The Cruise of the Alerte

The Cruise of the Alerte

By E. F. Knight.

Table of Contents

1. Titlepage
2. Imprint
3. I: The History of the Treasure
4. II: The Alerte Is Fitted Out
5. III: The Ship’s Company
6. IV: A Romance of the Salvages
7. V: Our First Voyage
8. VI: On the Salvages
9. VII: Running Down the Trades
10. VIII: Bahia
11. IX: Treasure Island at Last
12. X: The Summit of Trinidad
13. XI: On the Road to Treasure Bay
14. XII: We Explore the Ravine
15. XIII: A Narrow Escape
16. XIV: We Land the Stores in the Bay
17. XV: Our Camp
18. XVI: Discoveries in Southwest Bay
19. XVII: Pick and Shovel
20. XVIII: A Voyage to Market
21. XIX: Hove To
22. XX: The Adventures of the Shore-Party
23. XXI: We Abandon the Search
24. XXII: Homeward Bound
25. Colophon
26. Uncopyright

Imprint

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I

The History of the Treasure

In the course of a long cruise in the South Atlantic and up the South American rivers, in the years 1880 and 1881, with my little yacht the Falcon, I found myself, more by accident than intention, in the neighbourhood of the small desert island of Trinidad. We were bound from Montevideo to Bahia, and, after running before a heavy pampero off the River Plate, we fell in with strong head winds, and had to thrash our way to windward for upwards of a thousand miles of choppy seas and boisterous weather, while the rain poured down upon us almost without cessation, as it not unfrequently does during the season of the northerly Brazilian monsoon.

We steered a course away from the land to the eastward, hoping to meet with more favourable winds when we had obtained an offing of some four or five hundred miles. Vessels bound north from the Plate during the season of the northerly monsoon invariably pursue this plan, sailing as much as seven hundred miles close hauled on the port tack before they go about and make their northering. Thus it was that our course brought us in the vicinity of Trinidad, which lies in latitude 20° 30′ south and longitude 29° 22′ west, distant about seven hundred miles from the coast of Brazil, and my curiosity being aroused by the description of the islet in the South Atlantic Directory I decided to land and explore it.

We came to an anchor off this desolate spot on December 8, 1881, and we remained there for nine days. Our adventures of various sorts, the perils of landing, the attacks made on us by the multitudes of hideous land-crabs and ferocious seabirds, our difficult climb over the volcanic mountains, and finally our anything but regretful departure from one of the most uncanny and dispiriting spots on earth, are fully set out in my book, The Cruise of the Falcon. On turning to that book I find that I state there that I had had more than enough of Trinidad, and would on no account set foot on its barren shores again⁠—a rash resolution which I was destined to break nearly ten years after my first visit to the island.

The descriptions of Trinidad in the South Atlantic Directory are all of an old date, and were supplied at different times by captains of vessels in want of water or with crews stricken with scurvy, who effected a landing in order to procure water or the purslain and other greens which abound on some portions of the shore. Halley in 1700, Amaso Delano in 1803, and Commodore Owen in 1822 visited the island, and it is from their accounts that most of the information concerning it has been gathered. All describe the landing as extremely difficult, and often quite impracticable, on account of the almost perpetual surf which breaks on the iron-bound coast. Consequently mariners avoided the coral reefs and sea-worn crags, and, though the masters of homeward-bound vessels from around Cape Horn often sighted the island from a safe distance in order to correct the rate of their chronometers, it was rare indeed that the foot of a human being trod its shores.

But now the land-crabs and seabirds of Trinidad must be becoming almost familiarised with the sight of man, for the report of a vast treasure that is supposed to have been buried here some seventy years ago, has induced no less than five different bands of adventurers in the course of the last twelve years to fit out vessels for the purpose of seeking their fortunes among the volcanic ash.

This is an account of the most recent of these ventures, and I think it will be the last of them; for whereas all the previous