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Speaker 1: and thanks Thinking Sideways. I don't understand you never know
Speaker 1: what stories of things. We simply don't know the answer too. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome again to another episode of Thinking Sideways. I
Speaker 1: am Steve, of course, joined by Devon Joe, and once
Speaker 1: again we have a mystery. We have several mess We
Speaker 1: actually have several mysteries that time again, it is where
Speaker 1: we do what do we call these are a group
Speaker 1: show shorts? I never can remember because we frequently I
Speaker 1: never I don't know. It doesn't really matter. Two different
Speaker 1: kinds of group shows, right, we did that's kind and
Speaker 1: we do the like we have this week. The kind
Speaker 1: of group show we're doing is where each of us
Speaker 1: has a small mystery and they're all kind of related.
Speaker 1: There's a theme that the theme has lost treasures. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of lost treasure out there, by the way,
Speaker 1: there is, and so we're unfortunately just going to cover
Speaker 1: three treasures. Shall we just go ahead and jump into this.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about some lost treasure. All right, well, I
Speaker 1: guess I guess I'll start Yeah, please do Okay, what
Speaker 1: are we talking? What are you talking about? Well, I
Speaker 1: am going to be talking about the supposed lost gallon
Speaker 1: of pearls in the Salt and Seas full of pearls?
Speaker 1: How many pearls? A lot? Like millions lots? Do you
Speaker 1: know the worth of the pearls? No? Estimated? No, we
Speaker 1: don't know. It's a little it's it's it's a little thin.
Speaker 1: Here's here's the basic idea. If you don't know where
Speaker 1: the Salt and Sea is, it's probably something you should
Speaker 1: know right away. It's in southern California. It's near the
Speaker 1: Mexico California border. It's all so right there, not too
Speaker 1: far away from the coast, and technically it can connect
Speaker 1: to the Gulf of California. So yeah, it's a weird
Speaker 1: little spur that comes off the edge of the continent.
Speaker 1: That's right where it's at. Yeah. Yeah, So and then
Speaker 1: that little area sort of maybe theoretically floods and and so,
Speaker 1: just so we're clear, A galleon is this big Spanish ship.
Speaker 1: They're that big six hundreds era ships. I don't know
Speaker 1: why isn't there a coin that was called a galleon
Speaker 1: some kind of coin that was called a galleon at
Speaker 1: one point? No, am I making that up? Is that
Speaker 1: a fantasy thing? It's probably fantasy, might be a fantasy thing,
Speaker 1: but I think there's a coin that has a similar name.
Speaker 1: But there are some things as like a galleon of
Speaker 1: gas and a galleon of whiskey. Yeah, the galleon of whiskey.
Speaker 1: I'm very familiar. Yeah, yeah, okay, sorry, I just wanted
Speaker 1: to clarify. That's all right, So here's let's let's get
Speaker 1: into the story. This story is that evidently in the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds there were a lot of people flooding across
Speaker 1: the country, and these people were coming through the California area.
Speaker 1: We've got things like the gold rush going on to
Speaker 1: everybody's just milling about, and all of these stories started
Speaker 1: cropping up of the ship in the desert. So it's
Speaker 1: actually in the desert, it's not in the water. What
Speaker 1: are you laughing at? I looked it at the Harry Potter.
Speaker 1: It's the currency in Harry Potter is I was just
Speaker 1: laughing at the fact that, of course I made a
Speaker 1: Harry Potter refference without even realizing. Back to the story
Speaker 1: Harry Potter, So, well, all these people say they see
Speaker 1: the galleon, did anybody take a picture of it with
Speaker 1: their cell phone? No, lady had the terrible cameras in
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds. So according to some research out there,
Speaker 1: in the early sixteen hundreds, King Philip of Spain, I
Speaker 1: think Philip the third, he had sent a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of ships to the America's. One of those ships was
Speaker 1: going around and hunting for pearls. So that was kind
Speaker 1: of the thing with the Spanish Empire is like they
Speaker 1: decides running Mexico. They also they also took over the
Speaker 1: Philippines and they took basically they plundered all the gold
Speaker 1: out of the Philippines and brought it back to Spain
Speaker 1: via Mexico. And speaking of Spanish galleons, there there is
Speaker 1: actually a Spanish galleon buried in the sea or buried
Speaker 1: in the on the beach at Manzanita. Oh yeah, there is, Yeah,
Speaker 1: was about Yeah, I think it is. It. Don't look
Speaker 1: at me like that, I know it. Yeah, but it
Speaker 1: actually exists, It is really there, just probably full of stuff. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the whole thing. It was there was a storm
Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties and it was partially uncovered, and
Speaker 1: and and people became aware of it, and there was
Speaker 1: not there was no money to actually take it out,
Speaker 1: and so it's of course it's still there. And who
Speaker 1: knows what's it that there might there might be all
Speaker 1: kinds of gold in there, there might be treasure. But yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's there're Spanish gallions all over the place. There
Speaker 1: were a lot of them out there, So there's this
Speaker 1: one could be for real. Well I thought that it
Speaker 1: was full of pearls. Well here's here's the thing is that,
Speaker 1: according to the story, the king's orders these ships in
Speaker 1: sixteen ten is the year now that I'm rereading my notes.
Speaker 1: And he hires a couple of guys and one of
Speaker 1: them is a gentleman by the name of Wanda a
Speaker 1: Tubre and Pedro there was resolves. He sends them off
Speaker 1: in three ships that have a bunch of pearl divers
Speaker 1: on them. Uh. They go up and down the coast
Speaker 1: of California and Mexico. They're diving for pearls. They're evidently
Speaker 1: getting huge halls, and eventually they meet the natives and
Speaker 1: it turns out the natives had been taking pearls at
Speaker 1: you know, because pearls are in in oysters, I suddenly
Speaker 1: couldn't think of what they were in. Sorry pause, And
Speaker 1: they just thought they were useless. So they were throwing
Speaker 1: them on the ground and they had piles and piles
Speaker 1: of these things around. Well, actually technically they are. They
Speaker 1: are really useless. That's pretty They have no value to
Speaker 1: them as they you know, because we say they have
Speaker 1: value now that they have just like diamonds. I'm actually
Speaker 1: kind of surprised that that that they saw them that way,
Speaker 1: because I mean, don't forget that that we bought Manhattan
Speaker 1: for a bunch of little trinkets and like stuff like that.
Speaker 1: So I'm kind of surprised that they just discarded them. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I know is that, according to
Speaker 1: the story, they decided to trade for all these pearls,
Speaker 1: and what they did is they swindled the natives, shocking,
Speaker 1: and they gave them rags and junk and all of
Speaker 1: this sound like history at all, but actually from from
Speaker 1: the natives perspective, they probably actually got a good deal
Speaker 1: because you know, a rag is something you can actually
Speaker 1: mop up a mess with whereas you can't do that
Speaker 1: with the pearl. True, but they didn't take kindly to this,
Speaker 1: and they attacked the Spanish because they figured out they
Speaker 1: had been swindled, and a bunch of them were injured,
Speaker 1: and they ran and a bunch of these guys said, hey,
Speaker 1: we need to go home, We need to go back
Speaker 1: to Spain. According to the story, though, the guy that
Speaker 1: was in charge of this, his name was Alvarez Cordone,
Speaker 1: he said, no, we're going to continue on. I've been injured,
Speaker 1: I don't care. Go up the gulf and keep looking
Speaker 1: for more pearls. So they do that. Well, eventually one
Speaker 1: of the ships hits a reef it goes down, So
Speaker 1: now we've only got two ships. And they keep going
Speaker 1: on and they continue up what is now the Gulf
Speaker 1: of California. They get into this weird inland sea they're
Speaker 1: hanging about, and they realized that this place isn't what
Speaker 1: we need to be and they want to go back
Speaker 1: down the gulf, except the water level has dropped and
Speaker 1: they realized that they get out and the sea is
Speaker 1: sinking around their ship. Yeah, I could see that happening,
Speaker 1: you know, in southern California. Depending at the time of
Speaker 1: the year, it actually gets a lot of rain, like
Speaker 1: in January, and uh, I could see where it could
Speaker 1: actually be navigable for a short period of time. Well
Speaker 1: here's here's what happens though, and this is where we
Speaker 1: get into a little bit of of local information. So
Speaker 1: the Colorado River, you may or may not know this,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people probably don't because we it's
Speaker 1: so drained at this point, but it used to run
Speaker 1: almost all the way to the Gulf of California, and
Speaker 1: this area that we're talking about, where the Saltan Sea is,
Speaker 1: it's actually used to be referred to as the Salton
Speaker 1: Sink because what would happen is the river would flood,
Speaker 1: it would overflow, and it would overflow into the sink.
Speaker 1: Makes sense. So if there's a big flood, lots of
Speaker 1: water comes in and it fills this area and it's
Speaker 1: a temporary lake. At the same time, there are things
Speaker 1: called tidal bars which from the Gulf of California push
Speaker 1: water up the estuaries, and it could at times when
Speaker 1: there was a high flood, connect the sink to the ocean.
Speaker 1: So technically it's possible. Theoretically it's possible. I shouldn't said technically, theoretically, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say that really considering how to wrench. So
Speaker 1: the range can be in southern California if you had
Speaker 1: those two things coinciding, it's maybe. Yeah. Otherwise so maybe
Speaker 1: it could. So I would say that would be a
Speaker 1: distinct air of judgment on their part, but maybe. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: So according to this what happens is the Spanish evidently
Speaker 1: it was only one of the ships had gone while
Speaker 1: the other one stayed in the gulf. This one went
Speaker 1: north and got stranded. The sailors realized they're in trouble.
Speaker 1: They leave the ship, it's sitting on the ground full
Speaker 1: of pearls, and they hike it through the desert back
Speaker 1: to the coast and according to legend, are eventually picked
Speaker 1: up by another ship two months later. So they didn't
Speaker 1: take the pearls with them, any of them. Well, they
Speaker 1: might have taken some with them, but according to the legend,
Speaker 1: the hold was full of pearls. Imagine like taking a
Speaker 1: bath in that. Yeah, that would be pretty awesome. Yeah
Speaker 1: it is, it really is. And there's there are variants
Speaker 1: of this story. There's variants that say that no, it
Speaker 1: wasn't a Spanish galleon, but instead it was a pirate
Speaker 1: ship that went up and got caught in this same situation.
Speaker 1: So it's actually not a ship of pearls, it's a
Speaker 1: ship full of gold. So that's another one. There's another
Speaker 1: version that says that no, it wasn't the Spanish and
Speaker 1: it wasn't gold, instead it was vikings, that it's a
Speaker 1: Viking ship, which actually makes more sense when you think
Speaker 1: about it, because those Viking ships that I can't remember
Speaker 1: what kind of what the name is, but they had
Speaker 1: had a shallow draft to him, so they go in
Speaker 1: much shallower water, the gullants to kind of draw a
Speaker 1: little bit of water, the yeah, they go really deep.
Speaker 1: So this actually is a little more credible from that
Speaker 1: approach that it could have been. But then again, those
Speaker 1: ships are a little bit smaller, and the legend says
Speaker 1: that people would see this giant ship in the sand
Speaker 1: without its mass, but it's still a giant ship that
Speaker 1: they could see from afar. And that's where we're going
Speaker 1: to move into the legend because now we've talked about
Speaker 1: possibly how it could have got there. We now have
Speaker 1: all of these stories in the eighteen hundreds that happen,
Speaker 1: people saying they see the ship sitting there in the
Speaker 1: desert as they're crossing the desert, but they can never
Speaker 1: get back to it. There's a story of a prospector
Speaker 1: who gets into town says he took shelter in this weird,
Speaker 1: round dish wooden structure he found, and he hid in
Speaker 1: a in a storm in it. Unbeknownst to him, it
Speaker 1: was full of pearls. Bothered to look around a little bit.
Speaker 1: So now is this thing. Is this thing just sitting
Speaker 1: on the desert floor, or is it partially buried? Well,
Speaker 1: according to what happened in the area. And this is
Speaker 1: the hard part is that of course the salt and
Speaker 1: sea has now got water in it. We've pumped a
Speaker 1: bunch of water into it from runoff from irrigation, and
Speaker 1: it's it's actually one of the saltiest bodies of water
Speaker 1: on the planet, salt and Sea, I guess exactly. But um,
Speaker 1: now that the thing is is that according to the stories,
Speaker 1: what's happened is it got stranded. And this is a desert,
Speaker 1: so sand blows around, and what does sand, due to
Speaker 1: a big hulking object in the desert, piles up against it?
Speaker 1: So it would be buried and then it would get
Speaker 1: uncovered by the winds, and then a dune would grow
Speaker 1: around it, and then it would get uncovered by the
Speaker 1: winds in the waters. So it's coming and going. There's
Speaker 1: the story it evolved, like I mean we talked about
Speaker 1: it first started with the ship of pearls. Then it
Speaker 1: was a ship full of gold, that it was a
Speaker 1: Viking ship, like there's all these versions. It's actually rolled
Speaker 1: on from there. It's actually become a ghost ship that
Speaker 1: sails on the sands of the salt and sea. Some
Speaker 1: people actually report seeing that sailing, the leached ship without mass,
Speaker 1: flying around the sea and the sands. I should say
Speaker 1: it's a phantom ship. Why don't they just drained the
Speaker 1: salt and sea and find out if it's there. Um, Well,
Speaker 1: the Sultan Sea is actually slowly draining itself or not.
Speaker 1: It's super deep and it's a desert. I mean, we
Speaker 1: are pouring water into it, but not nearly as much
Speaker 1: as it used to get and so it is slowly
Speaker 1: draining on its own. Projected that in the next somewhere
Speaker 1: between the next ten to twenty years, if if things
Speaker 1: keep going the way they are, it'll be empty, and
Speaker 1: then you can go out there with your battle detector
Speaker 1: and your shovel and just dig your heart's content. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go out with my pearl detector. Said, shouldn't
Speaker 1: be too hard to find. Really, I'm just shocked that
Speaker 1: nobody's found it on Google Earth yet. Oh like that
Speaker 1: guy that drove his car into the lake recently for
Speaker 1: several years ago that they found recently. Yeah, it seems
Speaker 1: like a big thing. You would have found it. Well,
Speaker 1: but the problem is is that, well, I shouldn't say.
Speaker 1: The problem conveniently is believed to be in the area
Speaker 1: that is now under water. So if it's underwater, under sand,
Speaker 1: Google Earth still couldn't fight. All right, that's fair. There
Speaker 1: are some limitations there, there are. Okay, Well, this this
Speaker 1: was an easy one. So let's get into our theories,
Speaker 1: because that's really I mean, there's we could go on
Speaker 1: and on about the different stories and flesh them out,
Speaker 1: but really it all kind of comes down to what
Speaker 1: we've talked about so far. Three theories, the first of
Speaker 1: which is that it's real. It's totally yield, and it
Speaker 1: could be totally real for the reason that we talked
Speaker 1: about earlier, where the Colorado is flooding, and it's pouring
Speaker 1: a bunch of water into the area and filling up
Speaker 1: that inland sea or that big lake that then because
Speaker 1: of the tidal bars, becomes a bit of a connected
Speaker 1: to the sea. It's not actually an inland sea. It
Speaker 1: could be real. And as Joe talked about, and we've
Speaker 1: been talking about, we know that there were Europeans, whether
Speaker 1: they were Spanish or um Vikings are the makings technically Europeans,
Speaker 1: So Europeans are just all over the area. So technically
Speaker 1: it could have happened, though it's really kind of hard
Speaker 1: to believe a little bit. Although you know, again, it
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be a galley, and there could be
Speaker 1: a boat of some kind. And that's that's the one
Speaker 1: thing is that it's always says it's a galleon, but
Speaker 1: it could have been a smaller ship. I mean, like
Speaker 1: I talked about two break, he had three ships with him.
Speaker 1: One of them might have been the small one that
Speaker 1: was the scout and left the galleon in the gulf
Speaker 1: and took the little one up and that's the one
Speaker 1: that got stramped. It's kind of like Columbus, you know,
Speaker 1: his three ships worth the same size it was. There
Speaker 1: was big, medium, and small, like to coffee. Okay, we're
Speaker 1: to go onto theory number two. This one I love,
Speaker 1: which is that it's sort of kind of okay, okay,
Speaker 1: this is hilarious. I love the people do this kind
Speaker 1: of crap. It's eighteen sixty two and there are a
Speaker 1: couple of people who decide they want to travel around
Speaker 1: the desert and the best way they decide to do
Speaker 1: it is to build a skiff and put it on wheels.
Speaker 1: So this is a sailed ship with sales that then
Speaker 1: has wheels attached to it and they are driving across
Speaker 1: the desert. Did it No? It does. Actually people people
Speaker 1: actually do that. If you go out to like I
Speaker 1: go out to the Alboard Desert occasionally, which is a
Speaker 1: dry lake bed and the summertime, when it's not raining,
Speaker 1: it's it's nice and dry and hard. And there are
Speaker 1: people I've seen with my own eyes who build these things.
Speaker 1: They're basically windsurfers. Yea, yeah, they like these things. They've
Speaker 1: got wheels on them and windsurfing board whenever getting and
Speaker 1: they said at them, and they've got they've got a
Speaker 1: mast in the sail, and they just speed around the
Speaker 1: desert and these things. It's it's very cool. Well, these
Speaker 1: guys evidently weren't very good at driving their's because they
Speaker 1: drove it into a low point in the desert which
Speaker 1: was kind of moist, and they just got no, no,
Speaker 1: it wasn't even moist. It was just a low point
Speaker 1: and it got stuck. They couldn't get it back out.
Speaker 1: It's heavy. I mean, you know, they're failing it out
Speaker 1: of lumber. It's not like you just dragged that thing around.
Speaker 1: But they are saying that that is the you know,
Speaker 1: the sails and the mast of that are what people
Speaker 1: were seeing in the eighteen hundreds and claiming it was
Speaker 1: this galu. You would also explain the ghost chip theory.
Speaker 1: Possibly could have just st there speeding around when Yeah,
Speaker 1: or that people you know, in the later years or
Speaker 1: the earlier sorry that we're more contemporary of this thing
Speaker 1: speeding around there that they saw it and thought, what's
Speaker 1: that thing in the distance. It looks like a ship?
Speaker 1: The mast weird. Weird. Yeah, well, you know, actually the
Speaker 1: ghost ship thing. I don't know if you ever saw
Speaker 1: the Halloween episode of South Park, No, yeah, which one?
Speaker 1: I mean seasons now, now, they were the town was
Speaker 1: terrorized because they were seeing ghost pirates and it turned
Speaker 1: out it was a town pastor and he was using
Speaker 1: a flashlight and a couple of squirrels to create the illusions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not making this up. That's how it really went out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the same thing. You know, what I was thinking is
Speaker 1: for the ghost ship that that is moving about, is
Speaker 1: it could have been what what is that? You know
Speaker 1: how to pronounce this, Joe and I never can the
Speaker 1: illusion of something that looks that's reflected looks like it's
Speaker 1: several feet off the ground. Mirage, it's a fun yeah,
Speaker 1: oh god, I can't remember the name of it either.
Speaker 1: There's there's two we talked about that the skin Walker
Speaker 1: ranch thing. I mean, yes, you get your typical mirage,
Speaker 1: which what's the light is like refracted upwards and it
Speaker 1: looks like there's water, But that the other one where
Speaker 1: the lighters refracted downward and so it looks like it's floating. Yes,
Speaker 1: So so say something off in the distance horizontally actually
Speaker 1: looks like it's up in the air. And so that's
Speaker 1: that's the thing that I'm talking about, which moves just
Speaker 1: right into the third theory, which is it's a total fake.
Speaker 1: It's just not real, and it could be that it's
Speaker 1: a mirage. Um. There has been no evidence, concrete evidence.
Speaker 1: Nobody's even come back with a board and said this
Speaker 1: was from this ship that I found. Because people say
Speaker 1: they went to it. Actually, I need to rephrase that,
Speaker 1: because I'm wrong. There are no first hand accounts. They're
Speaker 1: all second and third. But it's never this guy went
Speaker 1: and when he was at the ship he took a
Speaker 1: board off of it and kept it with him. It's
Speaker 1: always they went to it and looked at it or
Speaker 1: saw it in the distance. They've never actually been to it.
Speaker 1: And this is the thing is, this is entirely counter
Speaker 1: to everything I know about human nature. I find I
Speaker 1: find a shipwreck, I'm gonna I'm gonna, like, as you say,
Speaker 1: take a souvenir from it. At the very least, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna dig it out, dig up whatever I can, and
Speaker 1: find anything valuable that's possibly there. Take it there. There
Speaker 1: is one story, there's one story that is unsubstantiated out
Speaker 1: there that there was some guy who showed up in
Speaker 1: town that nobody knew him. He showed up at this
Speaker 1: town with a little tin full of pearls and he
Speaker 1: used those, and people are like, hey, where'd you get those?
Speaker 1: I found him in the desert at this thing. Well
Speaker 1: could you take us there? Oh yeah, totally take you there.
Speaker 1: In the morning. Great, we'll put you up on our
Speaker 1: our place for the night, rent free. And in the
Speaker 1: morning he was gone. Like that's the one story that
Speaker 1: I've seen where somebody's actually showed up with it and
Speaker 1: the guy disappeared, and you know, some using air quotes
Speaker 1: because all of our listeners could see that. Y. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the guy disappeared, took the silver probably with him, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he probably. He probably disappeared with a horse that didn't
Speaker 1: survive the telling. But now so I am inclined to
Speaker 1: believe that this probably isn't real. The skiff is the
Speaker 1: only thing that I can see potentially being it. So
Speaker 1: this treasure that is supposedly lost, I don't think it
Speaker 1: actually exists, you know, I think that a lot of
Speaker 1: lost treasures never existed to be Yeah, yeah, yeah, well
Speaker 1: so much that one. All right, Well that's that's me,
Speaker 1: I know, except for I really want to know. I
Speaker 1: want to do one of those desert windsurfing board things. No,
Speaker 1: it looks like a lot of fun, it does, but
Speaker 1: it would probably hurt more when you fell off of
Speaker 1: it then if you fell off a windsurfing board, because
Speaker 1: you'd fall in the water. Yeah, okay, yes, so talking
Speaker 1: about fake maybe fake kind of thing. This is real.
Speaker 1: We can talk about mine and if you guys want
Speaker 1: let's hear about it. Let's do it. What is it?
Speaker 1: So we're gonna talk about the mystery of Poverty Island.
Speaker 1: I love the name, the Poverty Island. Lost treasure is
Speaker 1: what they call it, and poverty. Poverty Island is in
Speaker 1: Lake Michigan. Okay, that's right, that's right. Yeah, I could
Speaker 1: remember which lake it was in. Yeah. I've always actually
Speaker 1: found this one kind of fascinating, and I like the
Speaker 1: name to poverty I me, I like the name. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it makes you think that there was an orphanage on
Speaker 1: the island when you know it's really it's a really video.
Speaker 1: Yeah there's a lighthouse though, Yeah cool. I just I've
Speaker 1: always wondered why somebody named it Poverty Island. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't have a problem with it, but it's kind
Speaker 1: of a strange name. Yeah, I don't. I think I
Speaker 1: read about it, but I don't. I don't remember why.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, it's not really probably right to the story.
Speaker 1: You know. Actually we prefer to not answer every question
Speaker 1: that gives our listeners the opportunity to go researcher for
Speaker 1: themselves and send us an email. Yeah, by all means, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So it's eighteen sixty three, Yeah, civil war and all
Speaker 1: that Civil war. Yeah. Kind near the end of the
Speaker 1: Civil War, the Confederacy has decided that they need money,
Speaker 1: so they appeal to one Mr. Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, the
Speaker 1: third of France. For some reason, I don't totally know why,
Speaker 1: but for some reason, Bonaparte totally granted them a secret
Speaker 1: shipment of gold to help them out. And think he
Speaker 1: hated the Americans because they we were loosely connected to
Speaker 1: the English Confederates three too, I don't know, I don't
Speaker 1: know the I mean, the French have actually been our
Speaker 1: allies for a long long time, our strongest and oldest allies. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm not so sure that the French were that sympathetic
Speaker 1: to the Confederacy, but I'm not either. That's one of
Speaker 1: the that's my first red flags. Yeah. This delivery has
Speaker 1: been estimated to be worth about four million, four hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars in our money, today two fifteen money. It
Speaker 1: turns out it's really hard to do backwards calculations on
Speaker 1: what it would have been the value. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: don't know, but it's a lot of money. That's a
Speaker 1: lot of money. Yeah. This delivery path was headed towards
Speaker 1: Chicago via the Lake Michigan, the Lake Michigan, the of
Speaker 1: the St. Lawrence River, and so they went by this
Speaker 1: strange circuits route because they were awarding the Union blockade. Man,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, I think it's not really explicitly told. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I never understood how, you know what I mean, like
Speaker 1: why that particular area. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it'd be easier to sail around Florida and go
Speaker 1: to like New Orleans. But I don't know. They came
Speaker 1: through the North. I guess reasons again another red flag maybe,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, but by this time the Union
Speaker 1: spies had heard what was up, and they attacked this
Speaker 1: shipment near Poverty Island and sunk the ship and loot altogether,
Speaker 1: never to be seen again kind of story. But they
Speaker 1: managed aboard it, and the kind of story. Yeah. Remember
Speaker 1: I thought I saw a version where it sank in
Speaker 1: a storm. No, that is that is the Edmond Fitzgerald
Speaker 1: you're thinking of. Yeah, no, no, no no, no. Steve's right.
Speaker 1: There's the another story that goes it's sunk in a
Speaker 1: in a storm, which happens a lot near Poverty Island.
Speaker 1: It turns out of storm sinking. It would be interesting.
Speaker 1: I think, actually we should sinking. Yeah. Sorry, is that
Speaker 1: insensitive thinking? We should totally drain the great legs. It's
Speaker 1: probably all kinds of cool stuff at the legs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not the end of the story. Okay, there's more.
Speaker 1: In nineteen nine, a group of sailors were sailing on
Speaker 1: Lake Michigan like you do, and they were pulling up
Speaker 1: their anchor link by link on their chain and they
Speaker 1: snagged what they reported to be trunks, five of them.
Speaker 1: Five trunks on one anchor. Apparently. I don't know how
Speaker 1: that happened, but okay, they all tied together. Maybe they
Speaker 1: must be it must have been. Yeah, but the trunks
Speaker 1: were full of gold. They didn't they trunks didn't make
Speaker 1: it up because as they were pulling the trunks on board,
Speaker 1: the chain of the anchor snapped and so the trunks
Speaker 1: were lost. Back to see and okay, well, I initially
Speaker 1: thought that it was total bunk, because I thought, well,
Speaker 1: there's no way that a chain anchor and anchor chain
Speaker 1: could just snap like that kind of depends on how
Speaker 1: heavy duty. But it turns out it happens all the time.
Speaker 1: I actually read a fair amount about how ineffective anchors
Speaker 1: are just in general, and that the only reason that
Speaker 1: anchor's work is because of the chain attached to them.
Speaker 1: And when you're trying to haul the anchor up, there's
Speaker 1: so much weight usually that your links will expand, stretch, stretch,
Speaker 1: and snap and snap. So apparently the thing, especially if
Speaker 1: it was attached to four trunks worth of gold. Yeah, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: trunk's worth of gold. Yeah, I tend to think that's
Speaker 1: what's the word I'm thinking of here. They wouldn't have
Speaker 1: enough strength in them to pull up five trunks worth
Speaker 1: of gold. It would be it may not have actually
Speaker 1: been people manually hauling the anchor up, though it's true.
Speaker 1: It could have been a larger ship all the time.
Speaker 1: That's true. Maybe that was it. Yeah, so they pulled
Speaker 1: it up enough to see they saw that it was
Speaker 1: trump and then it, you know, slipped through their fingers
Speaker 1: and fell back to the sea. Yeah. And then in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty three, just before storm, the son of the
Speaker 1: Poverty Island lighthouse keeper said that he observed a salvage
Speaker 1: crew make what appeared to be an exciting discovery, just
Speaker 1: kind of off the coast of Poverty Island. Alright, So
Speaker 1: he said that they were excited, that was what he said. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he said they looked excited. I looked like they were celebrating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember reading the account. Yeah. And then a storm
Speaker 1: swept in and sunk that ship. They were partying into
Speaker 1: the night. We've got it, We've got it. Except for
Speaker 1: he didn't. He never said that it looked like they
Speaker 1: actually hauled stuff up. So I don't know if it
Speaker 1: was on their ship or not. Um, but actually the
Speaker 1: so that ship sank, and then in the wreckage of
Speaker 1: that that salvad ship was actually found and there was
Speaker 1: no gold there. What was the name of the ship?
Speaker 1: That's a really good question. I haven't seen it anywhere.
Speaker 1: I haven't either, have I know, I don't think I have.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're constantly finding new wrecks in the in
Speaker 1: the Great Legs. It's not an unusual thing. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: there was no there was no gold or anything on
Speaker 1: this ship. There seems like they weren't being very good
Speaker 1: at salvaging things well. But the other thing to keep
Speaker 1: in mind is when ships go down, it's not as
Speaker 1: if everything goes down in a straight line. So if
Speaker 1: ship turns over and this trunk of gold is on
Speaker 1: the deck, the trunk of gold is gonna be so
Speaker 1: heavy it's gonna sink pretty much like straight whereas the
Speaker 1: ship the ship drift, particularly if you're going down in
Speaker 1: a storm. Yeah, like the storm is so bad that
Speaker 1: you think it's probably not gonna I will, I will
Speaker 1: give a little bit of they might have got something
Speaker 1: just because of that fact. Okay, that's fair, Yeah, that's fair. Um,
Speaker 1: there are two guys who are searching for the treasure
Speaker 1: right now. Okay, there are more than two guys. I'm
Speaker 1: there are a couple like key players in the search
Speaker 1: for this treasure right out. So I guess we'll use
Speaker 1: these people in their opinions as theories. So there's really
Speaker 1: two theories here, right yeah. Yeah. And in the in
Speaker 1: the It's Not Real Camp is a guy by the
Speaker 1: name of Chuck Fellner, and he's a historian and an
Speaker 1: amateur shipwreck searcher. Guy. Great job is on his guy
Speaker 1: The Beach Boys had to do a song about that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But apparently record keeping about Lake Michigan ships was really
Speaker 1: robust in the nineteenth century. I can believe that, which
Speaker 1: is another reason why it would be weird for the
Speaker 1: Confederacy to be trying to smuggle a bunch of gold
Speaker 1: highly monitored area. Real, Yeah, you can't get your ships
Speaker 1: over there without somebody observing it. Yeah, but they also
Speaker 1: they have really really detailed sinking records for every shipwreck
Speaker 1: and anything like and there is no record of any
Speaker 1: ship like this sinking around this time. Yeah, although it's
Speaker 1: entirely possible if they were sneaking in there on the slide,
Speaker 1: that they got into the lake, then they second nobody
Speaker 1: had a clue that they were there exactly. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: would be the counterpoint to that. But I mean I
Speaker 1: took a look at this on the map because I
Speaker 1: was trying to figure out, like, how the hell they
Speaker 1: even got there. It's not exactly easy to get in there.
Speaker 1: I mean there's you know, today, there's locks and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. But yeah, now would be just as a
Speaker 1: sail right down and nobody's going to see me because
Speaker 1: I do it all under the cover of dark. No,
Speaker 1: but it could have been uh, you know, they were
Speaker 1: smuggling some stuff, right, so they were saying, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we've got a bunch of potatoes on this ship, got
Speaker 1: you know, just there's just a couple of guys, got
Speaker 1: some potatoes for the for you great north folk. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: that's a good point. I guess I am coming about
Speaker 1: it as it's a sneaky ship that isn't from the
Speaker 1: area the way I was viewing, I think it's unlikely
Speaker 1: that they would have been able to sneak in there
Speaker 1: without being observed somebody making note of it. I mean,
Speaker 1: even today, every port around the world, there are people
Speaker 1: keeping an eye on things, So there are people who
Speaker 1: are noting the comings and goings of ships. And it's
Speaker 1: not just spies for foreign countries or the private concerns
Speaker 1: that do it. Lloyd's has people in imports all around
Speaker 1: the world observing and want to observe that. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's that would be the it's not real I think,
Speaker 1: among other reasons. That's the feilder theories that it's just
Speaker 1: it's not real because of this, because of this, and
Speaker 1: because of you know, all this other stuff. Is that
Speaker 1: like you know, there's been a lot of anecdotal stories,
Speaker 1: but conveniently, everybody who's ever act, you know, almost gotten
Speaker 1: it has sunk. Yeah, they soccer, they've lost it. It's
Speaker 1: a cursed treasure. Yeah. But actually some people point to
Speaker 1: the consistency of the treasure being lost as proof that
Speaker 1: it exists, which is really interesting. I tend to not
Speaker 1: understand this kind of logic, but there you have. There
Speaker 1: was one story that has been repeated over and over
Speaker 1: and it's been pretty pure the whole time. Well actually,
Speaker 1: so no, no, no. Steve Harrington is the is a
Speaker 1: maritime historian that he's the proponent of this there. He
Speaker 1: he says that the stories of the treasure being founder
Speaker 1: like just yeah, too consistent. Almost there's always five chests,
Speaker 1: it's always in the same area, and it's always lost
Speaker 1: in a tragic way. So that means that it must
Speaker 1: be real. Yeah, I just think, you know, like, there's
Speaker 1: got to be at some point you stop me, you
Speaker 1: stop losing stuff conveniently like that. Well, here's the deal.
Speaker 1: The thing about it is is like many many years
Speaker 1: go by and you've got these chests. They're they're wooden
Speaker 1: trunks or something. They're full of gold, and you snag
Speaker 1: them and you haul them up towards the surface. Well
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but they're going to deteriorate over time, and
Speaker 1: the weight of that gold is just going to pop
Speaker 1: the bottoms right out of so sooner or later. If
Speaker 1: those trunks actually exist, it should have happened a long
Speaker 1: time ago. Somebody should have snagged the trunks, pulled them
Speaker 1: to the surface empty because the contest of the trunks
Speaker 1: have been left on the bottom. Yeah, Or if they
Speaker 1: didn't burst when they were drug up, say by these
Speaker 1: guys in three, they didn't have gold in them. Well no,
Speaker 1: I'm saying that maybe they still did, but when they
Speaker 1: went sunk back to the bottom it was thirty three
Speaker 1: year oars. The other time that somebody said they snagged
Speaker 1: their money nine, there have been stories. Those are the two.
Speaker 1: Somebody snaggs him and they're dragging them and then they
Speaker 1: lose them and they sink back down in the impact
Speaker 1: with the bottom of the bust them open. So now
Speaker 1: it's a crappy bunch of flotsom and a pile of gold. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, it's not That's why I find this thing
Speaker 1: about the five chests to be not quite credible. I agree. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Well there's somebody who disagrees with you, though there always is. Well,
Speaker 1: there's lots of people don't disagree with me. There's two
Speaker 1: guys who have been searching like a lot. One guy
Speaker 1: in nineteen eight I read a long article with him
Speaker 1: in like some beach periodical or something, you know, like
Speaker 1: one of those skin diver magazine. There was one art
Speaker 1: There was an article that really kind of got this
Speaker 1: one going. Well, it's it's this other guy. But this
Speaker 1: first guy, his name is Stephen Liebert, and he uh
Speaker 1: surgery dives in in the eighties, and he apparently had
Speaker 1: had done hundreds of dives by two thousand one, which
Speaker 1: is when the article was written. And um, yeah, he's
Speaker 1: not the only one. Richard Bennett has spent well over
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand dollars of his own money to find
Speaker 1: this treasure. But here's the real catch of this treasure.
Speaker 1: This is my favorite part of this, this whole story,
Speaker 1: is that the treasure, if it does exist, is on
Speaker 1: state land Poverty. It's it falls under the purview of
Speaker 1: the Poverty Island State Park um, which means that if
Speaker 1: somebody does find it, the state owns it and the
Speaker 1: person who found it gets down of oh, you don't
Speaker 1: even get at you don't get a cut. No it's not. No,
Speaker 1: it's all seized by the state because it's state property
Speaker 1: of historic value so much that there goes my incentive structure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna bother. I was going, I was all
Speaker 1: set to go out there. But now, well, but I
Speaker 1: actually remember reading something about those cases where people have
Speaker 1: fought that rule. Yeah. So the thing, the thing that
Speaker 1: happens really is that you basically you have a bunch
Speaker 1: of money and the state says, well, that's our money,
Speaker 1: and you say, no, it's not I have it, it's
Speaker 1: my money. And they say, but it's our money, and
Speaker 1: you say, all right, I'll give you of this money,
Speaker 1: and they go okay. Probably I would, yeah, I would
Speaker 1: just I would bring it up and then I would
Speaker 1: just just say, hey, look what I found off the
Speaker 1: coast of Bermuda. Yeah, That's what I'd be saying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: me too, Yeah, there you go. But it is well,
Speaker 1: it would be okay to the credit of these um
Speaker 1: it's Libert and Bennett. Are those the two guys? Okay,
Speaker 1: to their credit. The fact that they haven't found it
Speaker 1: yet is is understandable because whatever had the water is
Speaker 1: extremely cold and extremely murky. Yeah. Well, and there's storms
Speaker 1: there all the time, so the bottom is constantly changing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I would say this is the kind of thing that
Speaker 1: you should lose remotely operated vehicles for that. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean people and people have actually gone out and found
Speaker 1: treasure like in the Atlantic and stuff, I mean incredible treasures,
Speaker 1: and almost always they're using r OV. Yeah, they've started,
Speaker 1: it's ben It has started using a kind of remote
Speaker 1: camera here. I think it's like a homemade it looks
Speaker 1: like PVC. Yeah, it was a big grid kind of
Speaker 1: thing that had the camera on it that he's using now.
Speaker 1: But still nothing like that, he said. I guess I
Speaker 1: wouldn't say if I found treasure like this. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a good point. Probably wouldn't actually. Yeah, speaking of which
Speaker 1: I read some years back. I read a really great
Speaker 1: book called Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea,
Speaker 1: and these guys went out and actually did find a
Speaker 1: shipwreck with a fabulous amount of gold on it, and
Speaker 1: then and and it describes how they figured out where
Speaker 1: it was and then they and then they home built
Speaker 1: basically their own r OV and went out and just
Speaker 1: started searching the ocean floor in the likely places, and
Speaker 1: he eventually found it. And so the whole just the
Speaker 1: whole story of how they how they managed to figure
Speaker 1: out how to find this thing, and then then they
Speaker 1: modified their r o V to actually go inside the
Speaker 1: wreckage and pull the gold out. They didn't raise the ship.
Speaker 1: That's crazy. Oh it's it's it's really interesting how they
Speaker 1: managed to do it. And then the stuff that they
Speaker 1: found was just incredible and made them all very very rich. Well,
Speaker 1: this is why people like these guys keep doing. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, who doesn't want to find a shipwreck full
Speaker 1: of gold? And everybody wants to hell? Yeah, alright, well
Speaker 1: I have a have a story of lost treasure of
Speaker 1: my own. Yeah. So he went to the dryer and
Speaker 1: there was change in his pants when he put him
Speaker 1: in it, and now it's not there. Actually to check
Speaker 1: the nrap, Yeah yeah, I did it. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: went outside where you know, the event goes out, and
Speaker 1: they weren't there either. No. Actually, now that's just joke.
Speaker 1: I'm telling the story of my lost treasure is Joe's goal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I bought a bunch of gold ing and I put
Speaker 1: it in my safe and then I forgot the combination
Speaker 1: to the Yeah, I think it so some people. Some
Speaker 1: people believe that Joe's Gold exists. Other people know that
Speaker 1: it doesn't. Yeah. Yeah, alright, let's let's be serious. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: I was kind of like looking around. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: so many lost treasures to choose from, and I picked this.
Speaker 1: I picked this one because we haven't thrown a bill
Speaker 1: into our friends down on here for quite a while.
Speaker 1: And for Aussie friends, Yeah, we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: you guessed at Lasseter's reef. Yeah, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: in Australia, a pretty huge story. Yeah. And also and
Speaker 1: also not a reef. Yeah, I know it's not a
Speaker 1: reef in the sense that you think it is. I'm
Speaker 1: not not even sure why they called it a reef.
Speaker 1: It really Yeah, the only thing and I know, if
Speaker 1: we're wrong, one person email everybody else who was about
Speaker 1: to send the email. Don't that other person got it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I understood it as a vein of gold. And it's
Speaker 1: a reef almost like it's a structure of rock above ground,
Speaker 1: like a reef would be underwater. It's kind of that
Speaker 1: that stone structure, and just which is weird. It's a
Speaker 1: reef because I've looked it up while you talked for me.
Speaker 1: A reef is a rock or sandbar or other feature
Speaker 1: lying neath the surface of the water, thirty or less
Speaker 1: below the water. Yeah. Yeah, Well in this case it
Speaker 1: was I guess reminiscent of a reef, but it was
Speaker 1: it was a quartz ironstone formation that stuck up above
Speaker 1: the surface of the of the ground, but was assumed
Speaker 1: to also project quite a way is underneath the ground. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so Harold Bell Lasseter, whose real name was Lewis
Speaker 1: lass he started calling himself Harold last here for some
Speaker 1: reason because it sounds cooler. Yeah. And there was and
Speaker 1: there was an author named Harold Bell right who wrote
Speaker 1: actually a story about lost treasure, and is believed that
Speaker 1: perhaps he renamed himself because of because of that. So,
Speaker 1: so Harold Lassner was seventeen, the year was eight seven,
Speaker 1: and he wrote through Queensland, Australia to go to the
Speaker 1: Western Australian gold fields too. And some say that he
Speaker 1: was actually hurts hunting for rubies. Um, so he's either
Speaker 1: prospecting for gold or hunting for rubies and not really sure. Uh.
Speaker 1: He was near the East McDonald Ranges and mountains, in Australia,
Speaker 1: and he decided to travel west to the towards the
Speaker 1: coast and shortcutting through the desert where he became lost.
Speaker 1: And then that's when he came across this formation the reef,
Speaker 1: which was again the courts thing that had it wasn't
Speaker 1: solid gold, it just had it had, yeah, exactly, and
Speaker 1: then there's a lot of that. The Quarts formations often
Speaker 1: do have beds of gold, and uh, he took some
Speaker 1: samples and later on when he got back to civilization,
Speaker 1: he had to have assayed. Uh, and they came out
Speaker 1: to about three yet of gold per ton, which is
Speaker 1: actually pretty good. Yeah, yeah, good, fine, that's but that's
Speaker 1: one version of the story. He actually they told that
Speaker 1: story to the head of the Australian Workers Union because
Speaker 1: he was asking them to bank roll an expedition to
Speaker 1: go find the lost reef, which he had stumbled across
Speaker 1: many many years before. This was nineteen nine, actually nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty when he pitched to them, I was gonna say, yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of time had gone by. We're talking thirty
Speaker 1: years almost. Yeah. Yeah, so we're talking like, well in
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety seven, nineteen thirties, thirty three years before in nine.
Speaker 1: In late nineteen twenty nine, Last Year wrote to an
Speaker 1: Australian government official named Albert Green and telling him about
Speaker 1: finding this reef. He said he found it eighteen years before,
Speaker 1: in nineteen eleven, so he was just confused. He meant
Speaker 1: to say that it was seventeen years ago, thought he
Speaker 1: was seventeen. Yeah, I don't know, you know, I really
Speaker 1: don't know. But he actually they actually took it seriously
Speaker 1: enough that the letter was referred to a guy named
Speaker 1: Herbert Gepp who was chairman of the Development Migration Commission,
Speaker 1: and they asked him to investigate and gap in. A
Speaker 1: geologist named L. K. Ward interviewed Lasseter in November, and Ward,
Speaker 1: the geologist, said later that Last Year was quote quite
Speaker 1: unbalanced unquote. Yeah, doesn't mean he's lying, uh So gaps
Speaker 1: report was kind of tepid about the whole thing. He
Speaker 1: said that I said that any investigation of the reef
Speaker 1: should be regarded quote only in the form of a
Speaker 1: gamble unquote. So in other words, he didn't think it
Speaker 1: was too terribly credible, and that's why Last Year went
Speaker 1: to the Australian Workers Union and the Australian Workers Union
Speaker 1: in the end, decided to bankroll an expedition to the
Speaker 1: unit of either five thousand pounds or fifty thousand pounds,
Speaker 1: depending on who you read well, And I remember reading
Speaker 1: that part of the reason that he didn't go for
Speaker 1: the gold earlier. I mean we're talking thirty year span,
Speaker 1: is that there was gold that was much easier to
Speaker 1: get at. Yeah, exactly, I mean there was nobody. Nobody
Speaker 1: was gonna spend all this money to go find it
Speaker 1: in the middle of the desert. Way, he was in
Speaker 1: a very accessible place. We're just gonna mind it here
Speaker 1: very much. Yeah, they would bring a lot of goal
Speaker 1: out of the ground, and so yeah, that's that's yeah,
Speaker 1: that's one good reason. I'm not sure that he spent
Speaker 1: all those years actually prospesting or mining for gold. He
Speaker 1: he did a lot of different things. He was he
Speaker 1: had a lot of different jobs, and some people who
Speaker 1: called him a prospect or a minor. But actually I
Speaker 1: don't know that he actually spent much of his life
Speaker 1: actually doing that stuff. Anyway, back to his story, when
Speaker 1: he talked to the Australian Workers Union, he told them
Speaker 1: the story about how he found in seven and but
Speaker 1: he was lost and he was out in the desert
Speaker 1: with little food, little water, and his horses died and
Speaker 1: he was stranded and in pretty bad shape. But luckily
Speaker 1: for him, a camel driver came by and found him
Speaker 1: and took him to a surveyors camp. And there at
Speaker 1: the surveyors camp, he uh, he rested and you know,
Speaker 1: recuperated a little bit. He met a surveyor named Joseph Harding. Eventually,
Speaker 1: three years later he and Harding went back and they
Speaker 1: he was able to find the reef again and they
Speaker 1: took a bearing on it with the sexton apparently, And
Speaker 1: but it turned out later when they got back to civilization, uh,
Speaker 1: they found out that their watches were like off by
Speaker 1: at least a couple of hours, and so in order
Speaker 1: to you can fix your latitude without a time piece
Speaker 1: with with the sextant, but you can't fix your longitude.
Speaker 1: So they just had no idea their bearings were completely wrong.
Speaker 1: But if they knew, so here's my here's my question
Speaker 1: about that. Though. If you know your watches two to
Speaker 1: four hours off, you can make an adjustment. You can
Speaker 1: make an adjustment, and you should be able to figure
Speaker 1: out kind of the sweep of where it. Yeah, yeah, definitely, yeah,
Speaker 1: you'll know where it is latitude wise, and and obviously
Speaker 1: if you know when I walk my watch is exactly
Speaker 1: two hours off, then you should be able to get
Speaker 1: a pretty decent well. But as far as last year
Speaker 1: was concerned, you know that the whole wash, the whole
Speaker 1: thing was just yeah. So yeah, uh tell you where
Speaker 1: was I Uh So there was a new expedition to
Speaker 1: Lasseter's Reef, which is underwritten by the Union, in July,
Speaker 1: starting in July. It was two trucks and also had
Speaker 1: an aircraft, an airplane. First, pretty cool, it is pretty cool,
Speaker 1: although the airplane actually turned out to be really actually
Speaker 1: worse than useless. I mean this it was supposed to
Speaker 1: be used for reconnaissance and all that stuff, but between
Speaker 1: the plane crashing and the plane breaking and it's just yeah,
Speaker 1: at one point it left the pilot stranded in the
Speaker 1: wilderness for a couple of weeks before before he was found. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the airplane was actually just a complete pane and they
Speaker 1: set up. But they set up July nineteen thirty. Uh,
Speaker 1: they all traveled westward to reach its end and what
Speaker 1: what the what they were going to do was find
Speaker 1: a suitable staging area, create a landing strip, and then
Speaker 1: the pilot was going to go back in a truck
Speaker 1: was with another guy and get the airplane and bring
Speaker 1: it forward. And then like the other guy was to
Speaker 1: bring a much of supplies back in the truck. Um.
Speaker 1: And that was Alice Springs by the way that I
Speaker 1: mentioned it was all out of Alice Springs. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: The pilot would go back to Alice Springs and get
Speaker 1: the aircraft. And the overarching theme of this expedition was
Speaker 1: quote and then they went back to Alice Springs because
Speaker 1: that's what they did over and over and over again.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, everything's gone all to hell, Let's go
Speaker 1: back to Alice Springs. Regroup. Long story short. The people,
Speaker 1: the other people of the expedition, Uh, I found that
Speaker 1: Lasseter was evasive. Uh. He really wouldn't say anything about
Speaker 1: where the treasure was. At one point he said like,
Speaker 1: you know, ge, if I tell you where the treasure is,
Speaker 1: you won't need me anymore. But he wouldn't tell them.
Speaker 1: He wouldn't actually say whether you give them any reliable
Speaker 1: information to try to lead them to where the reef was. Eventually,
Speaker 1: other members of the expedition came to believe number one
Speaker 1: that he was like crazy number two that he was
Speaker 1: not being honest. Yeah, and there was there was a
Speaker 1: big fall out over the whole thing, an event he
Speaker 1: was ditched. Then he went off with one of the guy,
Speaker 1: a dingo hunter I think, a dingo hunter. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: went up with him and some camels I think, and
Speaker 1: looking for it. And eventually those two fell out because
Speaker 1: Last basically said, hey, I went off wandering and I
Speaker 1: found it, and I guess, great, let's go find let's
Speaker 1: go look at it. He's like, oh, I'm not telling
Speaker 1: you where it is. And so the guy's like and
Speaker 1: so there was a fight over that he didn't he
Speaker 1: said he brought back some rocks that he said we're
Speaker 1: from it. Yeah, but he wouldn't show him to him either. Yeah, yeah, exactly, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: last I know, And it ended kind of tragically for Laster.
Speaker 1: He wound up alone with a couple of camels left him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he went off alone and eventually his camel's bolted
Speaker 1: and he was left stranded with very little food or
Speaker 1: water and and hem. Yeah, he was in a bad way.
Speaker 1: Luckily for him, he was prefriended by some local Aborigines
Speaker 1: who helped him out. But apparently didn't help him quite enough,
Speaker 1: because eventually he did die anyway, Yeah, and uh in
Speaker 1: the in the desert, Yeah, he did well. I heard
Speaker 1: that there was talk that he had stayed in the
Speaker 1: area and that the Aborigines for helping him. And I
Speaker 1: don't know how they know this part, okay, so don't
Speaker 1: ask me for the details, but I remember reading something
Speaker 1: about the fact that they said he had made a
Speaker 1: belated attempt to return to Alice Springs. In other words,
Speaker 1: he stayed there too long, didn't have you know, they
Speaker 1: gave him food and water and he used up a
Speaker 1: big chunk of it before deciding I should probably go home.
Speaker 1: That that could very well be it. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: bad judgment, but he'shibited a lot of bad judgment. Who Yeah,
Speaker 1: Since he was missing for so long, a guy named
Speaker 1: Bob buck was was asked to go out there and
Speaker 1: find him if at all possible, and he was. He
Speaker 1: was a bushman, very experienced, and he spent eleven weeks
Speaker 1: looking around for tracks of Lasseter. Yeah, eleven weeks. He
Speaker 1: found signs, he followed the signs sense. This guy must
Speaker 1: have been an incredible bushman. Yeah. Um, and he came
Speaker 1: across a gathering of Aborigines and who denied any knowledge
Speaker 1: of him. But eventually they took him to the place
Speaker 1: where he was, where his body was, and they hadn't
Speaker 1: killed him, but it does appear they didn't really support
Speaker 1: him much either, and so he eventually died and Buck
Speaker 1: searched for his notes and stuff and otherwise just buried
Speaker 1: his body there. Eventually his body was relocated and moved
Speaker 1: to it to a different grave. Yeah, that that was
Speaker 1: the end of Lasterter. And of course the reef as
Speaker 1: far as any notes, you know, you think he'd write
Speaker 1: a note, straw map whatever. He didn't do that. Laster
Speaker 1: didn't do that kept it all in his head apparently. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so and also samples those rocks that he supposedly found,
Speaker 1: those were not found. So yeah, so somewhere out there
Speaker 1: is Laster's reef or maybe not can say is we
Speaker 1: really at this point we have nothing to corroborate that
Speaker 1: it's real? Yeah, now he uh last, it appears to
Speaker 1: be kind of dishonest, or it was kind of dishonest.
Speaker 1: And there's you know, let's face it, there's lots of
Speaker 1: people out there who want attention. Why the thing that
Speaker 1: I his behavior is what makes me think what I'm
Speaker 1: about to go into. I get the feeling that what
Speaker 1: he wanted from the Union was for them to give
Speaker 1: him the money to go do the search with maybe
Speaker 1: one or two people. Yeah, but they insisted on a
Speaker 1: more structured thing. Yeah, they turned it into this big thing.
Speaker 1: Like I almost feel like he kind of wanted to
Speaker 1: take the money and run and when he couldn't do that,
Speaker 1: oh oh crap, what do I do? Yeah? And he
Speaker 1: just played this game that blew up in his face. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think. Yeah, according to this his companions, he was
Speaker 1: just kind of sullen and yeah, I think I think
Speaker 1: he might be right. There's other reasons to doubt his story.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eleven, apparently he was living in a town
Speaker 1: called I'm probably mispronouncing them Tabby Lamb, which is on
Speaker 1: the table, which is on the far east coast of Australia.
Speaker 1: So nineteen eleven was was one one time when he
Speaker 1: claimed to have been way out in the west finding
Speaker 1: this thing, but he was in a completely different area.
Speaker 1: He was nowhere nearby. I've heard two different stories about Worry.
Speaker 1: It was in eighteen ninety seven. Uh I found on
Speaker 1: Wikipedia they said that in eighteen ninety seven when he
Speaker 1: claimed to have found it, he was actually in reform school.
Speaker 1: I remember seeing that. Yeah, Although he himself and his
Speaker 1: own autobiographical notes claimed that he was in the Royal
Speaker 1: Navy for four years, beginning in eighteen ninety seven and
Speaker 1: ending in nineteen o one, which means that even if
Speaker 1: he somehow found the reef in eighteen ninety seven, ran
Speaker 1: off and joined the navy got out in nineteen o one,
Speaker 1: was he able to Would he have been able to
Speaker 1: go back three years later, basically nineteen hundred with Harding
Speaker 1: and find the reef again? If it was, there's a
Speaker 1: little contradiction, and maybe he's just lying about serving in
Speaker 1: the Navy and maybe he wasn't, But it does If
Speaker 1: that's the case, it does sort of uncuttish credibility a
Speaker 1: little bit. Do we know for Harding? Do we have
Speaker 1: any record from Harding that he actually went on this
Speaker 1: expedition with Lasseter. I don't know if Harding even existed.
Speaker 1: Tell you the truth, Okay, yeah, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: mean I did a little looking and I didn't see it,
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean that it's not there. It means
Speaker 1: that I just didn't find it. Yeah. No, there might
Speaker 1: might have been. There might have been a Joseph Harding,
Speaker 1: but I doesn't seem all that well documented. And as
Speaker 1: to whether he actually went out and found the reef
Speaker 1: with Lasseter, you know who the hell knows? So theories
Speaker 1: it's real or it's not real. Yeah, I just talked
Speaker 1: about that, didn't I think I think it's not real. Well,
Speaker 1: I have a feeling it's not real. Well, well, there's
Speaker 1: there's something in between, which is that somebody lost his
Speaker 1: wallet it's still out there in the desert. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that could be it too. But yeah, I'm so
Speaker 1: sorry to our our Aussie friends. Sorry guys, probably not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know some of you, some of you agree with me,
Speaker 1: and some of you are crushed. But uh and I
Speaker 1: apologize to those of you who are crushed. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think it ever existed. Okay, so all right,
Speaker 1: it doesn't exist? Okay, all right, Well that was fun.
Speaker 1: We just talked about three treasures that I don't know,
Speaker 1: definitely don't exist. Appreciate, Yeah, truly lost treasures. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the whole the whole ship of pearls. I
Speaker 1: mean it's like, are you kidding me? It's a ship
Speaker 1: of fool. Yeah. Okay, Well, if you want to see
Speaker 1: any of the research, because we will put up links
Speaker 1: to each of these stories on our website, you can
Speaker 1: visit our website, which is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com.
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Speaker 1: Great Trump stopped talking. All Right, we've got to go
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Speaker 1: holiday and we will be talking to you next week. Yeah, everybody, Hi, guys,