Lost Ship of the Desert coming to TV Jan. 2, 2015

7 and 10 pm showings tonight, Fri., Jan 2.

 

What the heck is this?
Some scifi BS?

 

See the preview: http://www.ahctv.com/tv-shows/myth-hunters/myth-hunters-video/the-lost-ship-of-the-mojave.htm



I posted Choral Pepper's pearl treasure stories in 2004 and 2007: http://forums.bajanomad.com/viewthread.php?tid=26704


Here is the part of Choral Pepper's chapter on the lost ship:

Juan de Iturbe, explorer for the King and pearler on his own account, was first to sail the entire length along the California Gulf Coast and into the Colorado River in 1615. After loading his fifty-ton ship with a great fortune in pearls, he sailed northward beyond San Felipe, but instead of finding the mouth of the Colorado River, he discovered himself grounded on a sandbar in a vast sea surrounded by mountains. Certain that he had discovered the long-sought Straits of Anian that gave entrance to the Pacific Ocean, even though it had already been determined that this was not so, Iturbe stayed there for a month waiting for a storm or enough wind to carry him off the bar. At last the gods favored him with a great cloudburst, but water gushed down from the high mountains with such fury that waves rendered his ship unmanageable.

Still dreaming that he and his crew would be ennobled by the King and endowed with measureless fame and fortune, Iturbe continued his exploration by land. When supplies ran low, they dried flesh from antelope and wild sheep. After several months of futile searching, they climbed to the top of the highest mountain and identified the Colorado River winding toward the northeast, but the mouth of it was as elusive as the supposed Straits running to the west.


With their ship finally seaworthy, they attempted again to sail around the landlocked sea in search of an exit, but somehow, as if controlled by a sorcerer, the water had receded. Iturbe once again found himself grounded, this time on soft, boggy ground from which the crew barely escaped alive. With little choice, they abandoned the ship with its vast treasure of pearls, leaving it poised upright with its keel buried in sand as if a-sail, and managed to straggle across the sandy waste back to the Gulf where they eventually were rescued.

Iturbe's aborted pearling adventure gave birth to one of Southern California's greatest lost treasure legends, as recounted in Desert Lore of Southern California by this author.