The Carpenter’s Daughter

Section 2

Fortunately we have a number of photographs taken between the date of the Earhart/Noonan disappearance and Emily’s departure from Nikumaroro which include the specific location she describes. If Emily could see the wreckage, we should be able to see it too. And we can, or at least we can see something that fits her general description of what she saw in the place where she says she saw it.

Photo courtesy E. Bevington.	Photo courtesy Wigram AFB Museum, New Zealand.

Note: to view larger versions of these photos click on the photos.

Photo #1 (left) is a copy-photo of a photograph taken by Eric Bevington in October 1937 during the first British evaluation of the island for future settlement. It shows the western shoreline of Nikumaroro and the northern side of the wreck of SS Norwich City which is, at that time, largely intact. The sea is quite calm and a line of low breakers delineates the outer edge of the reef. Just north of the shipwreck and just behind the line of breakers two objects, resembling a “dash” and a “dot,” are clearly visible.

Photo #2 (right)is a photograph taken in December 1938 by the New Zealand survey party which was on the island at that time. The camera is looking out through a hole in the north side of the SS Norwich City and shows the reef edge looking northward from the wreck. The photo is one of several dozen in a scrapbook of the expedition. The caption reads “Undertow through gap in side of Wreck.” Even though all we have is a photocopy of this snapshot it is still possible to make out what appear to be the same “dash” and “dot” objects on the reef which appear in the 1937 photo.

Neither of these photos have been altered or enhanced in any way, but even from these “raw” images it is apparent that there was something where Emily says there was airplane wreckage.

The objects in the photos are not there now but forensic examination of better copies of these and other photos might provide more information about what they were and where they went. Of course, we can’t tell from the black and white photos what color the objects were, but we should be able to get some idea of how big they were by scaling them to Norwich City whose dimensions we have. Could the airplane pieces have been, in fact, merely debris from the shipwreck? That doesn’t seem very likely. At the time the photos were taken the ship had not yet started to break up and when it did, the debris field scattered predominantly southeastward toward the shore and the main lagoon passage. Gales and high seas hit Nikumaroro almost exclusively from the northwest.

With photographic confirmation that there was something there, and in the absence of a good alternative explanation for what it might be, it makes sense to accept Emily’s second-hand identification of it as a working hypothesis. If further photographic research can establish that the material which is present in Bevington’s October 1937 photo (a contemporaneous, primary source document) is from an aircraft, the implications are obvious. Air traffic over the remote reaches of the Central Pacific prior to October 1937 was extremely rare and is very easy to catalog. Only one airplane from this period is missing.

But what about the bones? Emily quite clearly talks about two different groups of bones - one set which she associates with the airplane wreckage and other bones which she associates with the shipwreck. Of the former she said in the first interview with Tom King:

And in the second interview:

Aside from where she says the bones were found, her account actually tracks fairly well with the known facts. A Gilbertese work party found a skull which Koata knew about. The European (Gallagher) did find out about the skull (although apparently not from Koata) and conducted a search. Not many bones were found (a total of 13) and most of these were relatively large. Gallagher had a box made for the bones. In short, it does seem that the bones Emily associates with the airplane wreck are the bones that were actually found elsewhere on the island.

For another opinion see “Where Were The Bones” by Dr. Tom King.

Sorting out the bones associated with the shipwreck is more difficult. Emily told Tom King of “Maybe 10 different people whose bones were found along that area” (near the shipwreck). She is quite clear that these bones were found on land:

You would come up on the reef, then the beach comes up where the island shrubs start to grow. That is where the bones were found.

Emily’s account is consistent with the recollections of Gallagher’s clerk, Bauro Tikana, who wrote in 1991, “When we first arrived I saw the ship wreck and asked Mr. Gallagher about it. He told me that it was Norwich City. Later when the laborers were cleaning (clearing) the land they told me that they found bones near the ship. I do not know if Mr. Gallagher knew about the bones as I did not tell him about it. The laborers also told me they found bones at the other end of the atoll.”

Mr. Tikana marked a map showing that bones were found on shore near the shipwreck, but to show where the “other bones” were found he could only circle the entire southeast portion of the island. We know that there were eleven men lost in Norwich City wreck in 1929 and that three bodies washed up and were buried by the survivors. If the burials were not very deep and were on or close to the beach, it seems possible that they may have been uncovered by storms in the ensuing ten years or so. It’s also possible that other bodies from the wreck washed up after the survivors were rescued. However, if a body from the airplane wreck (Noonan?) also washed up or was buried on that same beach it could be indistinguishable from the shipwreck bones.

Emily Sikuli’s story, supported by historical documents and photographs, offers some long-sought answers to the riddle of the Earhart/Noonan disappearance. Whether or not they are the correct answers remains to be seen. They do, however permit us to adjust and refine the hypothesis we are attempting to test.

But as answers to old questions are offered, new questions arise. Why does Emily associate the bones so strongly with the airplane wreck? And why did Koata put the area off limits? It is apparent that this was done before Gallagher arrived and found the other bones and the artifacts. Why did the finding of just a skull on a different part of the island cause Koata to put the airplane wreck off limits? And why didn’t Koata, or anybody else, tell Gallagher about the plane?

These seem to suggest that the aircraft arrived at or near the place where Emily saw wreckage (map reference 1) and was quickly, perhaps within days, destroyed by the violent surf. In the ensuing years, storms further scattered the wreckage along the natural lines of force. Buoyant material would travel farthest and may account for Pulekai’s sighting of wreckage on the lagoon shore (map reference 2). Some non-buoyant wreckage might eventually be pulled back out over the reef edge but most of the aluminum should be scattered southeastward along the flat, as is indicated by Tapania’s piece of a wing and the 1953 photos (map reference 3). Storms could drive pieces of the wreck ashore anywhere to the leeward of its starting place where they might be found and used by the locals.

It is important to remember that, by itself, Emily’s anecdotal recollections do not prove anything, but just as garbled anecdotal accounts of bones being found on Nikumaroro eventually led us to archival sources which documented a fascinating but forgotten chapter in the Earhart puzzle, so Emily’s tale has set us on a trail that may lead us to whatever is left of NR16020.