Spanish Gold Lured Them
High on a hilltop on the backside of Catalina Island is a very special cave. Its location is a well-guarded secret and even most island residents are not aware of its existence, let alone its location.
Sprouting out of a hilltop on the island’s windward side is a collection of large boulders, jumbled around in such a way that deep within lies a maze of passageways, a large chamber and a number of smaller ones. In anthropology circles, Torqua Cave’s claim to fame is that it is the site of some of the only indigenous petroglyphs found in California’s Channel Islands.
Like many caves found around the world, Torqua Cave holds a special place in the lore of the native peoples of the area and is believed to be the site of various religious and shamanistic rituals. But the cave also figures into a buried treasure story and the exploits of none other than Sir Francis Drake centuries ago.
In the early 1900s, a man named John Ryan, who claimed to be a descendent of Drake’s, was researching his family genealogy in an undisclosed “old, obscure library” somewhere in Europe when he chanced upon a journal entry from Drake’s voyage to the west coast of North America in 1579. Accompanying the entry was a map. A treasure map.
According to the journal entry, Drake’s ship, the Golden Hinde, came upon a flotilla of three Spanish galleons during a storm off the coast of California. Drake and his men pursued one of the ships, captured it and plundered it of all its treasures. The other two galleons escaped, but only temporarily.
Fearful that they were next on Drake’s hit list, the remaining two galleons quickly sailed to the windward side of Catalina Island where they landed and buried most or perhaps all of their treasure and drew up the infamous map accordingly.
Drake eventually caught up with the other two galleons and after seizing them on the high seas, was disappointed to learn that they no longer held their treasure. But while searching the vessels, he found the treasure map, the same map that Ryan would find more than three centuries later.
But Drake knew he was pressing his luck by staying in these waters. He knew that sooner or later the Spanish would be sending warships out to hunt for him. He knew that the hunter would soon become the hunted.
That disturbing realization, and the fact that his ship was already loaded to the gunnels with plundered treasure, forced him to set sail for home. He never returned to the coast of California and therefore could never have collected the treasure himself.
Now armed with the map, Drake’s descendent John Ryan came to the island and, based on the instructions given on the map, apparently had little difficulty finding the cave.
According to an article titled “Spanish Gold Lures Them,” which appeared in the August 21, 1911, edition of the Los Angeles Times, Ryan did indeed find some of the treasure buried in the cave. The article says that Ryan estimated that the value of the rest of the treasure could amount to $30 million, an amount that in today’s coinage would come to a staggering one billion dollars.
Ryan then set about enlisting the help of a man named Andrew Bolton, believed to be a pseudonym for the well-known Avalon luminary Charles Frederick Holder, founder of the world famous Tuna Club. For obvious reasons, Holder would have wanted his identity to remain a secret.
It was common practice in Drake’s time for a ship’s crew to bury only “decoy” portions of greater treasures. If this was the case and if Ryan and Bolton both took that into account, it can be assumed that they spent at least a little time and effort trying to find it as well. Since the rest of the treasure could have been buried literally anywhere within a radius of probably a mile or two, it would have been a difficult feat, to say the least.
Whether or not the two were successful in finding the rest of the treasure in Torqua Cave is unknown. No other newspaper articles on the matter appeared in any journals and the two men drifted off to their respective places in history. Like so many of the tales in Catalina’s history, the trail runs cold just when things are getting hot.
Even if our dynamic duo had indeed been successful in finding the original “decoy” buried treasure, which is entirely possible, odds are they never found the rest of it.
That means that somewhere out there, buried in the hills of the island’s windward side, an incalculable fortune may still be waiting for someone with the right luck and the right pluck to dig it up.
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