The Treasure of the Falkland Islands

[Crow]

We can to look at context of the time. Mason and Jewett who recieved promotion, status and good wages for their efforts in privateering. Even if they stayed a little into piracy.. The poor lags under them was just cannon fodder.

The south American wars of independence attracted thousands of would be privaterers to sign up under commsion. Most of them was never paid.

After the war of 1812 and Napoleonic wars there was thousand of sailors became unemployed. Wages and conditions deteriorated for sailors in merchant fleets as there was thousands competing for jobs on ships. There was no unemployment benefit in those days. A sailors lot was pretty crap.

Being an ordinary Sailor on Privateer you did not get paid unless you captured a prize and you get a share of that prise. Privateering was not as lucritive as most people thought. So you are risking your ass for no wages and dying in the hope you make a valuable capture. So it is easy to see why so many battle harded sailors became rebelious and mutinious and more than eager to stray into outright piracy.

Crow

 

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[Crow]

Another interesting point

Even if we prove John Johnston through archives in Argentina was crew member of Heroina would go a long way..

But still verify this Wagner? Then with what clues to the location of this all cave or depository. in the Berkley sound. As you can see below the search area is just too big to be practical.

And we do not know the out come of this second voyage to recover the treasure.

While it is fantastic story you have found there is at this stage still too many unknowns. But thanks everyone for contributing so far to fantastic thread. Especially Bookaroo and M. A. Nazario for both of your efforts.

Old Crow loves these treasure stories and swears hes retired but cannot help getting his beak stuck into these stories

Yeah yeah ya got me I am like an old donkey with carrot and stick chomping and missing the wobbling carrot. but quite cannot get a bite.

Crow

 

[M. A. Nazario]

Another interesting point

Even if we prove John Johnston through arives in argentina was crew member of Heroina would go a long way..

But still varify this Wagner? Then with what clues to the location of this all cave or depositoty. in the Berkly sound. As you can see below the search area is just too big to be practical.

View attachment 2186127

And we do not know the outscome of this second voyage to recover the treasure.

While it is fantasic story you have found there is at this stage still too many unknowns. But thanks everyone for contributing so far to famtasic thread. Especially Bookaroo and M. A. Nazario for both of your efforts.

Old Crow loves these treasure stories and swears hes retired but cannot help getting his beak stuck into these stories

Yeah yeah ya got me I am like an old donkEy with carrot and stick chomping and missing the wobbling carrot. but quite cannot get a bite.

Crow

Indeed, the evidence is tantalizing but regrettably scant.

I am inclined to believe now that perhaps our attribution of the treasure to the Berkeley Sound may not be entirely correct. The evidence makes no mention of the location - and the British Consulate only mentioned that the treasure was 40 miles from Port Stanley. Even by a sea route, the Sound is far closer than 40 miles.

As the 1829 map nearly proves, the area around Johnson's Harbour had the name Johnson attached to it far before John Johnson the pirate would have allegedly buried his treasure.

There are also no known caves or cave systems in the area, or really in the Falklands in general; though I am not attached to the notion that the treasure was buried in a cave to begin with, as some of the newspapers say.

 

[Crow]

Indeed, the evidence is tantalizing but regrettably scant.

I am inclined to believe now that perhaps our attribution of the treasure to the Berkeley Sound may not be entirely correct. The evidence makes no mention of the location - and the British Consulate only mentioned that the treasure was 40 miles from Port Stanley. Even by a sea route, the Sound is far closer than 40 miles.

As the 1829 map nearly proves, the area around Johnson's Harbour had the name Johnson attached to it far before John Johnson the pirate would have allegedly buried his treasure.

There are also no known caves or cave systems in the area, or really in the Falklands in general; though I am not attached to the notion that the treasure was buried in a cave to begin with, as some of the newspapers say.

Some good points.

What we have is generalization and not exact directions to work with. the Cave could be just sexed up version of story add to by the newspapers. But also consulate mention of location 40 miles is vague generalization. So we have not much to work on.

We still need to find out who was Wagener? and I suspect various spelling versions of that name.

Crow

 

[Crow]

I would not write the story off but with what we have so far? We could say is possibly plausible. But yet what we are lacking is the exact detail. With out a more accurate information we will struggle to fully unravel the story.

Crow

 

[Crow]

I might of found Him Joseph Wagener

Hamburg Passenger Lists, 1850-1934 for Joseph Wagener
Hamburg to San Francisco Direkt Band 001 (2 Mär 1850 - 31 Dec 1850)

It appears he was heading to Californian gold rush with a wife and child. The voyage from Hamburg would of called in to the Falkland islands before round Cape Horn entering the Pacific sailing up the coast of South America to San Francisco in California.

It is possible be met John Johnson between march and December 1850?

on the passenger list his occupation Maler in German meaning painter in English.

Source:

Abstracted from microfilm roll number 1, Library of Congress, Manuscript Div., shelf number 10,897. About 2,500 names, sometimes occupations and places of origin. Destinations of these 25 ships: Quebec, San Francisco, New York, Galveston, Adelaide, Sydney

Source Bibliography

SMITH, CLIFFORD NEAL. Reconstructed Passenger Lists for 1850: Hamburg to Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, and the United States. (German and Central European Emigration Monograph, 1, in four pts.) McNeal, Ariz.: Westland Publications. Part 1: Passenger Lists 1 through 25. 1980. 79p.

Crow

 

[Crow]

Joseph Wagener was in 1880 census for California
Age 64 Birth Date Abt 1816 Birthplace Germany

Home in 1880 San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA
Street Larkin Street House Number 906 Dwelling Number 67
Race White Gender Male Marital Status Married
Father's Birthplace Germany Mother's Birthplace Germany
Occupation House painter

Crow

 

[Crow]

Joseph Wagener Age at Death 67 Birth Date 1817 Death Date Jun 1884 Burial Date 28 Jun 1884 Burial Place San Francisco, San Francisco, California Funeral Home N. Gray & Co. Funeral Records Funeral Place San Francisco, San Francisco, California Record Type Register

Source Reference p. 1-140, 1879-1887


There also records of his death recorded in Germany.

If he is the correct person then it appears the late expedition to Falklands was failure to. There is no evidence of any one profiteering from this alleged treasure.


Crow

 

[M. A. Nazario]

Joseph Wagener Age at Death 67 Birth Date 1817 Death Date Jun 1884 Burial Date 28 Jun 1884 Burial Place San Francisco, San Francisco, California Funeral Home N. Gray & Co. Funeral Records Funeral Place San Francisco, San Francisco, California Record Type Register

Source Reference p. 1-140, 1879-1887


There also records of his death recorded in Germany.


View attachment 2186442


If he is the correct person then it appears the late expedition to Falklands was failure to. There is no evidence of any one profiteering from this alleged treasure.


Crow

Great research Crow. If he is the individual in question, then he would have been nearly the same age as Johnson.

Wagener would have been there long enough to acquaint with Johnson and find some evidence of the treasure, I’d presume. I can’t find any free access to the immigration source you listed; does it say what ship he was on?

The only other thing is that most of the sources we have confirm that 1853, the year of Johnson’s death, was when he was on the islands. Unless 1850 was where they first met, and perhaps Wagener became a whaler and stopped by in 1853, meeting his old friend again?

It’d make some sense, considering that the Francis Palmer was a whaler, a hint that he may have been more comfortable with the whaling crowd.

 

[Crow]

Great research Crow. If he is the individual in question, then he would have been nearly the same age as Johnson.

Wagener would have been there long enough to acquaint with Johnson and find some evidence of the treasure, I’d presume. I can’t find any free access to the immigration source you listed; does it say what ship he was on?

The only other thing is that most of the sources we have confirm that 1853, the year of Johnson’s death, was when he was on the islands. Unless 1850 was where they first met, and perhaps Wagener became a whaler and stopped by in 1853, meeting his old friend again?

It’d make some sense, considering that the Francis Palmer was a whaler, a hint that he may have been more comfortable with the whaling crowd.

Sadly the documents do not say what vessel they arrived on only passenger in that archive that was combination of 25 vessels that sailed from Hamburg to California.

However we might find a matching of date December 31 1850 when the ship arrived in San Francisco. We can search shipping arrivals indexes to identify a ship that arrived on 31st December 1850 in San Francisco?

I searched the About San Francisco Ship Passenger Lists Vol. I [1850-1864]

In the absence of official port records--destroyed by fire in 1940--this ambitious work attempts a reconstruction of passenger arrivals from newspapers and journals. The volume offered here is a reprint of the first volume in a series dealing with passenger arrivals at the port of San Francisco between 1850 and 1875, though this first volume contains a selection of passenger lists extending only though 1864.

Interest in the book is inevitably heightened by the fact that the passengers named in the lists came from all parts of the United States, as well as from Europe, though probably the majority were from East Coast points of origin. Here will be found listed approximately 13,500 persons who made the dramatic voyage to the celebrated El Dorado of legend, many of whom were previously the elusive objects of extensive genealogical searches, for some left their homes with hardly a trace, save for the laconic notation in family Bibles and church records: "Gone West."

Typically, each passenger list, from the longest to the shortest, is preceded by the following notations: name of ship, type of ship, port of embarkation, date of arrival, name of captain, description of cargo, and notes concerning the passage, which include date of departure, ports of call, length of voyage, and names of passengers who died en route, with their places of residence and dates of death. The list of passengers follows and sometimes identifies accompanying family members.

Sadly there is no name record. I figure he and his young family must of continued ton o British Columbia and disembarked there?

Or Wagener and his family stayed in Falklands for three years until 1853 before moving on another ship that was German?

Crow

 

[Crow]

Joseph Wagener

in the U.S. and Canada, Passenger and Immigration Lists Index, 1500s-1900s with wife and child but they do not give the name of the ship.

Annotation.

Abstracted from microfilm roll number 1, Library of Congress, Manuscript Div., shelf number 10,897. About 2,500 names, sometimes occupations and places of origin. Destinations of these 25 ships: Quebec, San Francisco, New York, Galveston, Adelaide, Sydney

Source Bibliography

SMITH, CLIFFORD NEAL. Reconstructed Passenger Lists for 1850: Hamburg to Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, and the United States. (German and Central European Emigration Monograph, 1, in four pts.) McNeal, Ariz.: Westland Publications. Part 1: Passenger Lists 1 through 25. 1980. 79p.

So the above record confirms the arrival of Joseph Wagener

As claimed in the passenger lists from Hamburg West Germany. So guess the hypothesis that he and his family stayed in the Falklands from 1850 till 1853 is probably not correct.

But not impossible for Joseph Wagener meeting John Johnson in the Falklands in 1850?

Crow

 

[Crow]

U.S., City Directories, 1822-1995 for Joseph Wagener
California San Francisco 1863 San Francisco Directory, 1863

He was in directories until 1876. Same occupation so for me that gives us good indication for him at least there was no discovery of treasure by him. Perhaps the answer to the second supposed expedition?

Some thing we have to ask our selves was John Johnson a recorded inebriate drunk told BS story to impress Joseph Wagener about buried treasure?

To answer that might be in the capital of Argentina there are records that night list as a crew member Heroina?

Crow

 

[Crow]

Another thing to consider.

If John Johnson was involved in looting of a ship in 1820 and her arrive back there in 1842 is correct where was he for the last 22 years?

There is few John Johnson's recorded in the New Bedford Whaling crew lists which could of be the answer to where he was for some of the time over last 20 years?

Crow