The Lost Ship of the Desert is the subject of legends about various historical maritime vessels having supposedly become stranded and subsequently lost in the deserts of the American Southwest, most commonly in California's Colorado Desert. Since the period following the American Civil War, stories about Spanish treasure galleons buried beneath the desert sands north of the Gulf of California have emerged as popular legends in American folklore.
Stories The "Lost Galleon" The earliest tales of a lost Spanish galleon appeared shortly after the Colorado River flood of 1862. Colonel Albert S. Evans reported seeing such a ship in 1863. In the Los Angeles Daily News of August 1870, the ship was described as a half-buried hulk in a drying alkali marsh or saline lake, west of Dos Palmas, California, and 40 miles north of Yuma, Arizona. It could easily be viewed at a distance of several miles from a mesa that lay between Dos Palmas and Palma Seca, California. The stories have given Palma Seca other names: Soda Springs, Indian Springs, and Bitter Springs, as the area was not well mapped in 1870. Expeditions were sent out in search of her, but the ship had either never existed or had vanished into the sand and mud once again. The Galleon, according to legend, is now under the waters of the modern Salton Sea.
There are those who claim the ship is Thomas Cavendish's Content, filled with pirate plunder; others claim that she is the Iqueue, a ship of Spanish mutineers.
Pearl ship of Juan de Iturbe This legend may refer to the same ship as the Lost Galleon, but its own story has always placed it in a distinct location, closer to the sand hills west of El Centro, California. Descriptions suggest it is closer to the size of one of Christopher Columbus' small caravels. The pearl ship is rumored to have been seen as recently as the 1970s.
The story goes that in 1615, Spanish explorer Juan de Iturbe embarked on a pearl-harvesting expedition, during which his crew sailed a shallow-drafted caravel up the Gulf of California. A high tidal bore carried him across a strait into Lake Cahuilla, a saltwater lake periodically connected to the gulf which was already in the process of drying up permanently. After exploring the lake for several days, Iturbe found himself unable to sail out again, whereupon he beached his craft and made his way back to the nearest Spanish settlement on foot, leaving behind a fortune in black pearls.
Iturbe's alleged ship has been seen and lost several times, and there are several stories about it having been looted. A mule driver traveling with the de Anza expeditions through Alta California was said to have removed the pearls in 1774. In 1907, a farmhand named Elmer Carver noticed odd-shaped fence posts while working on Niles Jacobsen's farm in Imperial, California. Mrs. Jacobsen claimed a wind storm had revealed the remains of a ship, which the Jacobsens had repurposed into a fence. Mr. Jacobsen had also found gems which he sold in Los Angeles.
Ferry boat or river schooner This story grew out of an effort to explain or debunk the Lost Galleon story. It is thought that an abandoned ferry or steamboat that had broken away during a Colorado River flood and had been left dry in the vast sands of the river delta is the origin of the rumors. Others claim that it was a schooner that gold-seekers wishing to search the more inaccessible portions of the Colorado River had built in Los Angeles and hauled through the desert by a mule or oxen team until the animals perished, leaving the boat mired in soft sand.
The ferry boat story changed over time more often than the Lost Galleon story. One incarnation said that a small ferry (a two-man sweep) was built away from the river in a place a hundred feet or so above sea level, where a source of wood was found, and that a team of six (or more) oxen perished hauling it through the sand near Los Algodones.Los Angeles Daily Star, 31 May 1862.
Evaluation of the legends From a smattering of first-, second- and third-hand accounts, a variety of fictional (especially graphic and cinematic) variations of the Lost Ship stories have been created. Not surprisingly, the first-hand accounts are extremely rare. Many of the above references fit the Lost Mines and Urban Legends molds, where the story passes from ear to ear with all evidence disappearing along the way.
Searching for and finding the remains of a Lost Ship is now rather problematic. The greater part of the Salton Sink has been submerged under the Salton Sea since 1905, and much of the adjacent land is under military control and has even been used for bombing ranges, rendering on-the-ground searches highly hazardous and/or illegal.
Lands adjacent to Laguna Salada in Baja California, and between the Gulf of California and the Salton Sea, regularly receive wind-blown sand from the desiccated delta of the much-diverted Colorado River, generating vast sand dune systems. Aerial searches using ground-penetrating radar might reveal ships' remains, but there has not yet been an agency that undertook this project and revealed its findings. Whether or not any such ships actually existed, the legends persist and remain entertaining to many.
Around AD 1500, the lake was 26 times the present size of the Salton Sea, at which time the water would have been 40 feet above sea level according to data from ArcGIS.ArcGIS Hub, "Shoreline of Ancient Lake Cahuilla" Add to this the quite large tide swings as well as possible increase from rains, and it seems that navigation may have been quite possible. It has flooded and dried eight times between 1824 and 1905. In 1540 Spanish explorer Diaz was in the area, and by 1700 to 1750 the lake had infilled. Presently there is a "high ground" in Northern Mexico, of 23 feet, or 6+m. Thus a ship of 8 foot draft would need to have an additional 30 feet of water, above "sea level". While "king tides" of summer and winter are the highest, and conceivably a storm surge could add further water building up, wind-blown up the Sea of Cortez, 30 feet of additional depth seems highly unlikely.
Media renditions of Lost Ship stories This is a media timeline list of material related to the "lost ship" in the California desert; it shows how the story has changed in each generation's telling.
Note: Although most written items are a paragraph or more long, and sometimes lengthy articles, some are only a brief sentence or two in passing of what the author had heard and thought about a ship in the desert story.
1800s 1870 The Galaxy, V.10, No.1, Jan. 1870 (New York newspaper) "In the Valley of the Shadow" by Albert S. Evans Reprinted 1873 in Evans' book, "A la California, Sketches of Life in the Golden State." * Autumn of 1863 – Evans' horse died, leaving him to walk out from the Colorado Desert's Dos Palmas westward toward Palma Seca, where Evans saw the lost ship. 1870 Los Angeles News, Aug. 1870 (California newspaper) "Interesting Discovery" (see: 1953 Nov. "The Calico Print") * Indians report a ship emerging from a drying alkaline marsh. 1870 Sacramento Union, Oct. 6, 1870 (California newspaper) "Dateline Los Angeles?" (see: 1977 July Lost Treasure magazine) * Article about men from San Bernardino seeking the ship. 1870 Sacramento Union, Oct. 13, 1870 (California newspaper) "Dateline Los Angeles?" (see: 1977 July "Lost Treasure" magazine) * Article about ship hunters returning without discovery. 1870 Sacramento Union, Nov. 16, 1870 (California newspaper) "Dateline Los Angeles?" (see: 1977 July "Lost Treasure" magazine) * Article about new search for fossil boat. 1870 Proceedings of California Academy of Sciences, Nov. 21, 1870 (California journal) notes of regular monthly meeting * Albert S. Evans tells about the two different times he saw the ship; not a mirage, nor Martin Vise's oxen-hauled schooner. 1870 Chicago Tribune, Dec. 20, 1870 (Chicago, Illinois newspaper) "Finding of the desert ship" * report of a ship found on the Colorado desert 1870 San Bernardino Guardian, Dec. 31, 1870 (California newspaper) "The Search for the Lost Ship" (see: 1953 Nov. "The Calico Print") * Joshua Talbot leaves Clusker party, having found nothing. 1871 San Bernardino Guardian, Jan. 14, 1871 (California newspaper) "Return of the Ship Prospectors" (see: 1953 Nov. "The Calico Print") * The Clusker party returns, not having found the ship. 1871 Proceedings of California Academy of Sciences, July 3, 1871 (California journal) notes of regular monthly meeting * Author concludes based on correspondence that the ship is an optical illusion. 1871 Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, Oct. 21, 1871: P. 8-9 (Worcester, Massachusetts journal) notes of annual meeting * A report on what the California Academy of Sciences had previously reported. 1872 Sacramento Union, Sept. 30, 1872 (California newspaper) "Dateline Los Angeles?" (see: 1947 "Gold Guns & Ghost Towns" by Chalfant) * The "Arizona" desert ship proves to be a ferryboat. 1873 Inyo Independent, Sept. 27, 1873 (California newspaper) "? Lost Ship? " (see: 1977 July "Lost Treasure" magazine) * James expedition found mast of ship. 1873 A La California: Sketches of life in the Golden State (book – chapter IX, p. 201) by Albert S. Evans, 1873 * Same as Evans' 1870 "Shadow of Death" newspaper account; this book was published after his death at sea. 1874 The Ship in the Desert (book of verse / poem) by Joaquin Miller, 1874 published by Roberts Brothers, Boston, and by Chapman & Hall, London. * The British edition is not quite the same as the American edition; Miller rewrote his poem. * Men battle over a beautiful Indian maiden; everyone dies at the ship in the desert. 1875 "The Ship in the Desert" (poem) by W. T. Grant & Pap Walker written in 1875, Olancha, California. published in Desert Padre (book) by Joan Brooks, 1997. * The desert ship as a sort of Flying Dutchman in Death Valley. 1878On the Frontier: Reminiscences of Wild Sports, Personal Adventures, and Strange Scenes (book, p. 244) by J. S. Campion, 1878 * Mission Indians & Monks of Lower California have a tradition of a wreck freighted with gold from Arizona – the Spanish "El Dorado" Author knew of two well-equipped expeditions that nearly perished of thirst while searching for the ship near Dos Palmas, California. 1881 Reminiscences of a Ranger, or Early times in Southern California (book, p.. 423) by Major Horace Bell, 1881 * Story about Joshua Talbot finding a mule-hauled boat built by Perry & Woodworth of Los Angeles. 1886Chicago Tribune Sept. 12, 1886 (Chicago, Illinois newspaper) "Whence came the ship?" * A MYSTERY OF THE FAMOUS SO-CALLED COLORADO DESERT 1886 Atlanta Constitution Sept. 20, 1886 (Atlanta, Georgia newspaper) "The Stranded Ship" * a mystery of the famous so-called Colorado desert 1886 Boston Daily Globe, Sept. 26, 1886 (Boston, Mass. newspaper) "Whence the ship?" p. 17 * A Mystery of the Colorado Desert. Unsuccessful Effort of a Prospector to Examine the Hulk. A Padre's Theory that it May Have Been a Gold-Laden Galleon. 1889 American Notes and Queries, Sept. 14, 1889 (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, magazine) Ed. by William S. Walsh: "The Ship in the Desert" * Story about finding frame of small two-sweeper ferry boat that was hauled by half a score or more of bull-teams which mostly perished. 1889 Los Angeles Times, Oct. 6, 1889 (Los Angeles, Calif. newspaper) "The Ship of the Desert" * The Phantom ship of California 1889 Sandusky Daily Register, Nov. 16, 1889 (Sandusky, Ohio newspaper) "The Phantom Ship" * The hulk buried in the sands of the Colorado desert 1890 Atlanta Constitution, July 27, 1890 (Atlanta, Georgia newspaper) "A Ship of the Desert" by Paul Grant * a traveler had found in the desert of Colorado a dismantled ship 1891 Ohio Democrat, Jan. 8, 1891 (New Philadelphia, Ohio newspaper) * a Mysterious Vessel said to have been seen in the Colorado desert 1891Galveston Daily News, Feb. 1, 1891 (Galveston, Texas newspaper) "A Ship in the desert"