Transport: Coffin Island Castaways

A favorite pastime among pirates of the Spanish Main was to set men adrift in small boats or maroon them on desert islands. Caja de Muertos (Coffin) Island, a few miles off the southern shore of Puerto Rico, is supposed to be the original of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, on which, as every schoolboy knows, pirates marooned Ben Gunn. Last week, out of the ocean near Coffin Island came reports of an amazing revival of such piratical practice.

The freighter West Mahwah of the Pacific Argentine Brazil Line has lately been held in San Juan, P. R., by a crew strike (TIME, Nov. 9). One night last weekit finally cleared the harbor. Few days later, into the office of U. S. District Attorney A. Cecil Snyder marched four ragged youths, three of them Puerto Ricans, the fourth a 16-year-old from Washington, D. C. named Rothwell Burke. Filing complaints against the West Mahwah, young Burke and two of his companions signed affidavits to the following story:

They had stowed away on the West Mahwah but were discovered at midnight, two hours after sailing. Furious, Captain Hansen at once ordered a few pieces of painters’ staging spliced together, gave the boys two bottles of water and a loaf of bread, set them adrift. At dawn the four castaways sighted Coffin Island 15 miles away, tried to reach it by paddling with their hands. They were still far away that afternoon when the fishing smack Desafio picked them up, carried them to Ponce, P. R.

Attorney Snyder appealed to the U. S. Coast Guard and Department of Justice for advice. Each began an investigation, but a Department of Justice lawyer in Washington presently announced that there is no law covering the situation. Said he: “There are many crimes on the seas for which we have no laws. If the castaways had been members of the crew the case would have been very different, but legal rights of stowaways are problemtical.”

Queried at the home office in San Francisco, the Pacific Argentine Brazil Line declared that Capt. Hansen had radioed that the whole affair was a hoax. Snorted the Line: “The incident has been grossly exaggerated.”