Episode 35: The King

This is the story of the one.

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Some fears are obvious and visible.

A dark, cobweb-covered basement.

An old axe propped up in the corner of the garage with something red along its edge.

Maybe rust.

or maybe something else.

Many fears, you see, can be documented, even photographed.

But others can't.

Some fears are like the wind.

The only proof it exists is in the way it affects other things.

That cool feeling on your skin.

The way the leaves in the tree sway back and forth.

And just like the wind, there are fears that we can only point out thanks to their effects.

One of the best places to feel that breeze, so to speak, is Hollywood.

The stories that entertain us the most most seem to tap into the deep, unseen fears that we all struggle with.

It's like touching the tip of your tongue to a 9-volt battery.

You hate the sensation, but there's something disturbingly attractive about it.

One of the biggest themes to come out of Hollywood over the past few decades, by far, has been one of isolation, loss, and disaster.

Films like I Am Legend and Alien dip into this pool, as do small screen shows like The Walking Dead and Battlestar Galactica.

We're obsessed with the idea.

We fear it, but we also love it, because the questions feel important.

What would happen if humanity were reduced to a tiny population, left on the brink of extinction and fighting for survival?

In what ways would our civilization hold strong, and where would it crack?

Could we rediscover order?

Or would chaos consume us all?

You would think this would be an impossible concept to understand firsthand.

That human dignity and ethics would prevent us from testing it out to find the true answers.

That again, life is rarely ethical, and thanks to the events that took place on a small island in the Pacific just a century ago, we have answers.

Odds are, though, you won't like them.

I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore.

Roughly 1,000 miles due south of Cabo San Lucos, in the Pacific waters off the coast of Mexico and Central America, is an island.

Now when I say island, you probably conjure up an image of a large green mountain protruding from the water, with sandy beaches and luxury resorts along the coastline.

But that would be wrong.

This island is small.

Really small, in fact.

It's perhaps two miles long, but from the air, it's almost non-existent.

It's more of a coral ring than anything else, with very little vegetation.

If you can picture a coffee stain, like a dark ring on a white napkin, that's what I'm talking about.

Outside the ring, the waves of the Pacific crash against the shore.

Inside, though, is a freshwater lagoon.

It's not deep, but it's drinkable.

The first European to stumble upon it, as far as historians can tell, was a man named John Clipperton.

In the first two decades of the 1700s, he operated as a privateer, a pirate for hire, serving the British crown in its efforts to hinder Spanish expansion into Central America and Mexico.

Due to the tiny island's proximity to the western coast of Guatemala and Mexico, Clipperton set up base there.

For as tiny as the island is, it offered a surprising amount of space for Clipperton.

The highest point is a mere 95 feet above the ocean waves, but he found a number of serviceable caves, which he had his men expand for storage and defense.

But his time there was short-lived.

Clipperton Island, as it has become known, had another feature that attracted attention.

Guano.

The island was actually one of many that were mined to supply the growing need for the chemical elements found in the manure of birds, bats, and seals.

This guano would primarily be used to manufacture gunpowder and fertilizer, two products that growing nations lusted after.

Because of this, the island exchanged hands a number of times through the middle of the 19th century.

For a while, Mexico claimed ownership, but in 1856, the American government passed the Guano Islands Act, making it legal for U.S.

citizens to claim guano-rich islands no matter where they were located, so long as they were uninhabited and unclaimed by another country.

In the late 1800s, the French sent troops to annex the island.

They found a small group of American guano miners there and forced them out.

Mexico wasn't too happy about the French claim, though, and they argued about it for years.

While they did, in 1899, a group of industrious British men landed and got to work.

Not only did they start mining, but they built houses and created garden areas.

They even planted more palm trees.

These guys were serious about colonizing the island and wanted to do it right.

The island was more harsh than they realized, and by 1909 they had given up.

All but one of the Englishmen abandoned the island and headed home.

And that's when Mexico got serious.

In 1910, President Diaz threw 13 soldiers on a ship and transported them to Clipperton, where they would do their part in maintaining Mexican rule over the valuable resources there.

Thankfully, when they arrived, they found the homes and the buildings that the British had constructed, empty and waiting for them.

There was even a recently built lighthouse, complete with its own keeper.

But it wasn't just 13 men with guns who made the trip.

Most of these men brought wives with them, you see.

And there were children, and servants, and all the supplies they would need to settle in and build a life there.

Sure, no one had been able to make go of it so far.

Sure, the island was nearly inhospitable.

And sure, it was expensive and difficult to transport supplies to these people.

But they were determined.

By 1910, nearly 100 people had begun to call the island their home.

Even more would be born there in the years to come.

What none of them could foresee, though, was just how many of them would die there.

One of those 13 soldiers was a man named Ramon Arnaud.

He was a 33-year-old military officer with a checkered past.

Within months of his enlistment years before, he had deserted his post.

It resulted in him spending over five months in a military prison.

and then through a series of unappealing command assignments.

Clipperton Island was, to him, just one more piece of that punishment, whether or not it came with the title of governor.

Children were born in those first few years.

Governor Arnaud and his wife Alicia welcomed their first child, Ramon Jr., in 1910, and two more followed over the next three years.

During that time, life was a dull rhythm of island life and the occasional resupply ship.

But that was all about to change.

Sometime in 1914, the supply ships from Acapulco stopped coming.

With a frequency of every two months, it was probably hard to tell if the ship was just late or if plans had changed.

I imagine everyone on the island watched the horizon daily for a sign of help.

Without that ship, they were essentially stranded, and every day that ticked by was another attack against their dwindling supply of hope.

In the late summer of 1914, a ship did show up, but this one was American.

It brought supplies, but its real mission was to pick up the last remaining member of the British mining crew who had stayed behind five years earlier.

While there, the ship's captain informed Governor Arnaud of the situation back home.

Not only had Mexico erupted into revolution, but the world was now at war following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria.

They'd seen nothing like it, and he had no idea if or when it would stop.

Perhaps, he suggested, Arnon and his community would like to come home just to be safe.

Arnand declined, and the community soon watched the Americans vanish over the horizon.

By 1915 though, that decision was beginning to feel flawed.

The vegetable garden that the British had installed had started to fall apart.

The only naturally occurring food on the island was a small supply of coconuts and whatever fish and birds they could hunt.

But what those foods lacked was vitamin C.

And so by late late 1915, many on the island had scurvy.

We tend to treat scurvy lightly, making pirate jokes about it when we're out with friends, but the reality of the disease is more horrible.

The symptoms begin with bleeding gums and sore spots, and eventually grow into depression, immobility, and open wounds.

In the end, someone suffering from scurvy simply bleeds to death, and without vitamin C, those around them can only helplessly watch it all end.

The people died off one or two at a time.

The disease seemed to favor adult men, and as the population dropped like a lead weight, the survivors struggled to bury their dead deep enough to keep them out of reach of the island's crabs.

By 1916, nearly all of the men were dead, and many of the women and children as well.

All told, there were perhaps two dozen survivors at this point.

Arnaud was motivated.

His wife Alicia was pregnant with their their fourth child, and if his family was going to survive, they needed to find help.

It was probably while they were all studying the dark storm clouds on the horizon that they spotted the ship.

They tried jumping and waving their arms, but there was no sign that the passing vessel saw them.

It was just too far away, and the approaching storm probably made it too dark to see them anyway.

The hope was slipping right past them, and they were helpless.

Out of desperation, Arnaud made the decision to gather the last of the men into the only boat on the island and row after the passing ship, hoping to catch its attention.

Their lives depended on it.

It was probably their last chance, after all.

And so they rowed hard and fast into the rough waters.

Historians aren't sure what happened next.

There might have been a struggle in the boat, according to some witnesses.

Or the small boat might have started to take on water.

What we do know is that the men stood up and seemed to grapple with each other, only to capsize the boat and toss them all into the sea.

And there, within sight of their families, all of the men drowned.

But Alicia Arnaud did not have time for heartache.

The storm that had been on the horizon was upon them within just two hours of the tragedy.

The three remaining women, along with perhaps half a dozen children, all gathered in the basement of the Arnad's home to take shelter.

And that's when Alicia went into labor.

She named her new son, Aniel, Angel, and he was the last good news they would experience for years.

When the women stepped out of the basement the following morning, the rest of the house was gone.

The storm had destroyed everything, it seems.

All of the homes, all of the gardens, even some of the palm trees were gone.

But something new was there as well.

Someone, actually.

Victoriano Alvarez.

the reclusive lighthouse keeper.

They knew he'd been there, of course, but he was seen so infrequently that most had already forgotten about him.

He's described by historians as mentally unstable, and a lack of social skills drove him to hide in the lighthouse for years from others.

How he got supplies, though, I have no clue.

Alvarez was a giant, tall, powerful, and menacing.

He must have been a shocking sight to the surviving women.

as they pushed their way free from the wreckage of their home.

But there he was, and he had a mission.

He wandered around the ruined settlement and gathered all of the weapons together.

Some reports say that he tossed most of them into the deeper part of the lagoon, while others say that he took them all back to the lighthouse.

Whatever he did with them, the message was the same.

I am the law now, he was telling them.

I am your only hope.

Alvarez set himself up as king over the island, with no other men men to challenge him and only three young women who were doing their best to keep the children alive.

But it wasn't a glorious reign.

No, Alvarez quickly became a nightmare for everyone there.

The three women were helpless to stop him.

For the next three years, Alvarez would rape, abuse, threaten, and beat the women like some sort of primitive clan elder.

He would often choose one of them to return to the lighthouse with him.

He would only send her back to the others when he grew tired of her company.

And none of the women angered Alvarez more than 20-year-old Tirza Randon.

Maybe it was her youthful rebelliousness or her sheer will to live, but Randon constantly made life difficult for the lighthousekeeper.

When she was with him, she was quick to voice her hatred of him, and when she was back in the settlement, she was a loud voice of dissent.

They needed to find a way to escape, but without without a visiting ship that seemed like a hopeless option.

Alvarez though was a monster and something needed to be done.

And he had made a mistake.

You see, he thought of his captives as just women.

Yes, he was stronger.

Yes, he was armed.

And yes, he seemed to be in control.

But Alicia and the others weren't just women.

No, they were survivors.

They were human beings fighting for dignity and safety.

And they were powerful in their own ways.

So when Alvarez walked into their collection of primitive shelters in July of 1917 and demanded that Alicia be the next to report to his lighthouse, they saw their chance.

The following morning, Arnaud and Randon both walked to the lighthouse with Ramon Jr.

in tow, now seven years old.

When they arrived, Alvarez was outside cooking a bird he had managed to capture.

That must have been a rare thing, as the women later described him as smiling.

But that smile melted away as he saw Randon approaching with Alicia.

There was an argument.

Alvarez wanted to know why she had brought the other woman with her.

And while the giant of a man was busy shouting about it at Arnod, the other woman slipped silently into the lighthouse.

When Randon came back out through the doorway, Alicia gave her a tiny nod.

Alvarez saw this, and he turned to see what was behind him, but it was too late.

Later, all three women were standing in their settlement on top of a hill that was crisscrossed by overgrown paths used by the mining companies years before.

And it was at that moment that they saw the rowboat.

It was a whaler launched from an American gunship called the Yorktown, anchored farther out at sea.

It was a Lieutenant Kerr who landed on the beach, and after speaking with the women, he brought all of the survivors back to the ship with him.

There, they were presented to the commander of the gunship, a man named H.P.

Peril, who listened to their story with deep interest.

They told him of their ordeal during the past three years, and of the maniacal lighthouse keeper who had held them captive through force and violence.

Where is he now?

Commander Peril asked them.

Dead, Alicia told him, and then added, as if to clarify the matter.

From scurvy.

Some people view humanity as just one more member of the animal kingdom.

And much like a dog left alone in a house for hours, it's in our nature to create chaos and destruction when we're left to our own devices.

We need rules and boundaries, these people would say, if we have any hope of maintaining order and civilization.

Others, though, would disagree.

They would say that our tendency towards society and culture is innate.

that it's written into our DNA, right alongside things like the blueprints for our circulatory system and eye color.

We're hardwired to build community, and it's merely the trials of life that push us off course from time to time.

But both can be equally true, I suppose.

What if humanity is really more of a creature in the balance?

The events that played out on Clipperton a century ago certainly show us both sides of that coin.

Some leaned toward order and peace, while others became animals.

Lieutenant Kerr and Commander Peril witnessed this firsthand.

After listening to the story of the survivors on the Yorktown, both men returned to the island later that day.

They wanted to see for themselves who this monster was that had terrorized the women for so long, dead or alive.

Both of them had seen scurvy kill men before, so They weren't afraid of what they'd find.

After walking the path from the beach and up the hill to the lighthouse, the men found the door wide open, so they stepped inside.

It was eerily quiet inside the dimly lit room, but it didn't take long for them to figure out why.

Stretched out on the floor was the body of the largest man either of them had ever seen.

Blood had pooled around the corpse, filling in low spots in the stone floor.

But their eyes were drawn away, toward an area of the floor beyond the man's shoulders.

Two objects had been tossed there, a knife and a hammer.

Both were small, easy weapons for a malnourished woman to hold and swing, and both of them were covered in blood.

The two Americans looked at each other from across the body of the King of Clipperton Island.

but neither of them said a word.

They knew what had happened, what had really brought an end to the man on the floor, but neither wanted to remark upon it.

With a nod, they turned and left the building.

The survivors were safe, and that was all that mattered to them.

The island could keep its king.

Alicia Arnaud would tell us that some people truly are monsters deep in their core.

Alvarez certainly was one of them.

But she also advocated a very risky balance, a wagering of her soul in the pursuit of freedom.

Because sometimes,

even if only in the rarest of rare circumstances, we have to become the monster in order to defeat it

and then hope that we can change back.

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This episode of Lore was researched, written, and produced by me, Aaron Mankey.

Lore is much more than a podcast.

There's a book series in bookstores around the country and online, and the second season of the Amazon Prime television show was recently released.

Check them both out if you want more lore in your life.

I also make two other podcasts, Aaron Mankey's Cabinet of Curiosities and Unobscured, and I think you'd enjoy both.

Each one explores other areas of our dark history, ranging from bite-sized episodes to season-long dives into a single topic.

You can learn about both of those shows and everything else going on all over in one central place: theworldoflore.com/slash now.

And you can also follow the show on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Just search for lore podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button.

When you do, say hi.

I like it when people say hi.

And as always, thanks for listening.

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