of the famous Captain Macfarlane Arthur who blackmailed the Indian maharajah back in 1936..
We were in a 45ft converted North Sea fishing boat. I knew a lot of people who'd been to Cocos Island, and we anchored there for 10 days before a typhoon drove the boat up on the beach. It was a write-off.
“We male a tent out of the sails because it rains so much there." Mr Sanders said. "The others stayed for about four months until they were taken off by a shark-fishing boat to Costa Rica. While they were on the island I spent most of my time hunting for food—hitting booby birds on the head while they were asleep, catching fish, and shooting pigs.
Hut For Treasure
“We were able to salvage some stuff off the boat. I didn’t leave with the others. I didn’t want to go north, and I wanted to wait for a drier spell to hunt for treasure.
“The dry spell never really came. There are rivers all the time and they can come up 6ft in an hour or two. I built a shack with some of the gear left behind by treasure expeditions, and an outrigger canoe to get around the island.
“But Cocos Island is changing all the time. There are always landslides because of the continual rain, and I'd say you could only find some treasure there by stumbling over it. There have been a lot of wrecks there, and the remains of some of them look very old. I didn’t find anything, and I was there about II months altogether. “
Yes. it was lonely at times —at night mostly.’’ Mr Sanders said. “The island is meant to be haunted, and I sometimes wished I would see a ghost, but I never did.
“Cocos Island is very hard to find. The chief pilot for the Canal Zone came out trying to rescue the three of us, and he searched for the island for 10 days without any success. He had to give up and go back to Panama. The trouble is you can’t get a sight to fix your position because Cocos is in the Doldrums, and it’s often overcast.
To Galapagos Islands
“I'd been there by myself for about seven months before a boat finally showed up. It was owned by a Canadian-American who was taking some people to start a colony in the Galapagos Islands, about 500 miles west of Ecuador.
“They were broke and they had come out to salvage whatever they could from our boat, but there was nothing left. I wanted to go to Galapagos: it’s meant to have buried treasure, too. People have found some silver church things there—in fact, all the talk there is treasure.”
In the Galapagos Islands Mr Sanders did some commercial fishing until his employer was edged out by someone else. “Then I stayed on the beach for a year,” he said, “but I got bored and I bought a farm. It was sort of a hobby. I had some horses, coffee, oranges, bananas, the usual things. At that time money was not too important.
“That was up to about five years ago, when a couple of American businessmen came and changed the whole place. We called one of them the Chicago shark—he’d sell you his fingernails. They put a value on everything."
Other things went wrong. The company in which Mr Sanders had invested some money failed; he had some trouble over the use of the port for his farm products: then when he married he was told he would have to take out Ecuadorian citizenship or leave.
Mr Sanders’s wife and her sister, who came with them to New Zealand, are from the Rio Bamba region cf Ecuador, and speak Ecuadorian Spanish.
War Service
Mr Sanders would not be drawn on the subject of his war exploits—except to say that his Military Medal was won while with the Long Range Desert Group in North Africa, and not with “Popski's Private Army.”
Mr Sanders joined Lieutenant-Colonel Vladimir Peniakov’s unique group when it was formed in 1942, taking part in its secret tasks in the desert behind Rommel’s lines and in Italy.
“I saw ’Popski' after the war," he said yesterday. “It was in 1947 or 1948, when we had a reunion at the Dorchester. There was quite a crowd there—more reporters than us. Popski died of a brain tumour not long after that. I corresponded with his widow for a while. The last I heard of her she was working for the Foreign Office in London."
Mr Sanders has no special plans now that he is back in New Zealand, but he said his return gave his father a chance to escape the rest of the winter, by travelling up to a holiday bungalow in North Auckland.
PRESS, 13 JUNE 1964
