Pirates, ghosts, gamblers & rumrunners spice up legend of Coronado Islands
http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/mar/01/1n1island...
By Peter Rowe
March 1, 2009
They are always present but often invisible. After the air has been scrubbed by wind or rain, though, travel to the San Diego-Coronado Bridge, the
Cabrillo Monument or Mexico's Highway 1 below Playas de Tijuana. Look out to sea. There they are, the Islas Coronados.
But even after the mists part, these four rocky isles remain enshrouded in myth and mystery.
They are so close – the nearest is only 14 miles from San Diego and eight miles from Tijuana – yet so obscure. Blame the marine haze or, if you ask
Capt. Ben Griffith, sheer ignorance.
“Most people in San Diego have never heard about these islands,” Griffith said as he sailed to the Coronados last week aboard the 105-foot Bright
& Morning Star, bearing 33 voyagers on a nature cruise. “They have never been publicized very well.”
That may be true, but such obscurity is difficult to fathom. The Coronados offer rugged scenery, spectacular wildlife and some of the Southwest's
greatest yarns. The islands belong to Mexico, but they have been used by an entire United Nations of heroes, villains and eccentrics: Russian hunters,
Chinese immigrants, Japanese divers, American rumrunners, assorted gamblers, a trigger-happy U.S. lieutenant and what must be Mexico's smallest naval
detachment.
These characters share the aquatic stage with dolphins, whales, elephant seals, brown pelicans, cormorants, oyster catchers and boobies. A voyage to
the Coronados is a journey into a realm that makes a habit of defying man and sheltering nature.
“There's so much variety,” Griffith said. “People like that.”
For some, this rugged chain stirs unworldly, eerie sensations. In September 1869, the San Diego Union reported a mirage causing the islands to appear
as giant fans, the letter V and castles. In 1886, flames were spotted flickering over the southernmost island – some speculated that shipwrecked
mariners were signaling for help.
If the islands are haunted, though, perhaps it is by the ghosts of 10 Chinese immigrants who were marooned there by smugglers in 1911. Or maybe by the
spirits of the otters and seals slaughtered by Russian and American hunters in the mid-19th century.
The hunters killed off their quarry, just as flotillas of Chinese and Japanese fishermen later scoured the islands' abalone beds. History here is rich
in commercial failure, as scheme after scheme – a brownstone quarry, a copper mine, a gold mine – fell victim to unforgiving geography. All four
islands boast sheer cliffs, knife-edge ridgelines and not one drop of fresh water.
Perhaps the most successful enterprise was the casino. The two-story structure on South Island was the brainchild of Mariano Escobedo, builder of
Tijuana's jai alai fronton, and Fred Hamilton, a San Diego lumber merchant. Their plans to draw alcohol-parched punters, though, were quickly
scuttled. By the time they opened the casino in the summer of 1933, Prohibition had been repealed. The next year, Mexico banned casino gambling; the
Coronado Islands Yacht Club closed that December.
Prohibition did cause increased traffic in these waters, though. Griffith learned his seamanship from several teachers, including an old salt who
illegally imported Mexican rum to Solana Beach and Del Mar. The late Mel Shears loaded the hooch onto a motorboat, then raced past the Coast Guard
north of the Coronados. Shears once described his adversaries: “Their boats were slow, but their bullets were fast.”
Two miles long and a half-mile wide, South Island is the largest of the Coronados, and it attracts mariners and legends. The most famous fable may be
the one involving Jose Arvaez, whose pirate band operated from this island.
In the 1850s, the story goes, Arvaez and company attacked merchantmen sailing south from California's gold fields. The pirates' technique was bloody
but effective: After taking the treasure, they slaughtered their victims and sank their ships. Authorities ashore assumed that the vessels and
everyone aboard had been lost in storms.
In 1858, though, Arvaez spared the cabin boy of the British bark Chelsea. Tom Bolter swore that he knew when the next gold ships would sail south. But
the partnership soon unraveled; Arvaez cast Bolter and two guards ashore on South Island. Bolter killed the guards, sailed to San Diego and enlisted
the Grendo, an American whaler, to ambush Arvaez on South Island.
As it sailed home to San Diego, the Grendo's yardarms were crowded with hanged pirates, while its hull was stuffed with gold.
This is great theater – in 2007, it provided the plot for a musical, “Pirates of Point Loma” by Welton Jones and Markuz Rodriguez – but poor history.
In the 1950s, maritime historian John Lyman searched 19th-century ships' registers. He was unable to find the Chelsea or the Grendo. Moreover,
contemporary journals from the 1850s do not mention Arvaez or Bolter.
Another Coronados yarn is well-documented. On July 28, 1943, a U.S. Navy lieutenant ordered his minesweeper to use the isles for target practice. By
the time the PC-815's third shell slammed into South Island – the chain's only inhabited island – the Mexican government was angrily protesting to its
U.S. allies.
The lieutenant lost his command. “Consider this officer lacking in the essential qualities of judgment, leadership and cooperation,” read the official
reprimand. That officer was L. Ron Hubbard, the future science fiction writer and founder of Scientology.
Arranged on a northwest-to-southeast axis, the four islands sit within gray whales' migratory routes. Two hours after departing San Diego, the Bright
& Morning Star sighted a spout off the starboard bow. The voyagers whipped out cameras and photographed the great creatures, which were moving
north after another calving season in Baja California's lagoons.
Each spout and lifted fluke was greeted with an “Oh!” But just seeing the sea was a thrill for some. “We're pretty landlocked in Wyoming,” said Susan
Bertilson from Laramie.
Others were just as excited when Griffith brought the boat within a few yards of Middle Island for a good look at the cormorants nesting there. On a
cliff face, brown pelicans sat in neat rows, looking down on the vessel with the confidence of parliamentary backbenchers who possess an invincible
majority.
Off South Island, the boat spied two-legged creatures – fishermen who live in a tiny settlement, their only neighbors a lighthouse keeper and the
Mexican navy's two coastwatchers. But most tourists seemed more interested in the marine birds and mammals. Oyster catchers! Boobies! Elephant seals!
Dolphins!
“We're sort of nature fiends,” said Carolyn Matiisen of Calgary, Alberta. “We've seen whales . . . ”
“ . . . and birds that are going to have us poring over our bird books for weeks,” said her friend Karyl Hubbard of Omak, Wash.
“Isn't it neat?” Matiisen asked.
Librarian Merrie Monteagudo contributed to this report.
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