The story of the ship
Eider was reported by the French newspapers of year 1934, many of which are available on line, on the website
https://gallica.bnf.fr of our "Bibliothèque nationale" (National Library). Have a look for instance at
L’Ouest-Eclair for year 1934 at
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb32830550k/date1934 and you will read
- on Jan. 30: that ship
Eider left for Iceland on January 29 with a crew of 22
- on March 27: a first-page article entitled "No news of "Eider" for 57 days", with details on the ship, including the crew list with actually an Albert Culas
- on March 28: another articled telling that the shipowner has come back from Reykjavik with no news of his three-masted ship
- on April 4: "Still no news of Eider"
- on August 4: that the "Société de secours aux marins français naufragés" sends 14100 francs from Paris, to be shared between the families of the sailors lost with the three-masted ship.
So there was actually a French three-master called
Eider, which was not a yacht but a "terre-neuvas", i.e. one of those ships that left for months to go fishing on the banks of Newfoundland or (like in that case) along the coasts of Iceland.
Eider was unfortunately not the only one that disappeared without a trace. The remarkable thing about Culas is that his widow apparently believed he could have been stranded in the Pacific! A possible explanation may be that having only heard the name "Hull", she believed that was one of the places bearing the same name in the Atlantic, for there are several of them, first of all the English city of that name on the Humber estuary.
Sorry if that does not demonstrate with a 100% probability that Culas could not be our castaway. I am sure those who do not want AE to have been the one on Niku will better imagine extraordinary ways, for an unfortunate sailor, to make a raft and drift around America (the one or the other way) unnoticed, to the Phoenix islands ...
With best regards
Christophe