Hello, I'm a new member. Has anyone heard of the Galapgos mystery? I'm sorry but I can't read the post myself as it's black type on a maroon background. Anyway, the gist is that the islands were colonised by 3 German couples back in the 1930's but after acrimony and skulduggery, most of them died and only one family survived. It is suggested that some people were poisoned or thrown down crevises; at least 2 bodies were found mummified on a beach.

Hi there Binky and welcome to the boards… I have a fascination with the Galapagos Islands but I’d certainly not heard of this mystery before. You say you can’t read the post… maybe this may help…
http://latinamericanhistory.about.com/od/20thcenturylatinamerica/a/09galaffair.htm

Hi Binky, welcome to the board. I've never heard this story either but it sounds intriguing.

If you mean that your typing in the box is black on a maroon background, there's something wrong, the type should be white. I'm sure the all knowing Nordmann will be able to help with that. In the meantime, do join us for an e-freshment in the Tumbleweed Suite bar and we'll try to persuade you that black is white!

it's definately black typeface on a maroon background. Impossible for me to read I'm afraid.

Welcome Binky, and what a fascinating story you bring us. Not one that I had heard before, who do you think did it?

The only family left were the Wittmers (son Rolf now runs a fleet of Galapagos yachts for touring the islands). However, Dora was very let down by Fred (the man with brass teeth) and I think she may have poisoned him. I bought a book shortly after I visited the Galapagos (where I first heard of this tale) and it has a photo of two mummified bodies ona beach -- could be accident rather than murder. Perhaps we'll never know but well worth searching out the book(s) or internet aricles.


I'm sorry but I'll have to bow out here - I can't read what I'm typing

Hi Binky and welcome to the board. It sounds like whatever browser you're using is overriding the website defaults. Which programme are you using as an internet browser?

The more one reads about the protagonists in the Galapagos Islands Mystery the more the mystery seems to be how any of them lasted even as long as they did. There isn't one of them who isn't suspect, or terminally silly, or both.

Opera

Now trying in Firefox. White type on a grey background. Readable! Thank you Nordmann

Ah - well done! It sounds like Opera's style settings just need some small adjusting.

You could possibly try to see if your browser is imposing a style on the presentation of websites. The setting is found under "View" and then "Style" in Opera. There you can switch between "Author mode" and "User mode" to see if it makes any difference.

nordmann wrote:

The more one reads about the protagonists in the Galapagos Islands Mystery the more the mystery seems to be how any of them lasted even as long as they did. There isn't one of them who isn't suspect, or terminally silly, or both.

Yes. It is difficult to warm to any of them.

Not so, perhaps, with the victims of another story which also took place in the eastern Pacific about 2,300 kilometres north-west of the Galapagos on Clipperton Island. Situated 800 kilometres south-west of Acapulco in Mexico, the uninhabited atoll of Clipperton is an overseas territory of France. The question of its sovereignty has periodically been the subject of dispute between France and Mexico. In the 1910s Mexico installed a small garrison on the island headed by Captain Ramon Arnaud Vignon as governor. His (somewhat confusingly) French-sounding name stemmed from the fact that his grandparents had arrived in Mexico as part of the Napoleonic forces supporting the Habsburg Mexican Empire in the 1860s. Arnaud was not a very successful governor, however, as he managed to get Clipperton forgotten about by the outside world (including by Mexico!) and then presided over a bizarre phenomenon whereby the adult male population of the colony (i.e. the soldiers under his command) all mysteriously died while their wives and children survived. In the end Arnaud himself died (by drowning) leaving a lighthouse-keeper as the only adult male on the island. This lighthouse-keeper Victoriano Alvarez, however, was no gentleman but proceeded to tyrannise the women and children and proclaimed himself ‘king’ of Clipperton. His reign of terror, which included rape and murder, lasted for 2 years before a couple of the women plucked up the courage to hatch a plot whereby one of them distracted him while the other clubbed him over the head to bump him off. You can read more about the story here:

The Tyrant of Clipperton Island

That was the story as related by the survivors headed by Arnaud’s widow and can be taken at face value. Another interpretation, however, would be to see that it was Arnaud himself who went mad and was the tyrant and that Alvarez got the blame for the sake of family/class honour. Another interpretation would be that Arnaud was the first tyrant while Alvarez was the second tyrant. Whatever the truth of the matter, it’s another example of how the difference between civilization and barbarity can be the mere thickness of a coconut leaf.

The following short film from France Télévisions 1ère outre-mer looks at the history of Clipperton and also the island today:

Clipperton, l'île oubliée

At about 1:36 the presenter says something in a comical manner/accent which sounds like:

“Mais après, à part une cocoteraie.”

I’m trying to translate that as “After that, it's a bit of a coconut plantation” but I suspect that I’m missing something relating to the term’s use in French popular culture.

Anyone here read Kurt Vonnegut's "Galapagos"?

Vizzer wrote:

Clipperton, l'île oubliée

At about 1:36 the presenter says something in a comical manner/accent which sounds like:

“Mais après, à part une cocoteraie.”

I’m trying to translate that as “After that, it's a bit of a coconut plantation” but I suspect that I’m missing something relating to the term’s use in French popular culture.

How about, "but after that [brief description of the island], apart from a coconut grove ... [makes a face]... ", meaning, other than the few coconuts there ain't much there. As she goes on to say about a dozen seconds later, "a shipwrecked person would have a hard time surviving - the water is undrinkable, the meat of the (land) crabs is inedible/poisonous and the ocean is infested with sharks - in short it's far from being an island paradise!"

Franky I'm not surprised that people tend to lose their sanity there.

Thanks for that translation Meles. That makes much more sense and a coconut grove is also a better choice of wording than a plantation to describe what is actually on the island.

As you suggest it really is a desert island in the true meaning of the term. At the beginning of the film the presenter gives a list of alternative names for the island – L’île tragique, L’île de la désolation, L’île de l’oublie, L’île mystérieuse and L’île au trésor. Interestingly the name Île de la Passion is not listed which one might think quite apt considering its history. The ‘king of Clipperton’ is even described in it as having "fait vivre un véritable calvaire aux survivantes" – inflicted a veritable calvary on the survivors.

Île de la Passion or Île de La Passion (note the capital ‘L’ on La) is the name occasionally used by geographer Christian Henri Jost (featured in the film). Jost has done significant work on the flora and fauna of the island and has shown how, since the removal of pigs from the island in 1958, the number of birds now numbers over 100,000 including the world’s most important colony of masked boobies but also brown boobies, frigatebirds and sooty terns. The number of land crabs (Gecarcinadae) has fluctuated, once soaring to an estimated 10 million. Their devourings, along with the guano produced by the birds, has denuded the island of nearly all vegetation save the few aforementioned coconut trees. Conversely, the lagoon (sealed off from the open sea) has gradually become less salty and brackish and fresher and fresher as a result of plants blooming in it which the land crabs are unable to get to. Jost has produced this map which shows the location of Clipperton and its economic exclusion zone of 200 nautical miles (milles marins):
  

 
(Note how Clipperton’s economic exclusion zone is nearly the size of France’s metropolitan hexagon)
     
The name île au trésor is also fitting, however, because if ever there was a treasure island à la Robert Louis Stevenson then Clipperton was it. This stems from its association with the Norfolk privateer John Clipperton who supposedly used the island as a base for his operations in the early 1720s.