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Cocos Island is situated in the Pacific Ocean, approximately 400 nautical miles southwest of the Costa Rican coast.
This is the voyage that the 'BM273 Vigilant' crew took to reach Cocos Island from Brixham, Devon in 1932.
(Map shown is from the book 'Treasure Cruise' by J. Plumpton 1934)
Cocos island is roughly rectangular in shape and measures about 4 miles by 2 miles. It is uninhabited apart from park rangers.
The island has steep cliffs around most of the island - Wafer Bay and Chatham Bay on the North side are the only safe landing or anchoring points.
(The following image is a reproduction of a 1838 map which James Plumpton used for navigation and published in his 'Treasure Cruise' book)
Cocos is surrounded by coral reefs and has a very rich marine life. It is famous for schooling hammerhead sharks and has 300 species of fish and turtles, and sting rays too.
Scuba diving there is very popular but the only way of reaching it is by taking a trip for about 40 hours by boat from Costa Rica!
Around 1818-1820, no less than 3 bands of pirates were supposed to have buried their treasure on Cocos island. One story involved the hiding of the 'Treasure of Lima' including 12 solid life sized statues of the Virgin Mary and the apostles.
The missing treasure is potentially worth billions of pounds and around 500 expeditions were made from 1820 to 1978 to try and find the treasure.
In addition to Cocos Island having been well documented as a base for pirates, other sources have also placed it as the island occupied by the marooned Robinson Crusoe in Daniel Defoe’s classic book and also as the island which Michael Crichton used as the inspiration for his fictitious "Isla Nublar" for the book and film Jurassic Park.
It is also said to be the place that inspired R.L. Stevenson to write Treasure Island!
The Foreign Office handbook for 1935, an official Government publication, stated on pages 141-2 :
"Cocos Island - Existence of treasure on the island is well established. It was a seventeenth century and later, resort of pirates and freebooters. In 1818 Bonito, alias Bennett Graham, secreted vast treasure, said to be 350 tons of bullion, while Davies cached 300,000lb, weight of silver, 733 bars of gold, and seven kegs of gold coin. A few years later Bonito deposited a fresh quantity of gold bars and specie to the value of eleven million dollars. In or about 1826 a man passing as William Thompson, who appears to have sailed under Bennett, but was then in command of the brig 'Mary Dier', concealed about twelve million dollars' worth of stolen gold coins, golden ornaments, jewels and silver ingots on Cocos Island"
When the Vigilant crew arrived at Cocos Island in 1932, there had already been 100's of unsuccessful expeditions to find the buried treasure and there would be many more to follow...
Many of the visitors to the island have left their mark by carving their ships names and the date into the rocks.
When James Plumpton arrived on the Vigilant Trawler in 1932, he noted that two other ships carrying the 'Vigilant' name had visited previously, with one dating as far back as 1867.
The climate is hot, around 27 deg C and humid. The rainfall is heavy at 8000mm's per year, around 10 times that of the average UK annual rainfall.
There are approximately 200 waterfalls on the island, some of them are several hundred feet high.
With it's dense tropical forests and mountainous peaks up to 1000ft, Cocos Island was filmed for the helicopter sequence at start of the Jurassic Park Movie!
Nuez Island above is on the north of Cocos Island.
These are some of the photo's of the Vigilant crew's treasure digging efforts.
If you look carefully, you can see some of the men stood in the diggings.
As far as I know, no one has ever found anything of great value, perhaps with the exception of a French Expedition in the 60's who may have found a chest of coins in a cave?...August Gissler lived on the island for nearly 20 years and apparently only found six gold coins. So the main bulk of the treasure could still be there to this day...
Treasure hunting on Cocos Island is now banned. I understand that the last treasure hunt was in 1992 carried out by John Hodges and Leonel Pacheco on the ship Dulcinea. Permission now has to be obtained to set foot on the island.
The 1932 Vigilant crew did not manage to find any treasure on the island despite being there for many months and even joining forces with a Vancouver operation who had a 'metalphone' metal detecting system.
James Plumpton wrote a good account of the hardships faced while being on the Island including the heat and near constant rainfall, not to mention the insects and dense impregnatable jungle. Practically all the expeditions ended in failure, most just returned home exhausted and disappointingly empty handed. Some treasure hunters died on the island due ill health or even injuries sustained from fighting between rivals.
Countless dynamite explosions and excavation operations no doubt scarred the island quite badly over the years and many of the animals were hunted for food. Treasure Hunting is now strictly prohibited on the island, visitors are only allowed to land with permission and have to keep to specific paths. The the wildlife and fauna is now flourishing making the Island a very unique and beautiful place .
For some examples of other Treasure Hunts, please see my page here
If you would like to find out more about Cocos Island, I can recommend this excellent 40 minute documentary on YouTube:
Cocos Island - The mysterious island in the Pacific - FULL VERSION!!
If you have any information to add or any comments, please drop me an email: jamesplumpton.history@gmail.com
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