Thinking Sideways: Lost Treasures

again we have a mystery. We have several mess We actually have several mysteries that time again, it is where we do what do we call these are a group show shorts? I never can remember because we frequently I never I don't know. It doesn't really matter. Two different kinds of group shows, right, we did that's kind and we do the like we have this week. The kind of group show we're doing is where each of us has a small mystery and they're all kind of related.

There's a theme that the theme has lost treasures. There's a lot of lost treasure out there, by the way, there is, and so we're unfortunately just going to cover three treasures. Shall we just go ahead and jump into this. Let's talk about some lost treasure. All right, well, I guess I guess I'll start Yeah, please do Okay, what are we talking? What are you talking about? Well, I am going to be talking about the supposed lost gallon of pearls in the Salt and Seas full of pearls?

How many pearls? A lot? Like millions lots? Do you know the worth of the pearls? No? Estimated? No, we don't know. It's a little it's it's it's a little thin. Here's here's the basic idea. If you don't know where the Salt and Sea is, it's probably something you should know right away. It's in southern California. It's near the Mexico California border. It's all so right there, not too far away from the coast, and technically it can connect

to the Gulf of California. So yeah, it's a weird little spur that comes off the edge of the continent. That's right where it's at. Yeah. Yeah, So and then that little area sort of maybe theoretically floods and and so, just so we're clear, A galleon is this big Spanish ship. They're that big six hundreds era ships. I don't know why isn't there a coin that was called a galleon some kind of coin that was called a galleon at one point? No, am I making that up? Is that

a fantasy thing? It's probably fantasy, might be a fantasy thing, but I think there's a coin that has a similar name. But there are some things as like a galleon of gas and a galleon of whiskey. Yeah, the galleon of whiskey. I'm very familiar. Yeah, yeah, okay, sorry, I just wanted to clarify. That's all right, So here's let's let's get

into the story. This story is that evidently in the eighteen hundreds there were a lot of people flooding across the country, and these people were coming through the California area. We've got things like the gold rush going on to everybody's just milling about, and all of these stories started cropping up of the ship in the desert. So it's actually in the desert, it's not in the water. What are you laughing at? I looked it at the Harry Potter.

It's the currency in Harry Potter is I was just laughing at the fact that, of course I made a Harry Potter refference without even realizing. Back to the story Harry Potter, So, well, all these people say they see the galleon, did anybody take a picture of it with their cell phone? No, lady had the terrible cameras in the eighteen hundreds. So according to some research out there, in the early sixteen hundreds, King Philip of Spain, I think Philip the third, he had sent a whole bunch

of ships to the America's. One of those ships was going around and hunting for pearls. So that was kind of the thing with the Spanish Empire is like they decides running Mexico. They also they also took over the Philippines and they took basically they plundered all the gold out of the Philippines and brought it back to Spain via Mexico. And speaking of Spanish galleons, there there is actually a Spanish galleon buried in the sea or buried

in the on the beach at Manzanita. Oh yeah, there is, Yeah, was about Yeah, I think it is. It. Don't look at me like that, I know it. Yeah, but it actually exists, It is really there, just probably full of stuff. Yeah, yeah, that's the whole thing. It was there was a storm in the nineteen thirties and it was partially uncovered, and and and people became aware of it, and there was not there was no money to actually take it out,

and so it's of course it's still there. And who knows what's it that there might there might be all kinds of gold in there, there might be treasure. But yeah, there's there's there're Spanish gallions all over the place. There were a lot of them out there, So there's this one could be for real. Well I thought that it was full of pearls. Well here's here's the thing is that, according to the story, the king's orders these ships in sixteen ten is the year now that I'm rereading my notes.

And he hires a couple of guys and one of them is a gentleman by the name of Wanda a Tubre and Pedro there was resolves. He sends them off in three ships that have a bunch of pearl divers on them. Uh. They go up and down the coast of California and Mexico. They're diving for pearls. They're evidently getting huge halls, and eventually they meet the natives and it turns out the natives had been taking pearls at you know, because pearls are in in oysters, I suddenly

couldn't think of what they were in. Sorry pause, And they just thought they were useless. So they were throwing them on the ground and they had piles and piles of these things around. Well, actually technically they are. They are really useless. That's pretty They have no value to them as they you know, because we say they have

value now that they have just like diamonds. I'm actually kind of surprised that that that they saw them that way, because I mean, don't forget that that we bought Manhattan for a bunch of little trinkets and like stuff like that.

So I'm kind of surprised that they just discarded them. Well, yeah, I don't know, but I know is that, according to the story, they decided to trade for all these pearls, and what they did is they swindled the natives, shocking, and they gave them rags and junk and all of this sound like history at all, but actually from from the natives perspective, they probably actually got a good deal because you know, a rag is something you can actually mop up a mess with whereas you can't do that

with the pearl. True, but they didn't take kindly to this, and they attacked the Spanish because they figured out they had been swindled, and a bunch of them were injured, and they ran and a bunch of these guys said, hey, we need to go home, We need to go back to Spain. According to the story, though, the guy that was in charge of this, his name was Alvarez Cordone, he said, no, we're going to continue on. I've been injured, I don't care. Go up the gulf and keep looking

for more pearls. So they do that. Well, eventually one of the ships hits a reef it goes down, So now we've only got two ships. And they keep going on and they continue up what is now the Gulf of California. They get into this weird inland sea they're hanging about, and they realized that this place isn't what we need to be and they want to go back down the gulf, except the water level has dropped and they realized that they get out and the sea is

sinking around their ship. Yeah, I could see that happening, you know, in southern California. Depending at the time of the year, it actually gets a lot of rain, like in January, and uh, I could see where it could actually be navigable for a short period of time. Well here's here's what happens though, and this is where we

get into a little bit of of local information. So the Colorado River, you may or may not know this, and a lot of people probably don't because we it's so drained at this point, but it used to run almost all the way to the Gulf of California, and this area that we're talking about, where the Saltan Sea is, it's actually used to be referred to as the Salton Sink because what would happen is the river would flood, it would overflow, and it would overflow into the sink.

Makes sense. So if there's a big flood, lots of water comes in and it fills this area and it's a temporary lake. At the same time, there are things called tidal bars which from the Gulf of California push water up the estuaries, and it could at times when there was a high flood, connect the sink to the ocean. So technically it's possible. Theoretically it's possible. I shouldn't said technically, theoretically, yeah,

I would say that really considering how to wrench. So the range can be in southern California if you had those two things coinciding, it's maybe. Yeah. Otherwise so maybe it could. So I would say that would be a distinct air of judgment on their part, but maybe. Well yeah, So according to this what happens is the Spanish evidently it was only one of the ships had gone while the other one stayed in the gulf. This one went north and got stranded. The sailors realized they're in trouble.

They leave the ship, it's sitting on the ground full of pearls, and they hike it through the desert back to the coast and according to legend, are eventually picked up by another ship two months later. So they didn't take the pearls with them, any of them. Well, they might have taken some with them, but according to the legend, the hold was full of pearls. Imagine like taking a bath in that. Yeah, that would be pretty awesome. Yeah it is, it really is. And there's there are variants

of this story. There's variants that say that no, it wasn't a Spanish galleon, but instead it was a pirate ship that went up and got caught in this same situation. So it's actually not a ship of pearls, it's a

ship full of gold. So that's another one. There's another version that says that no, it wasn't the Spanish and it wasn't gold, instead it was vikings, that it's a Viking ship, which actually makes more sense when you think about it, because those Viking ships that I can't remember what kind of what the name is, but they had had a shallow draft to him, so they go in much shallower water, the gullants to kind of draw a little bit of water, the yeah, they go really deep.

So this actually is a little more credible from that approach that it could have been. But then again, those ships are a little bit smaller, and the legend says that people would see this giant ship in the sand without its mass, but it's still a giant ship that they could see from afar. And that's where we're going to move into the legend because now we've talked about

possibly how it could have got there. We now have all of these stories in the eighteen hundreds that happen, people saying they see the ship sitting there in the desert as they're crossing the desert, but they can never get back to it. There's a story of a prospector who gets into town says he took shelter in this weird, round dish wooden structure he found, and he hid in a in a storm in it. Unbeknownst to him, it was full of pearls. Bothered to look around a little bit.

So now is this thing. Is this thing just sitting on the desert floor, or is it partially buried? Well, according to what happened in the area. And this is the hard part is that of course the salt and sea has now got water in it. We've pumped a bunch of water into it from runoff from irrigation, and it's it's actually one of the saltiest bodies of water on the planet, salt and Sea, I guess exactly. But um, now that the thing is is that according to the stories,

what's happened is it got stranded. And this is a desert, so sand blows around, and what does sand, due to a big hulking object in the desert, piles up against it? So it would be buried and then it would get uncovered by the winds, and then a dune would grow around it, and then it would get uncovered by the winds in the waters. So it's coming and going. There's the story it evolved, like I mean we talked about

it first started with the ship of pearls. Then it was a ship full of gold, that it was a Viking ship, like there's all these versions. It's actually rolled on from there. It's actually become a ghost ship that sails on the sands of the salt and sea. Some people actually report seeing that sailing, the leached ship without mass, flying around the sea and the sands. I should say it's a phantom ship. Why don't they just drained the

salt and sea and find out if it's there. Um, Well, the Sultan Sea is actually slowly draining itself or not. It's super deep and it's a desert. I mean, we are pouring water into it, but not nearly as much as it used to get and so it is slowly draining on its own. Projected that in the next somewhere between the next ten to twenty years, if if things keep going the way they are, it'll be empty, and then you can go out there with your battle detector

and your shovel and just dig your heart's content. Yeah, I'm gonna go out with my pearl detector. Said, shouldn't be too hard to find. Really, I'm just shocked that nobody's found it on Google Earth yet. Oh like that guy that drove his car into the lake recently for several years ago that they found recently. Yeah, it seems like a big thing. You would have found it. Well, but the problem is is that, well, I shouldn't say. The problem conveniently is believed to be in the area

that is now under water. So if it's underwater, under sand, Google Earth still couldn't fight. All right, that's fair. There are some limitations there, there are. Okay, Well, this this was an easy one. So let's get into our theories, because that's really I mean, there's we could go on and on about the different stories and flesh them out, but really it all kind of comes down to what we've talked about so far. Three theories, the first of

which is that it's real. It's totally yield, and it could be totally real for the reason that we talked about earlier, where the Colorado is flooding, and it's pouring a bunch of water into the area and filling up that inland sea or that big lake that then because of the tidal bars, becomes a bit of a connected to the sea. It's not actually an inland sea. It

could be real. And as Joe talked about, and we've been talking about, we know that there were Europeans, whether they were Spanish or um Vikings are the makings technically Europeans, So Europeans are just all over the area. So technically it could have happened, though it's really kind of hard to believe a little bit. Although you know, again, it doesn't have to be a galley, and there could be a boat of some kind. And that's that's the one thing is that it's always says it's a galleon, but

it could have been a smaller ship. I mean, like I talked about two break, he had three ships with him. One of them might have been the small one that was the scout and left the galleon in the gulf and took the little one up and that's the one that got stramped. It's kind of like Columbus, you know, his three ships worth the same size it was. There was big, medium, and small, like to coffee. Okay, we're to go onto theory number two. This one I love, which is that it's sort of kind of okay, okay,

this is hilarious. I love the people do this kind of crap. It's eighteen sixty two and there are a couple of people who decide they want to travel around the desert and the best way they decide to do it is to build a skiff and put it on wheels. So this is a sailed ship with sales that then has wheels attached to it and they are driving across the desert. Did it No? It does. Actually people people

actually do that. If you go out to like I go out to the Alboard Desert occasionally, which is a dry lake bed and the summertime, when it's not raining, it's it's nice and dry and hard. And there are people I've seen with my own eyes who build these things. They're basically windsurfers. Yea, yeah, they like these things. They've got wheels on them and windsurfing board whenever getting and they said at them, and they've got they've got a mast in the sail, and they just speed around the

desert and these things. It's it's very cool. Well, these guys evidently weren't very good at driving their's because they drove it into a low point in the desert which was kind of moist, and they just got no, no, it wasn't even moist. It was just a low point and it got stuck. They couldn't get it back out. It's heavy. I mean, you know, they're failing it out of lumber. It's not like you just dragged that thing around.

But they are saying that that is the you know, the sails and the mast of that are what people were seeing in the eighteen hundreds and claiming it was this galu. You would also explain the ghost chip theory. Possibly could have just st there speeding around when Yeah, or that people you know, in the later years or the earlier sorry that we're more contemporary of this thing speeding around there that they saw it and thought, what's that thing in the distance. It looks like a ship?

The mast weird. Weird. Yeah, well, you know, actually the ghost ship thing. I don't know if you ever saw the Halloween episode of South Park, No, yeah, which one? I mean seasons now, now, they were the town was terrorized because they were seeing ghost pirates and it turned out it was a town pastor and he was using a flashlight and a couple of squirrels to create the illusions. Yeah, I'm not making this up. That's how it really went out. Yeah,

the same thing. You know, what I was thinking is for the ghost ship that that is moving about, is it could have been what what is that? You know how to pronounce this, Joe and I never can the illusion of something that looks that's reflected looks like it's several feet off the ground. Mirage, it's a fun yeah, oh god, I can't remember the name of it either. There's there's two we talked about that the skin Walker

ranch thing. I mean, yes, you get your typical mirage, which what's the light is like refracted upwards and it looks like there's water, But that the other one where the lighters refracted downward and so it looks like it's floating. Yes, So so say something off in the distance horizontally actually looks like it's up in the air. And so that's that's the thing that I'm talking about, which moves just right into the third theory, which is it's a total fake.

It's just not real, and it could be that it's a mirage. Um. There has been no evidence, concrete evidence. Nobody's even come back with a board and said this was from this ship that I found. Because people say they went to it. Actually, I need to rephrase that, because I'm wrong. There are no first hand accounts. They're all second and third. But it's never this guy went and when he was at the ship he took a board off of it and kept it with him. It's always they went to it and looked at it or

saw it in the distance. They've never actually been to it. And this is the thing is, this is entirely counter to everything I know about human nature. I find I find a shipwreck, I'm gonna I'm gonna, like, as you say, take a souvenir from it. At the very least, I'm gonna dig it out, dig up whatever I can, and find anything valuable that's possibly there. Take it there. There is one story, there's one story that is unsubstantiated out there that there was some guy who showed up in

town that nobody knew him. He showed up at this town with a little tin full of pearls and he used those, and people are like, hey, where'd you get those? I found him in the desert at this thing. Well could you take us there? Oh yeah, totally take you there. In the morning. Great, we'll put you up on our our place for the night, rent free. And in the

morning he was gone. Like that's the one story that I've seen where somebody's actually showed up with it and the guy disappeared, and you know, some using air quotes because all of our listeners could see that. Y. Yeah, the guy disappeared, took the silver probably with him, Yeah, he probably. He probably disappeared with a horse that didn't survive the telling. But now so I am inclined to believe that this probably isn't real. The skiff is the

only thing that I can see potentially being it. So this treasure that is supposedly lost, I don't think it actually exists, you know, I think that a lot of lost treasures never existed to be Yeah, yeah, yeah, well so much that one. All right, Well that's that's me, I know, except for I really want to know. I

want to do one of those desert windsurfing board things. No, it looks like a lot of fun, it does, but it would probably hurt more when you fell off of it then if you fell off a windsurfing board, because you'd fall in the water. Yeah, okay, yes, so talking about fake maybe fake kind of thing. This is real. We can talk about mine and if you guys want let's hear about it. Let's do it. What is it? So we're gonna talk about the mystery of Poverty Island.

I love the name, the Poverty Island. Lost treasure is what they call it, and poverty. Poverty Island is in Lake Michigan. Okay, that's right, that's right. Yeah, I could remember which lake it was in. Yeah. I've always actually found this one kind of fascinating, and I like the name to poverty I me, I like the name. Yeah. Yeah, it makes you think that there was an orphanage on the island when you know it's really it's a really video. Yeah there's a lighthouse though, Yeah cool. I just I've

always wondered why somebody named it Poverty Island. I mean, I don't have a problem with it, but it's kind of a strange name. Yeah, I don't. I think I read about it, but I don't. I don't remember why. I'm sorry, it's not really probably right to the story. You know. Actually we prefer to not answer every question that gives our listeners the opportunity to go researcher for themselves and send us an email. Yeah, by all means, yeah, okay, So it's eighteen sixty three, Yeah, civil war and all

that Civil war. Yeah. Kind near the end of the Civil War, the Confederacy has decided that they need money, so they appeal to one Mr. Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, the third of France. For some reason, I don't totally know why, but for some reason, Bonaparte totally granted them a secret

shipment of gold to help them out. And think he hated the Americans because they we were loosely connected to the English Confederates three too, I don't know, I don't know the I mean, the French have actually been our allies for a long long time, our strongest and oldest allies. Yeah. I'm not so sure that the French were that sympathetic to the Confederacy, but I'm not either. That's one of

the that's my first red flags. Yeah. This delivery has been estimated to be worth about four million, four hundred million dollars in our money, today two fifteen money. It turns out it's really hard to do backwards calculations on what it would have been the value. Yeah, so I don't know, but it's a lot of money. That's a lot of money. Yeah. This delivery path was headed towards Chicago via the Lake Michigan, the Lake Michigan, the of the St. Lawrence River, and so they went by this

strange circuits route because they were awarding the Union blockade. Man, I don't know. Yeah, I think it's not really explicitly told. Yeah, I never understood how, you know what I mean, like why that particular area. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I think it'd be easier to sail around Florida and go to like New Orleans. But I don't know. They came through the North. I guess reasons again another red flag maybe,

I don't know. Yeah, but by this time the Union spies had heard what was up, and they attacked this shipment near Poverty Island and sunk the ship and loot altogether, never to be seen again kind of story. But they managed aboard it, and the kind of story. Yeah. Remember I thought I saw a version where it sank in a storm. No, that is that is the Edmond Fitzgerald you're thinking of. Yeah, no, no, no no, no. Steve's right.

There's the another story that goes it's sunk in a in a storm, which happens a lot near Poverty Island. It turns out of storm sinking. It would be interesting. I think, actually we should sinking. Yeah. Sorry, is that insensitive thinking? We should totally drain the great legs. It's probably all kinds of cool stuff at the legs. Yeah, that's not the end of the story. Okay, there's more.

In nineteen nine, a group of sailors were sailing on Lake Michigan like you do, and they were pulling up their anchor link by link on their chain and they snagged what they reported to be trunks, five of them. Five trunks on one anchor. Apparently. I don't know how that happened, but okay, they all tied together. Maybe they must be it must have been. Yeah, but the trunks

were full of gold. They didn't they trunks didn't make it up because as they were pulling the trunks on board, the chain of the anchor snapped and so the trunks were lost. Back to see and okay, well, I initially thought that it was total bunk, because I thought, well, there's no way that a chain anchor and anchor chain could just snap like that kind of depends on how heavy duty. But it turns out it happens all the time.

I actually read a fair amount about how ineffective anchors are just in general, and that the only reason that anchor's work is because of the chain attached to them. And when you're trying to haul the anchor up, there's so much weight usually that your links will expand, stretch, stretch, and snap and snap. So apparently the thing, especially if it was attached to four trunks worth of gold. Yeah, well, yeah, trunk's worth of gold. Yeah, I tend to think that's

what's the word I'm thinking of here. They wouldn't have enough strength in them to pull up five trunks worth of gold. It would be it may not have actually been people manually hauling the anchor up, though it's true. It could have been a larger ship all the time. That's true. Maybe that was it. Yeah, so they pulled it up enough to see they saw that it was trump and then it, you know, slipped through their fingers

and fell back to the sea. Yeah. And then in nineteen thirty three, just before storm, the son of the Poverty Island lighthouse keeper said that he observed a salvage crew make what appeared to be an exciting discovery, just kind of off the coast of Poverty Island. Alright, So he said that they were excited, that was what he said. Yeah, he said they looked excited. I looked like they were celebrating. Yeah, I remember reading the account. Yeah. And then a storm

swept in and sunk that ship. They were partying into the night. We've got it, We've got it. Except for he didn't. He never said that it looked like they actually hauled stuff up. So I don't know if it was on their ship or not. Um, but actually the so that ship sank, and then in the wreckage of that that salvad ship was actually found and there was no gold there. What was the name of the ship? That's a really good question. I haven't seen it anywhere.

I haven't either, have I know, I don't think I have. I mean, they're constantly finding new wrecks in the in the Great Legs. It's not an unusual thing. Yeah, but there was no there was no gold or anything on this ship. There seems like they weren't being very good at salvaging things well. But the other thing to keep in mind is when ships go down, it's not as

if everything goes down in a straight line. So if ship turns over and this trunk of gold is on the deck, the trunk of gold is gonna be so heavy it's gonna sink pretty much like straight whereas the ship the ship drift, particularly if you're going down in a storm. Yeah, like the storm is so bad that you think it's probably not gonna I will, I will give a little bit of they might have got something

just because of that fact. Okay, that's fair, Yeah, that's fair. Um, there are two guys who are searching for the treasure right now. Okay, there are more than two guys. I'm there are a couple like key players in the search for this treasure right out. So I guess we'll use these people in their opinions as theories. So there's really two theories here, right yeah. Yeah. And in the in the It's Not Real Camp is a guy by the name of Chuck Fellner, and he's a historian and an

amateur shipwreck searcher. Guy. Great job is on his guy The Beach Boys had to do a song about that. Yeah. But apparently record keeping about Lake Michigan ships was really robust in the nineteenth century. I can believe that, which is another reason why it would be weird for the Confederacy to be trying to smuggle a bunch of gold highly monitored area. Real, Yeah, you can't get your ships

over there without somebody observing it. Yeah, but they also they have really really detailed sinking records for every shipwreck and anything like and there is no record of any ship like this sinking around this time. Yeah, although it's entirely possible if they were sneaking in there on the slide, that they got into the lake, then they second nobody had a clue that they were there exactly. Yeah, that

would be the counterpoint to that. But I mean I took a look at this on the map because I was trying to figure out, like, how the hell they even got there. It's not exactly easy to get in there. I mean there's you know, today, there's locks and stuff like that. But yeah, now would be just as a sail right down and nobody's going to see me because

I do it all under the cover of dark. No, but it could have been uh, you know, they were smuggling some stuff, right, so they were saying, oh, yeah, we've got a bunch of potatoes on this ship, got you know, just there's just a couple of guys, got some potatoes for the for you great north folk. Yeah, okay, that's a good point. I guess I am coming about it as it's a sneaky ship that isn't from the area the way I was viewing, I think it's unlikely that they would have been able to sneak in there

without being observed somebody making note of it. I mean, even today, every port around the world, there are people keeping an eye on things, So there are people who are noting the comings and goings of ships. And it's not just spies for foreign countries or the private concerns that do it. Lloyd's has people in imports all around the world observing and want to observe that. Yeah. Yeah, so that's that would be the it's not real I think,

among other reasons. That's the feilder theories that it's just it's not real because of this, because of this, and because of you know, all this other stuff. Is that like you know, there's been a lot of anecdotal stories, but conveniently, everybody who's ever act, you know, almost gotten it has sunk. Yeah, they soccer, they've lost it. It's a cursed treasure. Yeah. But actually some people point to the consistency of the treasure being lost as proof that

it exists, which is really interesting. I tend to not understand this kind of logic, but there you have. There was one story that has been repeated over and over and it's been pretty pure the whole time. Well actually, so no, no, no. Steve Harrington is the is a maritime historian that he's the proponent of this there. He he says that the stories of the treasure being founder like just yeah, too consistent. Almost there's always five chests, it's always in the same area, and it's always lost

in a tragic way. So that means that it must be real. Yeah, I just think, you know, like, there's got to be at some point you stop me, you stop losing stuff conveniently like that. Well, here's the deal. The thing about it is is like many many years go by and you've got these chests. They're they're wooden trunks or something. They're full of gold, and you snag

them and you haul them up towards the surface. Well I'm sorry, but they're going to deteriorate over time, and the weight of that gold is just going to pop the bottoms right out of so sooner or later. If those trunks actually exist, it should have happened a long time ago. Somebody should have snagged the trunks, pulled them to the surface empty because the contest of the trunks have been left on the bottom. Yeah, Or if they didn't burst when they were drug up, say by these

guys in three, they didn't have gold in them. Well no, I'm saying that maybe they still did, but when they went sunk back to the bottom it was thirty three year oars. The other time that somebody said they snagged their money nine, there have been stories. Those are the two. Somebody snaggs him and they're dragging them and then they lose them and they sink back down in the impact with the bottom of the bust them open. So now

it's a crappy bunch of flotsom and a pile of gold. Yeah, yeah, so yeah, it's not That's why I find this thing about the five chests to be not quite credible. I agree. Yeah, Well there's somebody who disagrees with you, though there always is. Well, there's lots of people don't disagree with me. There's two guys who have been searching like a lot. One guy in nineteen eight I read a long article with him in like some beach periodical or something, you know, like

one of those skin diver magazine. There was one art There was an article that really kind of got this one going. Well, it's it's this other guy. But this first guy, his name is Stephen Liebert, and he uh surgery dives in in the eighties, and he apparently had had done hundreds of dives by two thousand one, which is when the article was written. And um, yeah, he's not the only one. Richard Bennett has spent well over a hundred thousand dollars of his own money to find

this treasure. But here's the real catch of this treasure. This is my favorite part of this, this whole story, is that the treasure, if it does exist, is on state land Poverty. It's it falls under the purview of the Poverty Island State Park um, which means that if somebody does find it, the state owns it and the person who found it gets down of oh, you don't even get at you don't get a cut. No it's not. No, it's all seized by the state because it's state property

of historic value so much that there goes my incentive structure. Yeah, I'm not gonna bother. I was going, I was all set to go out there. But now, well, but I actually remember reading something about those cases where people have fought that rule. Yeah. So the thing, the thing that happens really is that you basically you have a bunch of money and the state says, well, that's our money, and you say, no, it's not I have it, it's

my money. And they say, but it's our money, and you say, all right, I'll give you of this money, and they go okay. Probably I would, yeah, I would just I would bring it up and then I would just just say, hey, look what I found off the coast of Bermuda. Yeah, That's what I'd be saying. Yeah, me too, Yeah, there you go. But it is well, it would be okay to the credit of these um it's Libert and Bennett. Are those the two guys? Okay,

to their credit. The fact that they haven't found it yet is is understandable because whatever had the water is extremely cold and extremely murky. Yeah. Well, and there's storms there all the time, so the bottom is constantly changing. Yeah. I would say this is the kind of thing that you should lose remotely operated vehicles for that. Yeah. I mean people and people have actually gone out and found treasure like in the Atlantic and stuff, I mean incredible treasures,

and almost always they're using r OV. Yeah, they've started, it's ben It has started using a kind of remote camera here. I think it's like a homemade it looks like PVC. Yeah, it was a big grid kind of thing that had the camera on it that he's using now. But still nothing like that, he said. I guess I wouldn't say if I found treasure like this. Yeah, that's a good point. Probably wouldn't actually. Yeah, speaking of which

I read some years back. I read a really great book called Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea, and these guys went out and actually did find a shipwreck with a fabulous amount of gold on it, and then and and it describes how they figured out where it was and then they and then they home built basically their own r OV and went out and just started searching the ocean floor in the likely places, and

he eventually found it. And so the whole just the whole story of how they how they managed to figure out how to find this thing, and then then they modified their r o V to actually go inside the wreckage and pull the gold out. They didn't raise the ship. That's crazy. Oh it's it's it's really interesting how they managed to do it. And then the stuff that they found was just incredible and made them all very very rich. Well,

this is why people like these guys keep doing. Oh yeah, I mean, who doesn't want to find a shipwreck full of gold? And everybody wants to hell? Yeah, alright, well I have a have a story of lost treasure of my own. Yeah. So he went to the dryer and there was change in his pants when he put him in it, and now it's not there. Actually to check the nrap, Yeah yeah, I did it. Yeah, And I went outside where you know, the event goes out, and

they weren't there either. No. Actually, now that's just joke. I'm telling the story of my lost treasure is Joe's goal. Yeah, I bought a bunch of gold ing and I put it in my safe and then I forgot the combination to the Yeah, I think it so some people. Some people believe that Joe's Gold exists. Other people know that it doesn't. Yeah. Yeah, alright, let's let's be serious. Yeah yeah, I was kind of like looking around. I mean, there's so many lost treasures to choose from, and I picked this.

I picked this one because we haven't thrown a bill into our friends down on here for quite a while. And for Aussie friends, Yeah, we're going to talk about you guessed at Lasseter's reef. Yeah, which is, you know, in Australia, a pretty huge story. Yeah. And also and also not a reef. Yeah, I know it's not a reef in the sense that you think it is. I'm not not even sure why they called it a reef.

It really Yeah, the only thing and I know, if we're wrong, one person email everybody else who was about to send the email. Don't that other person got it? Yeah, I understood it as a vein of gold. And it's a reef almost like it's a structure of rock above ground, like a reef would be underwater. It's kind of that that stone structure, and just which is weird. It's a reef because I've looked it up while you talked for me.

A reef is a rock or sandbar or other feature lying neath the surface of the water, thirty or less below the water. Yeah. Yeah, Well in this case it was I guess reminiscent of a reef, but it was it was a quartz ironstone formation that stuck up above the surface of the of the ground, but was assumed to also project quite a way is underneath the ground. Yeah. And so Harold Bell Lasseter, whose real name was Lewis lass he started calling himself Harold last here for some

reason because it sounds cooler. Yeah. And there was and there was an author named Harold Bell right who wrote actually a story about lost treasure, and is believed that perhaps he renamed himself because of because of that. So, so Harold Lassner was seventeen, the year was eight seven, and he wrote through Queensland, Australia to go to the Western Australian gold fields too. And some say that he was actually hurts hunting for rubies. Um, so he's either

prospecting for gold or hunting for rubies and not really sure. Uh. He was near the East McDonald Ranges and mountains, in Australia, and he decided to travel west to the towards the coast and shortcutting through the desert where he became lost. And then that's when he came across this formation the reef, which was again the courts thing that had it wasn't solid gold, it just had it had, yeah, exactly, and

then there's a lot of that. The Quarts formations often do have beds of gold, and uh, he took some samples and later on when he got back to civilization, he had to have assayed. Uh, and they came out to about three yet of gold per ton, which is actually pretty good. Yeah, yeah, good, fine, that's but that's

one version of the story. He actually they told that story to the head of the Australian Workers Union because he was asking them to bank roll an expedition to go find the lost reef, which he had stumbled across many many years before. This was nineteen nine, actually nineteen thirty when he pitched to them, I was gonna say, yeah, a lot of time had gone by. We're talking thirty

years almost. Yeah. Yeah, so we're talking like, well in eighteen ninety seven, nineteen thirties, thirty three years before in nine. In late nineteen twenty nine, Last Year wrote to an Australian government official named Albert Green and telling him about finding this reef. He said he found it eighteen years before, in nineteen eleven, so he was just confused. He meant to say that it was seventeen years ago, thought he was seventeen. Yeah, I don't know, you know, I really

don't know. But he actually they actually took it seriously enough that the letter was referred to a guy named Herbert Gepp who was chairman of the Development Migration Commission, and they asked him to investigate and gap in. A geologist named L. K. Ward interviewed Lasseter in November, and Ward, the geologist, said later that Last Year was quote quite unbalanced unquote. Yeah, doesn't mean he's lying, uh So gaps

report was kind of tepid about the whole thing. He said that I said that any investigation of the reef should be regarded quote only in the form of a

gamble unquote. So in other words, he didn't think it was too terribly credible, and that's why Last Year went to the Australian Workers Union and the Australian Workers Union in the end, decided to bankroll an expedition to the unit of either five thousand pounds or fifty thousand pounds, depending on who you read well, And I remember reading that part of the reason that he didn't go for the gold earlier. I mean we're talking thirty year span, is that there was gold that was much easier to

get at. Yeah, exactly, I mean there was nobody. Nobody was gonna spend all this money to go find it in the middle of the desert. Way, he was in a very accessible place. We're just gonna mind it here very much. Yeah, they would bring a lot of goal out of the ground, and so yeah, that's that's yeah, that's one good reason. I'm not sure that he spent all those years actually prospesting or mining for gold. He

he did a lot of different things. He was he had a lot of different jobs, and some people who called him a prospect or a minor. But actually I don't know that he actually spent much of his life actually doing that stuff. Anyway, back to his story, when he talked to the Australian Workers Union, he told them the story about how he found in seven and but he was lost and he was out in the desert with little food, little water, and his horses died and

he was stranded and in pretty bad shape. But luckily for him, a camel driver came by and found him and took him to a surveyors camp. And there at the surveyors camp, he uh, he rested and you know,

recuperated a little bit. He met a surveyor named Joseph Harding. Eventually, three years later he and Harding went back and they he was able to find the reef again and they took a bearing on it with the sexton apparently, And but it turned out later when they got back to civilization, uh, they found out that their watches were like off by at least a couple of hours, and so in order to you can fix your latitude without a time piece with with the sextant, but you can't fix your longitude.

So they just had no idea their bearings were completely wrong. But if they knew, so here's my here's my question about that. Though. If you know your watches two to four hours off, you can make an adjustment. You can make an adjustment, and you should be able to figure out kind of the sweep of where it. Yeah, yeah, definitely, yeah, you'll know where it is latitude wise, and and obviously if you know when I walk my watch is exactly two hours off, then you should be able to get

a pretty decent well. But as far as last year was concerned, you know that the whole wash, the whole thing was just yeah. So yeah, uh tell you where was I Uh So there was a new expedition to Lasseter's Reef, which is underwritten by the Union, in July, starting in July. It was two trucks and also had an aircraft, an airplane. First, pretty cool, it is pretty cool, although the airplane actually turned out to be really actually

worse than useless. I mean this it was supposed to be used for reconnaissance and all that stuff, but between the plane crashing and the plane breaking and it's just yeah, at one point it left the pilot stranded in the wilderness for a couple of weeks before before he was found. Um. Yeah, the airplane was actually just a complete pane and they

set up. But they set up July nineteen thirty. Uh, they all traveled westward to reach its end and what what the what they were going to do was find a suitable staging area, create a landing strip, and then the pilot was going to go back in a truck was with another guy and get the airplane and bring it forward. And then like the other guy was to bring a much of supplies back in the truck. Um. And that was Alice Springs by the way that I mentioned it was all out of Alice Springs. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The pilot would go back to Alice Springs and get the aircraft. And the overarching theme of this expedition was quote and then they went back to Alice Springs because that's what they did over and over and over again. It's like, oh, everything's gone all to hell, Let's go back to Alice Springs. Regroup. Long story short. The people, the other people of the expedition, Uh, I found that Lasseter was evasive. Uh. He really wouldn't say anything about

where the treasure was. At one point he said like, you know, ge, if I tell you where the treasure is, you won't need me anymore. But he wouldn't tell them. He wouldn't actually say whether you give them any reliable information to try to lead them to where the reef was. Eventually, other members of the expedition came to believe number one that he was like crazy number two that he was not being honest. Yeah, and there was there was a big fall out over the whole thing, an event he

was ditched. Then he went off with one of the guy, a dingo hunter I think, a dingo hunter. Yeah. I went up with him and some camels I think, and looking for it. And eventually those two fell out because Last basically said, hey, I went off wandering and I found it, and I guess, great, let's go find let's go look at it. He's like, oh, I'm not telling you where it is. And so the guy's like and so there was a fight over that he didn't he said he brought back some rocks that he said we're

from it. Yeah, but he wouldn't show him to him either. Yeah, yeah, exactly, Yeah, yeah, last I know, And it ended kind of tragically for Laster. He wound up alone with a couple of camels left him. Yeah, and he went off alone and eventually his camel's bolted and he was left stranded with very little food or water and and hem. Yeah, he was in a bad way. Luckily for him, he was prefriended by some local Aborigines

who helped him out. But apparently didn't help him quite enough, because eventually he did die anyway, Yeah, and uh in the in the desert, Yeah, he did well. I heard that there was talk that he had stayed in the area and that the Aborigines for helping him. And I don't know how they know this part, okay, so don't ask me for the details, but I remember reading something about the fact that they said he had made a

belated attempt to return to Alice Springs. In other words, he stayed there too long, didn't have you know, they gave him food and water and he used up a big chunk of it before deciding I should probably go home. That that could very well be it. Yeah, and so bad judgment, but he'shibited a lot of bad judgment. Who Yeah, Since he was missing for so long, a guy named Bob buck was was asked to go out there and

find him if at all possible, and he was. He was a bushman, very experienced, and he spent eleven weeks looking around for tracks of Lasseter. Yeah, eleven weeks. He found signs, he followed the signs sense. This guy must have been an incredible bushman. Yeah. Um, and he came across a gathering of Aborigines and who denied any knowledge

of him. But eventually they took him to the place where he was, where his body was, and they hadn't killed him, but it does appear they didn't really support him much either, and so he eventually died and Buck searched for his notes and stuff and otherwise just buried his body there. Eventually his body was relocated and moved to it to a different grave. Yeah, that that was the end of Lasterter. And of course the reef as far as any notes, you know, you think he'd write

a note, straw map whatever. He didn't do that. Laster didn't do that kept it all in his head apparently. Yeah. Yeah, so and also samples those rocks that he supposedly found, those were not found. So yeah, so somewhere out there is Laster's reef or maybe not can say is we really at this point we have nothing to corroborate that it's real? Yeah, now he uh last, it appears to be kind of dishonest, or it was kind of dishonest. And there's you know, let's face it, there's lots of

people out there who want attention. Why the thing that I his behavior is what makes me think what I'm about to go into. I get the feeling that what he wanted from the Union was for them to give him the money to go do the search with maybe one or two people. Yeah, but they insisted on a more structured thing. Yeah, they turned it into this big thing. Like I almost feel like he kind of wanted to take the money and run and when he couldn't do that, oh oh crap, what do I do? Yeah? And he

just played this game that blew up in his face. Yeah, I think. Yeah, according to this his companions, he was just kind of sullen and yeah, I think I think he might be right. There's other reasons to doubt his story. In nineteen eleven, apparently he was living in a town called I'm probably mispronouncing them Tabby Lamb, which is on the table, which is on the far east coast of Australia.

So nineteen eleven was was one one time when he claimed to have been way out in the west finding this thing, but he was in a completely different area. He was nowhere nearby. I've heard two different stories about Worry. It was in eighteen ninety seven. Uh I found on Wikipedia they said that in eighteen ninety seven when he claimed to have found it, he was actually in reform school.

I remember seeing that. Yeah, Although he himself and his own autobiographical notes claimed that he was in the Royal Navy for four years, beginning in eighteen ninety seven and ending in nineteen o one, which means that even if he somehow found the reef in eighteen ninety seven, ran off and joined the navy got out in nineteen o one, was he able to Would he have been able to go back three years later, basically nineteen hundred with Harding

and find the reef again? If it was, there's a little contradiction, and maybe he's just lying about serving in the Navy and maybe he wasn't, But it does If that's the case, it does sort of uncuttish credibility a little bit. Do we know for Harding? Do we have any record from Harding that he actually went on this expedition with Lasseter. I don't know if Harding even existed. Tell you the truth, Okay, yeah, I don't know. I mean I did a little looking and I didn't see it,

But that doesn't mean that it's not there. It means that I just didn't find it. Yeah. No, there might might have been. There might have been a Joseph Harding, but I doesn't seem all that well documented. And as to whether he actually went out and found the reef with Lasseter, you know who the hell knows? So theories it's real or it's not real. Yeah, I just talked about that, didn't I think I think it's not real. Well,

I have a feeling it's not real. Well, well, there's there's something in between, which is that somebody lost his wallet it's still out there in the desert. Yeah, yeah, that's that could be it too. But yeah, I'm so sorry to our our Aussie friends. Sorry guys, probably not. Yeah, I know some of you, some of you agree with me, and some of you are crushed. But uh and I apologize to those of you who are crushed. But yeah, I don't think it ever existed. Okay, so all right,

it doesn't exist? Okay, all right, Well that was fun. We just talked about three treasures that I don't know, definitely don't exist. Appreciate, Yeah, truly lost treasures. Yeah yeah, I mean the whole the whole ship of pearls. I mean it's like, are you kidding me? It's a ship of fool. Yeah. Okay, Well, if you want to see any of the research, because we will put up links to each of these stories on our website, you can visit our website, which is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com.

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holiday and we will be talking to you next week. Yeah, everybody, Hi, guys,