In 1859, there were four unpleasant men that were
serving in the Peruvian Army as soldiers. They made very little money and were
always dreaming of a better life for themselves. The four men included Diego
Alvarez, a Spaniard; Killorain, an Irishman; Luke Barrett, an Englishman; and
Brown, an American. One of the men soon met Father Matteo, a priest who told the
man about a treasure that was in a church in the town of Pisco, Peru. The
treasure would not be easy to obtain. One first had to first find the treasure
that was hidden within the church and then get past the priests of the church
that guarded the treasure. The four men devised a plan to go to the church and
steal the treasure.
When they got to Peru and had located the church,
Alvarez and Killorain suddenly became devout Catholics. They attended mass at
the church with the treasure for some time and came to have a relationship with
the priests of the church as well as other members of the church. Once they had
established themselves as proper citizens of the church, they went to the
priests and warned them to be careful. They had heard stories of a Father Matteo
who was spreading stories that there was treasure within the church. They spoke
of how they also heard that Father Matteo was gathering together a group of
robbers to come and steal the treasure.
The priests became worried. They knew that there
was no possible way for the men to know about Father Matteo or the church’s
treasure on their own and believed that Father Matteo must really be trying to
steal the treasure. After some thinking and deliberating with the priests,
Alvarez came up with a way to keep the treasure safe. He and his friends could
place the treasure on their ship and take it to Callao. To keep the lot safe
while it was on route, Alvarez and his friends would be happy to guard the
treasure for the priests. The priests liked the plan and loaded onto the ship a
number of treasure pieces including doubloons, candlesticks encrusted in jewels,
assorted jewelry such as bracelets, necklaces, and rings, crucifixes, and uncut
stones.
The ship set out for its destination with some
crew, a few priests and four guards. After a few hours into their journey, the
four men killed everyone else on the ship. Alvarez came up with the plan that
they could abandon the ship and claim shipwreck so that no one would ever
suspect that they had murdered the others and robbed the ship. They could row to
Australia and then after some time, come back to reclaim their treasure. The
four men set sail for Tahiti to get supplies for their plan. Once they had
everything they needed, they travelled to a small coral reef and unloaded the
treasure there onto a smaller ship.
Because the reef had no harbor, they were not
entirely sure of where they were. Alvarez created a map but not knowing the
surrounding area very well made it very difficult and the map quite inaccurate.
They made their way to the nearby town of Katiu and Alvarez asked a local what
the name of the coral reef was. The man told him the name of the reef was Pinaki
and because Alvarez thought that the man may begin to wonder what the interest
was in the reef Alvarez shot him to prevent word spreading or the man going to
the reef himself and finding the treasure. Alvarez quickly became a wanted man
in the town after killing one of the locals and the four men had to quickly
leave the town. But the man had been mistaken and Pinaki was a reef far from the
reef that Alvarez had been at.
Just as they had planned, they continued on and
destroyed the ship so that they could row to Australia. Once there, the people
believed their story and the men lived very well off the little part of the
treasure that they had brought with them. However, due to some poor planning,
when it was time to reclaim the treasure, they found themselves somewhat short
of funds and needed to create more. They tried to find investors that would be
interested in a funding few prospectors with a treasure map but the investors
didn’t want a part of it so they decided to go work in the Palmer gold fields.
During their time working there, Alvarez and Barrett got into a fight with a few
natives and were killed. Killorain and Brown also found themselves in a fight
and they killed a man. For that they were arrested, convicted, and sentenced to
twenty years in prison. While they were serving their time, Brown died.
In 1912 a man by the name of Charles Howe lived near Sydney. He was at home one
night when a beggar came to the door looking for money. Howe thought that he was
the most frightful looking man he had ever seen. He invited him in, let him dry
off and eat some food and then the beggar went on his way. About four months
later, the Sydney hospital called Howe at his home and asked him to come in. The
beggar was there and needed to talk to someone. Howe was the only person he
could think of. When Howe arrived, the beggar told Howe of his story of how his
name was Killorain and he had spent much of his life in prison. He told Howe of
the other three men and the buried treasure that he was now too sick and old to
reclaim. He gave Howe Alvarez’s map and asked him to go get the treasure.
Howe left the hospital and started to investigate
the story. He found out that there had been a major theft from the church of
Pisco and that four men came to the town of Cooktown after claiming to have been
shipwrecked. He went back to the Sydney hospital to talk to Killorain but found
out that he had already died. Howe sold all he owned and set sail for Tahiti and
then move on to the small reef of Pinaki. In February of 1913, Howe set up to
live on Pinaki and he lived there for thirteen years, creating a grid and
looking for the treasure systematically. After coming up with nothing after all
that time, he went back to Tahiti and started to ask about the Bosun Bird, the
ship that had been shipwrecked off the small coral reek of Pinaki. He found out
that the ship had never been near Pinaki at all but it had been a different
coral reef.
Taking Alvarez’s map once again, he set sail
looking for the treasure. It didn’t take him long to find the jewels and the
doubloons and all he had left then was the gold. According to the map, it was at
the bottom of a pear-shaped pool. He searched the pool and found pieces of wood,
which he assumed were parts of the ship and was convinced that he was well on
his way to finding the rest of the treasure. However, he knew that he still had
the problem of pulling fourteen tons of gold out of the pool and he did not want
to ask any of the locals for help because he didn’t want them to know that he
had found anything, especially with them already knowing his location. Instead,
he reburied the jewels and the doubloons and went back to tell the locals that
he hadn’t found anything.
Howe moved back to Australia and gathered together
a small group of investors and prospectors that could help him go back to get
the treasure. While the plans were being made, Howe went out to the gold mines
to look for gold in 1932. He kept in touch with those that were still making
plans but then suddenly, all contact with Howe stopped and he was never heard
from again. Continuing on with their plans, the prospectors and investors went
to Tahiti to look for the gold in January 1934. They believed that they may have
found the reef that the treasure was buried but they had just begun to start
looking when they ran out of money. They went back to their investors and asked
for more money but the investors were no longer interested in funding this
seemingly-useless expedition.
The treasure has never been recovered and is still
buried on an island near Katiu and Makemo. For those very interested in being
the first ones to be able to uncover the treasure and keep it as their own, it
is known to be a deserted island while Alvarez and his men were camped there and
while Howe and his crew were working to find the treasure. On the eastern side
of the reef is a coral pinnacle and there is a small passageway to the left.
However, there is no harbour or place for a ship to enter. About three miles
from the passageway is the pear-shaped pool that is thought to have the gold.
