James Brown of Cranston sat down and wrote a letter to John C. Newbury, the Collector of Customs. “I hope you will pardon the liberty I am taking in writing to you but I thought you were the best one to write to. I know that several expeditions have been fitted out from your place for the famous Cocos Island treasure. The last one, I believe, was the brig Blakely, which failed to find it,” he penned. “The reason it cannot be found is because it is no longer on Cocos Island. It was there once but was later removed from there in the latter part of 1849 and planted on another Island of the South Pacific and I was one of the men who moved it and the only one living who now knows where it is. Will you be kind enough to show this letter to anyone whom you think would be interested? I want to start another expedition for the treasure and would be glad to communicate with anyone in the matter.”

John Brown was born in 1834 and had taken to the seas as a teenager. Eventually he became a ship’s captain after gaining enough experience. In 1849, when he was just barely 16 years old, he took a position as second mate to Captain Henry Smith who was taking his schooner Sea Foam on a pearl fishing expedition. After they were on the open sea, Smith allegedly confessed to Brown that it was not really pearls he was after; it was buried treasure.

According to the story Brown would later tell for the rest of his life, Smith’s father had loaded a great deal of treasure onto the schooner Black Witch in 1822, after helping to rob Spanish ships off the coast of Peru. The ships were said to be carrying diamonds, gold, rubies and valuable items from Peruvian churches. For a variety of reasons, he and his co-conspirators never went back for the loot and eventually he was the only member of the party remaining alive. Before his death, he told his son the story.

John Brown would forever swear that he and Smith located the treasure during that faux pearling trip, exhumed it and moved it to another tropical island. Brown supposedly made a detailed map at that time so that Smith could one day go back and claim the goods. But, before that could happen, Smith died, leaving Brown with a treasure map. The map documented the treasure being reburied in the Thousand Islands. He needed a crew to physically and financially assist him in going to claim the goods and, knowing that most people wouldn’t believe the story, he started exhibiting the coins he had taken from the secret stash back in 1849. He also began writing letters to anyone who might help him make the right connections.

It was not until he left Cranston for a visit to San Francisco, however, that the ball got rolling. At the hotel in San Francisco, he met a man named George Luce, a doctor who was so enthralled by the idea of treasure-hunting that he took the reins and got a crew of investors gathered. Numerous people were greatly interested in partnering up with Brown for this once-in-a-lifetime quest for riches. Wealthy, successful men freely invested their money in the expedition with the expectation of bringing back even more. More than fifty men invested anywhere from $10 to $2,000, bringing the total investment to $25,000. An assemblage of 15 treasure hunters set out to sea from San Francisco aboard the schooner Herman on July 20, 1902 without any shadow of a doubt. Brown’s tale was so detailed and his yellowed map of the South Seas, complete with exciting markings of where the fifty-million-dollar treasure lied, seemed to promise an easy windfall.

But nothing was easy. As they got underway, Brown decided it was not safe to go to the island at that time and they would all spend the winter in Sydney, Australia and set back out on their trip in the spring. There, they watched their trusty captain drain their hopes. One of the investors, G.W. Sutton, later said that Brown was constantly buying liquor and was almost always drunk. He and the others later recalled how Brown even attempted to sell the schooner and leave them all stranded there. Very concerned over the state of things, the men contacted the American consul and asked for assistance. With their help, Sutton replaced Brown as captain and they sailed away from Sydney toward their original goal. Quite upset by the turn of events, Brown allegedly became violent and began beating on the investors and threatening to kill them. They even found poison aboard which they were certain he was going to attempt to end their lives with.

In reality, Brown was the only person who could lead them to the treasure, if there was one, so they begged him to please make good on his agreement to take them there. Brown reportedly laughed in response and told them the whole thing had been a joke. There was no other option, at that point, than to go ashore, sell the schooner, and go back to America, now financially strained. There was public outcry over Brown being a fraud and he was arrested. His defense was that the spirits of dead pirates had warned him that it was simply not a good time to unearth the treasure.

Brown’s failed expedition would not be the first or last time a great deal of money was spent in seeking the Cocos Island loot. After the Blakely expedition produced nothing, the stock company which financed the trip fell into financial ruin and the owners were forced to sell the boat just to be able to pay the wages of the crew they’d hired.

Sir Henry Palliser, Admiral of the British Navy, put together his own costly expedition, using several hundred military personnel to assist him aboard the cruiser Amphion. The crew located a huge iron-hinged trapdoor on Cocos Island, perfectly matching the description of a trapdoor leading to the treasure which Palliser had read about in an old Spanish document. Before they could get past the tunnel entrance, a massive tropical storm began to rage and buried the entrance over 100 feet deep. The public was so angered over Palliser utilizing the military for such nonsense that he soon retired from his position.

In Feb. of 1909, John Brown decided to try his luck again. He set out to get the treasure aboard the steamer Mariposa. The 75-year-old was determined to finally claim the loot before he died. It does not appear that he was successful. He died without riches in Maine during the winter of 1921.

Until it was officially named a National Park in 1978, hundreds of people continued sailing to Cocos Island in search of pirate booty. Over 300 known expeditions were unsuccessful. Located in the Pacific Ocean about 300 miles southwest of the Costa Rican mainland, the island’s fabled treasures apparently remain safely embedded in the earth. And there may be yet another horde of riches in the Thousand Islands, allegedly transferred there by a Cranston man who was either a believable con artist or a determined sea captain with an authentic treasure map pointing to a financial windfall which has never been claimed.

Kelly Sullivan is a Rhode Island columnist, lecturer and author.