J: Jacolliot to Jubmel 151
The S.S. Jesmond
A ship associated with the controversial discovery of Atlantis in 1882. On March
1, the 1,465-ton steam schooner was on a routine transatlantic voyage bound from
France to New Orleans with a cargo of dried fruit, when Captain David Amory
Robson observed “the singular appearance of the sea” some 200 miles southwest
of Madeira. Great billows of mud clouded the water, together with a vast carpet
of dead fish numbering an estimated .5 million tons spread over 7,500 square
miles. At the same moment, a slight submarine volcanic eruption was reported by
monitoring stations in the Azores and Canaries.
The following morning, the Jesmond, still on course, was confronted by an
unknown island that gave every indication of having just risen from the sea. It
was large, about 30 miles across from north to south, and mountainous, with a
smoldering volcano. Captain Robson led a small landing party to investigate the
new island. Black basalt predominated, and a fine ooze, with millions of dead fish,
seemed to cover everything. The place was utterly barren and cut by numerous
fissures, from which steam rose constantly. By accident, one of the sailors found
a flint arrowhead. Excited by this discovery, the men began randomly digging.
Almost at once, they shoveled up many more arrowheads, together with a few
small knives.
Robson returned on March 3 with ship’s tools and 15 volunteers. Before
nightfall, they unearthed the stone statue of a woman; it was a bas-relief sculpted
into one side of an oblong rock and slightly larger than life-size, heavily encrusted
with marine growth. Further inland, the men came upon two walls of unmortared
stone. Nearby, they excavated a sword made of some unfamiliar yellow metal,
followed by a number of spear-heads, ax-heads, and metal rings. Finally came
pottery figures of birds and other animals, plus two large flat-bottom jars containing
bone fragments and a virtually intact human skull. With weather deteriorating,
Captain Robson brought the finds aboard his vessel, marked the island’s position
(latitude 250 North, longitude 230 40’ West), then hoisted anchor. He arrived in
New Orleans at noon, March 31.
TheJesmond’s encounter was described first in a front page story of a local
periodical, then quickly syndicated to more than a dozen newspapers across the
country. A reporter for the New Orleans’ Times-Picayune wrote that the artifacts,
which he personally handled, did not impress him as fakes, and he wrote that the
Captain offered to “show the collection to any gentleman who is interested.” On
May 19, Robson returned to London—without his finds, the whereabouts of which
have not been known since. Lawrence D. Hill, whose investigation of the Jesmond
incident is the most thorough, concluded that the sword and other metal objects
weretumbaga, an alloy 80 percent gold and 20 percent copper. Robson, writes
Hill, had the artifacts melted down and split the resultant gold with his crew. The
ship’s log was discarded by the British Board of Trade in keeping with its policy of
destroying such documents after seven years.