Hello All
When one thinks of pirate raids in the pacific, one normally thinks of the great buccaneering days of south America in the 17th century or the brief age of the privateers during the war of south American Independence around 1820 or the few acts of gold fever piracy in the early 1850's.
By the time of 1880 piracy and the great buccaneering raids was well and truly a thing of the past. Or where they?
The peaceful pacific was settling down to a more gentle refined era of neocolonialism and island monarchies. It was the age when the missionaries had tamed the mighty cannibals of the pacific and the reckless beachcomber and pirates were a thing of the past. Hawaii was still a independent kingdom not yet a state of the United States.
Hawaii was then a strange mix of European ideas of monarchy mixed in with a tropical island culture. Fermented with a mixture of nationality's and American dominated sugar industry driving changes over this once island paradise.
But in this vortex of calmness and earthly paradise there is a dark secret that very few people are aware of. It was in December 1884 that Hawaii became the scene of the last great buccaneering raid in history.
It was publicly humiliating for the Hawaiian king and his generals and down right embarrassing for the united states government. The raids was so brazen and so cocky that one cannot help feel a little admiration for this bunch of pirates. they really caught the Hawaiian government and king with their pants down.
It was perhaps because of this event that latter lead to the United States own colonial expansionism policies by Annexing Hawaii for themselves. What ever the motives it was clear both parties never searched for the pirates and slowly wiped the whole embarrassing episode from history.
Except a few newspaper stories that escaped the censors of the day.
No one took much notice of the strange vessel that was loitering off shore. Eventually the Honolulu harbor pilot went out to bring the ship in. The harbor pilot sent out and never returned. the harbor master sent another out and they did not return.
About 10pm the natives were stunned to see about 5 boats come ashore at the wharf with about 70 armed men with cutlasses and Winchester rifles they quickly marched with military precision captured the town of Honolulu.
The Royal Hawaiian treasury, The Royal Palace and the king himself, his ministers, generals, banks and all the large companies were systematically held to ransom and robbed and looted with out firing a shot or anybody getting killed.
The Hawaiian Army could not fire a shot as they had no bullets and the cannons at the Honolulu fort had not been assembled. It was conservatively estimated that over 2.5 million dollars of treasure in 1884 prices was looted from Honolulu and that was not counting all the major companies that were looted. As quickly as they arrived they left like a thief in the night, by day break the Filibusters had vanished as quickly as they come.
No one ever knew who these men where who perhaps pulled off one of the greatest crimes of piracy in history. No one in the embarrassed Hawaiian and United States governments wanted too pursue the pirates.To this day there is no record of who these men were or where they come from or where they went after the Honolulu raid. Even the name of the ship was unknown, it was and still is a complete mystery.
There was a clue latter reported in a San Francisco newspaper about a strange ship in the San Francisco prior to the event with strange men coming and going at all times of night? Was it connected to the great pirate raid of Honolulu? We will never know for sure.
Several years latter another newspaper story appeared about some well armed men going on expedition funded by a so called general Butler. Allegedly going on an expedition to recover buried treasure from a unknown shipwrecked American whaling ship on a mystery Island in the Pacific that there is no record of.The ship never returned nor did the men. Were they connected to the 1884 robbery? Perhaps we will never know.
But one thing for certain on one dark night in early December 1884 a bunch well trained buccaneers pulled one the most successful daring crimes in history leaving the governments of two countries with very red faces.
And what of the treasure?
Your guess is good as mine.
Hardluck
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« Last Edit: April 24, 2010, 04:10:46 am by hardluck »
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