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Suwarrow is the island to visit if you are wanting to delve into the mysteries of where South Pacific pirates may well have hidden their treasure! For it is this island which has yielded many hidden treasure chests over the years and is surrounded in myth and legend even today.
In the mid-19th century a ship out of Tahiti carrying out salvage work on a wreck on Suwarrow's reef unearthed a box containing $15,000 in coins. In 1876 a New Zealander, Henry Mair, discovered silver pieces of eight in a turtle nest.
The main find was hastily covered again because of a fracas Mair was involved in and believe it or not, has never yet been rediscovered. The coins were from 100 years before, during the period when the British navigator, George Anson, crossed the Pacific in 1742 in the HMS Centurion after losing five ships in a raid on Spanish shipping in the Pacific.
Excavations in the mid 1870's uncovered stone walls and platforms, lime kilns, a flintlock, a musket and of all things, a skeleton holding an iron bolt. Theories abound on the origin of these remains. For more than 250 years Spanish galleons crossed the Pacific from the west coast of the Americas to the Philippines and back again.
Most used a more northerly route but it is entirely possible that some of these ships wandered further south and were shipwrecked as a result of the violent storms and cyclones common in these latitudes. Known to have been uninhabited from the Polynesian viewpoint, Suwarrow was first discovered by Russian ship, the "Suvorov" on September 17 1814.
The atoll has one of the best harbors in the Pacific. It is quadrilateral in shape and 50 miles (80 km) in circumference. Its reef encloses a land-locked lagoon 12 miles (19 km) by eight (13 km). But it would be hazardous to live there - cyclones have often created waves which sweep right over the atoll since its small component of land is extremely low-lying.
Suwarrow is also famous for being the home of New Zealand hermit, Tom Neale, who stayed alone there from 1952 to 1954 and again from 1960 to 1963. His experiences were documented in his book An Island to Oneself.
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