“…Many vessels were wrecked on Gardner Island in the old days, the survivors dying lonely deaths. Captain Ross found mounds above the graves of sailors when he visited the island 30 years ago, but the skeleton of the last to die was nowhere seen. Over the whole island there is that brooding spirit of desolation which only uninhabited places have….”
http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&cl=search&d=AS19291202.2.50&srpos=8&e=-------50--1----0%22gardner+island%22+wreck--
The
Too Many Bones section of the
Evaluating Emily report (
http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/Bulletins/15_Carpentersdaught/15_Evaluation.html) tries to make sense of Emily Sikuli's recollection that the bones of about 10 people were found near the wreck of the Norwich City. In this discussion we are told that Gallagher's clerk, Baura Tikana, marked a spot near the Norwich City wreck where bones were found by the colonists clearing land near the shipwreck. Those bones were presumably those of the three Norwich City crewman buried while the survivors of the wreck were awaiting rescue.
Baura Tikana also indicated that "other bones" were found on the island however "he could only circle the entire southeast portion of the island" to indicate where those bones were found. Perhaps Baura Tikana was thinking of castaway reported by Gallagher but he couldn't remember the exact location where these bones were found and thus circled a large area. On the other hand, Captain Ross's recollection of seeing the several grave sites on his visits to Gardner ca. 1900 suggests that maybe by 'other bones' Baura Tikana meant the bones of
several other people, found at various locations around the southeast of the island and thus he couldn't mark a specific location on the map.
This interpretation is admittedly a far out one--why would we have no report of these other castaways from Gallagher?...but I couldn't resist offering it as improbable as it seems.
Speculating sure is fun, isn't it?...
I should also mention here that strangely enough Emily Sikuli's recollections that remains of about 10 people were seen by the early colonists is corroborated by the statements made by John William Jones, an employee of Burns-Phillips, when he was interviewed on Hull Island in 1937 by Itasca personnel (
http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/ResearchPapers/Phoenixislands.html). Jones said that the remains of 9 sailors from the Norwich City 'now lie on the beach' there (after being dug up by the non-existant pigs of Gardner Island...). I have always thought that Emily simply had a faulty recollection of decades-old events, but what Jones told the Itasca in 1937 does sort of match what Emily told Tighar many years later. Hard to believe, and yet quite a coincidence if there was no underlying kernel of truth.
Note added after original post: Jones didn't say where on the the island the bones of 9 sailors were seen, so I suppose they could be the Captain Ross castaways, uncovered and conveniently on display on the beach for Jones' visit to Gardner.